By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe dismissed Vaughn Miller’s call for rapists to be castrated or executed, emphasising the legal limits surrounding criminal penalties.

Mr Miller, the minister of environment and natural resources, spoke in the House of Assembly after a recent increase in sexual assaults in his constituency.

“That’s his view,” Mr Munroe said yesterday.

“We’ve never had a castration law. So, I sincerely doubt that if you were to pass one it would survive muster. But if people want to feel good to say you passed it and then it was struck down by the courts that would be a view.”

“I understand that Mr Miller was expressing his frustration. The level of certain types of crime and, as I say, sexual offences you have to be mentally disordered because there are too many people willing to willingly engage in relationships for you to have to resort to raping anyone.”

Asked if there should be harsher penalties for sex crimes, Mr Munroe said: “The maximum penalty for rape is life imprisonment. I don’t think it could get worse than that.”

Mr Miller said the rise in sexual assaults caused Golden Isles residents to wonder if they were being targeted. Police have since arrested a suspect in the attacks. 

“I wish to register my anger against persons who commit such violent, reprehensible, detestable acts,” he said. “In fact, I am rather draconian in my mindset on this. I’m from the old school, the old, old, old school. If you find them guilty, without a shadow of doubt, you castrate or execute them and prepare ‘em tell ‘em bid farewell to this side and say hello to whatever is on the other side. That’s my draconian opinion.”