Penal Code section on insult of modesty to be reviewed: MHA
The section of the Penal Code that criminalises words or gestures used to insult a woman’s modesty will be reviewed, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in Parliament on Tuesday (27 February).
The move will come as part of an overall review of the Penal Code, said the MHA’s Parliamentary Secretary Amrin Amin in response to Member of Parliament Intan Azura Mokhtar’s question on whether Section 509 of the Code would be updated to include men as victims of acts that insult their modesty.
“We are reviewing the Penal Code and one of the sections we are looking at is that particular section. So we will review it holistically and see what we need to strengthen,” Amrin said.
Currently, Section 509 states that those convicted of insulting the modesty of any woman by uttering any word, making any sound or gesture, exhibiting any object, intending that these be seen by such woman, or intruding upon the privacy of such woman, shall be punished with a maximum jail term of a year and/or a fine.
These offences include acts such as taking upskirt videos or exposing one’s self to a woman. Men are currently not included as victims of offences that fall under the Section.
The issue came into the spotlight last December after Colin Teo Han Jern, 27, was sentenced to 10 weeks’ jail and fined $4,000 for filming obscene videos of unsuspecting men in the public toilets of shopping malls along Orchard Road.
The prosecution had sought a six-month jail term for Teo but the district judge said that there were no provisions for insulting the modesty of men at that time. Instead, Teo was sentenced based on the charges he faced for making obscene films and possessing obscene films, among others.
In his response to Dr Intan’s queries, Amrin also stated that 100 police reports involving upskirt offences committed with mobile phones or other recording devices were made annually between 2013 and 2017.
An average of 20 police reports were filed per year over the same period involving harassment and insulting the modesty of women at the workplace, he added.
Of the aforementioned reports, 97 per cent were made by women.
Related story:
Man who filmed men in public toilets sentenced to 10 weeks’ jail, $4,000 fine
