Child abusers cannot hide from the law, says gender minister

Minister of Gender, Family and Social Services, Shidhatha Shareef, has stated that child abusers using religion as a shield to act with impunity cannot hide from the long arms of the law.

The minister has also stated that spreading hard-line ideologies in the name of Islam will not be tolerated, via a tweet, on Sunday night.

This comes at a time of public outrage succeeding reports of an unregistered and illegal marriage between a 13 year-old girl and a 26 year-old fisherman identified as Ismail Hammad of Fehi Ali, from Maduvvari island of Raa atoll. Following the public outrage, the Ministry of Gender and Family revealed that relevant authorities were informed after the 13 year old child bride was discovered to be pregnant.

As such, the Maldives Police Service (MPS) revealed on Sunday that the authority's intelligence department received information on the family of the 13 year-old child in 2018.

The incident came to the attention of the public eye on Friday after Hammadh, the 26 year-old fisherman, was violently attacked by his crew-mates on the sea-cucumber fishing boat he worked on, after a disagreement during an alleged heated religious discussion.

Since the incident, it has come to light that Hammadh and his crew-mates have hard-line extremist religious ideologies and all of them have unregistered illegal marriages to children.

According to the joint press statement released on Sunday by the MPS and the Ministry of Gender, investigation into the matter has been ongoing since the authorities received reports of child neglect towards all the children of the 13 year-old girl's family on 6th June 2018.

While highlighting that the child's family has extremist ideologies, the joint statement declared that efforts are underway by all the relevant authorities to provide these children with their inherent right to education, healthcare, and a safe environment.

They state that investigations showed that the child had no registered marriages, while adding that legal action will be taken to protect children at-risk of being targeted by such crimes.

Nevertheless, authorities are being heavily criticized on social media for the lack of action taken against child sex offenders.