Woman acquitted of sexual assault as law ‘does not cover women as offenders’
However, Zunika Ahmad was convicted of one charge under the Children and Young Persons Act for committing an obscene act with the victim, and sentenced to eight months' jail.
SINGAPORE: A 40-year-old woman who admitted to repeatedly sexually assaulting her 13-year-old neighbour over almost two years was acquitted of six charges on Tuesday (Apr 12).
However, Zunika Ahmad was convicted under the Children and Young Persons Act for committing an obscene act with the victim in February 2012. She was sentenced to eight months' jail; she could have been jailed up to five years and/or fined up to S$10,000.
In a landmark judgment on the six charges for which Zunika was acquitted, Justice Kan Ting Chiu said the particular section of the law under which she was charged “does not cover women as offenders”.
Zunika had pleaded guilty in December last year to six counts under section 376A(1)(b) of the Penal Code for sexually assaulting the young girl using a sex toy. Section 376A(1)(b) criminalises the sexual penetration of a minor “with a part of A’s body (other than A’s penis) or anything else”.
Both the prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutors John Lu and Dwayne Lum, and Zunika's lawyer, Ms N Sudha Nair, had agreed that a woman could be charged under section 376A(1)(b) after studying the Interpretation Act.
But Justice Kan, noting that the issue of whether a woman can be charged under section 376A had not been decided before, said: "The charges cannot stand even after (Zunika) had pleaded guilty to them.
“The reference to a person who has a penis cannot be construed to include a woman without doing violence to common sense and anatomy”, he added, noting that the law is clearly not gender-neutral and that “we should be slow to suggest or infer the contrary.”
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