Understanding the British experience with paedophilia

I always perk up my ears when Malaysia comes on the UK news but lately, that brings about a mixture of dread and shock.

Nothing though could have prepared me for the shock of Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin’s conviction for the crime of possessing paedophilic pornography.

Malaysians are usually in the news for weird news reports like the “coconut bomoh” or Islamofascist scholars and their ridiculous pronouncements.

Nur Fitri’s conviction really takes the biscuit though. He was is possession of materials said to be of the most extreme nature. Malaysia boleh, indeed!

Do I have any sympathy for Nur Fitri? Despite all the justifiable condemnations against him, it must be terrible to have such perverse sexual desires.

For some reason, Nur Fitri found himself inclined to this and it would and has become his ruination.

However, I have greater sympathy for the children who were exploited in order to give Nur Fitri gratification. They did not have a choice in the matter.

Going by documentaries about paedophilia (they are a staple here in the UK), it is apparently not curable.

I would also ask, how on earth would one know anyway?

One can only guess if it is cured by interviewing the patient and the answers given would have to be taken at face value.

For all intents and purposes, there is no way of curing paedophilia.

Does this however, excuse Nur Fitri? Not by a long shot. Whatever sickness it is, it was freewill on Nur Fitri’s part to collect that material.

He chose to participate in this heinous activity thus perpetuating child sexual abuse. It is the demand of he and paedophiles like him which keep the paedophile pornographical industry alive

In present day Malaysia, paedophilia is something rather hush-hush. There was a term before, “sumbang mahram”, which broadly includes paedophilia (and whose occurrences were mostly with under aged victims anyway) but was mainly coined the purposes of identifying incest.

We had not yet faced a paedophilic porn collector until Nur Fitri’s case. Only now I am detecting in the Malay media the term “pedofil”.

Why this glaring absence? It could be the fact that given the overwhelming religion of Malay folk is traditional Islam, they have a problematic relationship with paedophilia.

This problem arises from the majority of the traditional Muslim’s belief that Prophet Muhammad married a six-year-old child bride, Aisha Abu Bakr.

He said to have consummated the marriage when she was nine. Although many Muslim countries have banned child marriages, we will find a residual inclination to it by a portion of the clergy.

The callous remarks by some high officials regarding Nur Fitri being given a “second chance”, notwithstanding their possible good intentions, were remarkably insensitive to the public’s feelings.

In Malaysia, we had already faced the unsolved murders such as those of Nurin Jazlin Jazimin and William Yau but we have not yet had a scandal involving child sex abuse by high profile figures on a large scale before.

Scandals such as these can tell us a lot about the nature of paedophilia and the British faced a major one recently.

These “second chance” officials need to understand the British sentiment regarding paedophilia and the scandal which had rocked the nation only a few years before.

Jimmy Saville became most famous paedophile (colloquially known as nonce) after a series of accusations were levelled against him.

Saville was a famous figure for decades as the host of “Jim’ll Fix It” (ironically a programme to make kid’s wishes come true!) and more famously was the first and last presenter of “Top of the Pops”.

He raised tens of millions of pounds for charity and was the patron of a few hospitals. After his death in 2011, hundreds of his victims (now in their middle ages) came forward to reveal his depravity.

As if abusing children was not bad enough, he actually abused children who were patients in the hospitals at which he was the patron!

At one point, his case came on BBC evening news daily with his latest victims emerging.

The extravagant grave built to commemorate him was unceremoniously removed. It is as if Saville was shamefully erased from British memory.

The “Jimmy Saville effect” led to more arrest of convictions of high profile paedophiles. The one which shocked me the most was Rolf Harris who was up till then a figure embodying the values of love and mercy to animals when he hosted a programme called “Animal Hospital”, a favourite programme of mine which warmed my heart in the early days of my life here.

Harris, an octogenarian, is currently serving a custodial sentence.

Paedophilia also found a safe haven in the darker corners of cyberspace. In chat rooms where paedophiles try to flirt and groom under aged girls so they may eventually meet them.

A TV programme called “Paedophile Hunter” exposed the extent of this activity. The “hunter” also led a team to lure and expose these paedophiles. This was another major scandal which happened only last year.

The Nur Fitri case, I believe, is only the tip of the iceberg.

If we dig deeper, we may find there is a lot more going on than we thought. However, the unhealthiest attitude we can take would be to brush this issue under the carpet due to reasons of pride and shame.

The British experience has much to teach us and can literally save young lives. – May 13, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.