Chairperson, the Portfolio Committee on Social Development considered the Children's Amendment Bill, which is a private member's Bill. It was tabled and referred to the committee on 13 March 2013.
The committee met with the sponsor of the Bill, hon Mike Waters, on 18 June 2013 in order to receive a briefing on the Bill. The Bill seeks to amend the Children's Act of 2005 in order to provide for a person convicted of attempted rape to be found unsuitable to work with children and to provide for matters connected therewith.
The proposed amendment has the insertion of attempted rape in sections 120(4) and (5) of the Act to provide for the person who has been convicted of attempted rape to be found unsuitable to work with children. Hon Waters explained to us that part B of the Child Protection Register that is stipulated in the Act was introduced to protect children from people who have been found unsuitable to work with them. At present, the Act determines that such people include those convicted of murder, attempted murder, rape, indecent assault or assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm with regard to a child.
On 13 August 2013 the committee received a briefing from the Department of Social Development and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, responding to the proposed amendments in respect of the committee decision.
The Department of Social Development also briefed us on some legislative and operational implementation challenges regarding the Act. These include the implementation of the adoption policy, the National Child Protection Register, the foster care system, human resources and funding of early child development programmes. In order to address these challenges, the department initiated a process of reviewing this Act since 2011.
With regard to section 120(4) and (5) of the Children's Act, the department acknowledged that there has been challenges pertaining to the interpretation of the term "unsuitability" and that this has impacted on the implementation of the section. Currently, the court may convict an offender in terms of an offence mentioned in section 120, but another legal process has to be followed to make the finding of unsuitability work with children. This has been quite a challenge for the Department of Social Development.
Therefore, instead of having a separate process, they are proposing in one of the 43 amendments that a person must be deemed to be found unsuitable to work with children when they are found guilty of a crime against a child. Furthermore, section 120 does not provide for the attempted sexual offences that are stated in section 55 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, 2007. The amendment proposes that a person convicted of an attempted sexual offence against the child be included in the section. That is obviously the amendment that comes from the department.
Having heard these two presentations and also the presentations from hon Waters, the committee decided to reject the motion of desirability of the Bill and to rather go for a holistic approach on the amendments as proposed by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development as well as the Department of Social Development. This process has already proceeded quite far; it is already at Cabinet level in respect of the amendments. Thank you. [Applause.]
There was no debate.