A man has been charged at the Sessions Court on Tuesday, 21 January, for accessing child pornography on social media after pleading guilty.
Mohamad Reizal Dagang, 40, also administrated a Facebook group where lewd photos of children were shared. He would approve membership requests, allowing members to share child sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
He has been fined RM5,000. If he fails to pay the fine, he faces four months in jail. The light sentence understandably made many upset.
Under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act, possession of child pornography carries a prison sentence of up to five years, a maximum fine of RM10,000, or both upon conviction.
During the case mitigation, Rezial, who was unrepresented, asked for a lighter sentence, stating that he only has his brother and no one else.
Reizal is the latest person arrested under “Op Pedo Bersepadu PDRM-MCMC” to face charges under the law.
The Op involved a series of raids conducted across Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Johor, Terengganu, Penang, and Perak. So far, the authorities have arrested 13 suspects and seized 40,000 CSAM and pornographic materials from various devices.
Netizens were unhappy that the accused paedophile received such a light punishment. They felt that the Malaysian law was soft and would only embolden more paedophiles in the country. They hoped the authorities would mete out a harsher sentence to discourage similar crimes.
RM 5k je??? Imagine dah berapa ramai dia enable with his content
— Rizal 🍉🇲🇾 (@rizale_dahalan) January 21, 2025
Kalo kat uk ni boleh masuk penjara berpuluh tahun. Memiliki porno kanak pon dh kesalahan besar. Lemah undang2 malaysia patut la pedo bersarang kat sini
— Hello there! (@idcthonotime4u) January 21, 2025
Kita dlm keadaan “syiok sendiri” dgn 1001 mcm punya perundangan manja, pesalah are laughing all the way to the bank, draw duit bayar denda. Lepas bayar $5K, dia gelak create akaun baru. PATI pun gelak lepas bayar denda buat semula kesalahan. Penjara/deportation tak tak dikenakan.
— EM-Jay (@emjay039) January 22, 2025
Tolonglah beratkan lagi hukuman. They will never learn kalau setakat duit‼️
— aphrodite (@Miss_Shzrn) January 22, 2025
Just last week, two men, Lim Xin Yi, 31, and Goh Kien Yoong, 37, pleaded guilty in a Johor Baru Sessions Court for possessing child pornography. The duo were also fined RM5,000 each.
Lim was found possessing 2,172 photographs and 400 videos of child sexual abuse against children on two different computers. Meanwhile, Goh was found with 211 photos on a laptop. He also pleaded guilty to keeping pornographic material on a mobile phone.
Not the first time Malaysia accused of being “soft”
In 2014, Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin, who was studying mathematics at the Imperial College London under a Mara scholarship, was found to possess over 30,000 videos and photographs of child pornography. 601 of it belonged under Category A, which depicts abuse involving penetrative sexual acts with children.
Nur Fitri, considered to be a mathematical genius, was arrested, charged, and convicted in the UK on 21 November 2014. He was sentenced by the UK courts on 30 April 2015 to five years imprisonment over offences relating to child pornography.
When he returned to Malaysia after spending nine months in jail, he enrolled as a master’s student at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and continued pursuing his PhD at the same university. He was reportedly a good and well-behaved student during his time there.
People voiced worries that he was allowed to roam freely in university. However, Associate Professor Dr P. Sundramoorthy, a Universiti Sains criminologist, said Nur Fitri could not be discriminated against or prevented from having a normal life due to his criminal record. He added that the university will have to take precautions to ensure Nur Fitri doesn’t cause harm to its community.
In 2019, Nur Fitri’s name made news again when it was revealed that he wasn’t registered in the child sex offenders’ registry maintained by Malaysia’s Social Welfare Department.
This was because Nur Fitri was convicted in 2015, two years before the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 came into force. As such, the list records convictions for child sexual offences from 2017 onwards.