The Chief Judge of Ogun State, Justice Mosunmola Dipeolu, has hinted that the state will soon open a sex offenders’ register as part of efforts to curtail the prevalence of sexual violence in the state.
Dipeolu who revealed this at the public presentation of a book, “The Law At Your Fingertips”, at the state Judiciary Complex, Kobape, Abeokuta, the state capital, said names of sex offenders would be written in the register upon conviction by the court.
She said the need to establish sex offenders’ registry was in line with the increasing number of sexual offence cases in the society, which has become the order of the day.
She emphasised that such offenders name would also be circulated on all the state’s owned media, and conviction of the convict would be known to the general public.
She said this would not only promote the safety of the general public, but would instill courage and confidence in victims and their family to come forward and access justice.
She said the commitment of the present administration of state’s judiciary to bring justice closer to the people remains on course, saying that the state judiciary now presently on online and can be accessed, on almost all the social media platforms by simply typing “Ogun state judiciary”, on the search engines.
She said raping of minors in the country has become the order of the day, which the victims felt demoralised, noting that the victim need to report the case in order to seek for justice, and then the justice shall be down while the rapist would not go scot free.
“Indeed, the raping of minors has become rampant in our society with those raped feeling shy to seek for justice, which then traumatized the victims. It is not a stigmatization, all you need is to report the case and seek for justice, that will even serve as a deterrent to others who intend to do so,” Dipeolu said
She said that the state has selected certain laws of the state to be made accessible to the general public, including the Ogun State Child Rights Law 2003, which would address the rights of children in the state, noting that it was among the ones that would transcribe into Yoruba language and Pidgin English, in order to make it more understandable to the common man. She said that the objective of the Child Rights Law 2003 was to ensure that the rights of children in the state are protected, noting that majority of the victims in that category are the downtrodden like housemaids, wards, orphans and the weak. She said: “We are confident that this simplified and transcribed version of the Child Rights Law will be easily understood by any child with the exception of those who cannot read and write at all.”