In a very strange outcome in a case of sexual assault, a woman — who had passed off as an Indonesian man since she was 16 — had all her charges of sexual penetration thrown out of court.
Why? Because she didn’t have a penis — thus she did not qualify to be convicted of rape, under the law.
39-year-old Zunika Ahmad turned up in court yesterday expecting to be sentenced for the crime after pleading guilty to six charges of sexually penetrating an underage girl using a sex toy and her fingers, Channel NewsAsia reports.
The special circumstances of her gender dysphoria, however, meant that she would be charged as a female. Zunika even had two wives, who were also under the impression that they were married to a man. Zunika even had a daughter — but the child was borne from an affair by her first wife, and Zunika had gone along with the lie, unwilling to out herself as a woman.
Zunika, however, did carry out a criminal offence — she formed a close relationship with a 13-year-old neighbour, and carried out a sexual relationship with the girl for nearly two years. Though Zunika had not forced herself on the girl (the sexual acts were committed with the girl’s consent), it was still illegal considering the age of consent is 16.
In a landmark ruling however, Senior Judge Kan Ting Chiu acquitted her of all six charges. According to the judge, he doubted that the law of which Zunika was convicted for applied to women.
Section 376A(1)(b) refers to the sexual assault offender as “a person (A) who sexually penetrates, with a part of A’s body (other than A’s penis) or anything else, the vagina, or anus, as the case may be of a person (B) under the age of 16”.
“On a plain reading… A is a person who has a penis, which A had not used to penetrate B,” said Justice Kan. “The reference to a person who has a penis cannot be construed to include a woman without doing violence to common sense and anatomy,” he said, deciding that the law was gender-specific.
Gender equality advocacy group AWARE obviously had some strong words to say about the law, calling the acquittal “not right”.
“The assault should be taken seriously no matter the gender or body of the perpetrator,” they wrote on their Facebook page.
Zunika was still convicted under the Children and Young Persons Act for committing an obscene act with the victim, and has been sentenced to eight months in jail.
Psychiatrists had diagnosed her with a strong desire to be male, and one simply recommended sexual reassignment surgery instead of psychiatric treatment, so that she can continue life as a man.
Zunika’s wives and daughter have since come to terms with her transsexualism. She intends to undergo surgery and continue living with her family after serving her sentence.
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