KUCHING: Dr Ismail Drahman says sexual abuse has a tremendous impact on the psychological wellbeing of the victims, particularly children.
“The effects on children are bad, especially when the victims grow up. They can suffer from a lot of psychological traumas, among many other effects,” the Hospital Sentosa psychiatrist said on Monday (Sept 6).
Due to this, he urged the public to be more sensitive and aware of the latest issues happening in society.
“I am curious as to why the Australians are able to pick up on this problem rather than Malaysians. Most of the time, these paedophiles discover their victims online.
“When a paedophile pretends to be nice to prepubescent children, they may have sexual intentions, and it is difficult to detect unless we closely observe this adult’s behaviour.”
Dr Ismail explained that paedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent has a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children (children who have not yet reached puberty).
“Paedophilia has a sustained, focus, and intense pattern of sexual arousals such as persistent sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, or behaviours involving pre-pubertal children.
“The age of 13 is the cut-off for prepubescent children and to diagnose a person with paedophilia, they must be at least 16 years old or five years older than the prepubescent child.”
When asked what else could be done to help protect children from paedophiles, Dr Ismail said that it was high time to introduce sex education.
“This is also to teach our children to avoid strangers who seemed to be nice yet touch them inappropriately.”
He added that awareness of paedophilia should be continuously raised among the public and schoolchildren.
