The recent Nth room sex crime has grabbed the attention of the public. What I found very weird about this incident was the public having to demand severe punishment to the perpetrators. As of March 23, more than two million people have signed the online petition demanding the disclosure of those related to the crime. Not only that, many are asking for a fair punishment to these perpetrators. My question is, “Why do we have to struggle so much for sex crimes to be punished?” It seems so weird that we need to raise our voice to protect the victims and punish the wrong.
Another thing I found weird was focusing on the number of users in the sex crime chat room. Depending on various press releases, the number of people in the chat room differed greatly. Some said it was up to 260,000 while some said it was only 10,000. I could easily notice disputes arguing over what the exact number of users in the chat room was. However, the number itself is not the point. The point is that there are victims, including those under the age of 19, and that there are people who watched those videos. There is no need to make a fuss over what the exact number is because that does not help anyhow in taking a closer look at what the problem is. What we need to focus on is how we are going to protect the victims and punish the perpetrators.
See, this Nth room sex crime is not an incident that appeared out of nowhere. To go further, the crime could have been prevented. However, we lacked the measures to punish such crimes. We tend to punish sex criminals with lighter sentences compared to other countries. Not only that, when it comes to filming or distributing pornography, there is barely any punishment at all. For instance, the owner of “Welcome to Video,” a child pornography dark website, was given only a year and a half jail sentence last year. On the other hand, U.S. citizens who were a member of the website were given jail sentences from five to eight years for owning child porn. This is the index that shows where we stand in treating sex criminals and crimes.
If I were to list examples of any other indexes, it can go on and on. However, I would like to stop here to talk more about what the first steps to change the status quo should be. The first thing, of course, is to change the legal grounds so that we can give heavier sentences to these perpetrators. This is the very process we need to go through. But what else? That’s the real question. What other changes should be made to no longer come across any more Nth room sex crimes? The key is to acknowledge consuming sex crime videos as a problem. The users of the Nth room payed a great amount of money to watch the videos. However, such videos are not a product to consume. The victims were lured and even threatened to take part in the videos, meaning these videos were literally scenes of crimes. Thus, we need to acknowledge that consuming sex crime videos is not any different from passing by a crime scene without reporting. In short, we not only need to stop and prevent the production of these sex crime videos, but also need to recognize the wrong doing of taking a peek at the crime scenes. Sex crime videos are by no means a product to consume.
We should no longer have to raise our voice to grab attention on these issues nor have to plead for a heavier sentence to such crimes. Now is the time that these changes are made. If not now, then when?