MPs voted 17-0 on Monday to back minimum jail terms for the worst child sex offences. The vote on 5 October 2026 closed a debate that began on Friday 2 October on a private member's motion from Dwayne Seymour MP, the independent opposition member for Bodden Town East. Two members, Jay Ebanks MP and Juliana O'Connor-Connolly MP, were absent for the division.

The motion asks the government to consider three things: a full review of every law dealing with sexual offences against children, higher maximum penalties for those offences, and mandatory minimum prison terms for the most serious of them, with judges keeping the power to depart from the minimum in exceptional cases. It does not change the law by itself. It commits the government to consider the changes and to bring any amendments back to Parliament.

Isaac Rankine MP, Minister for Social Development and Innovation, told the House the work is already under way. He said a multi-agency working group that includes the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, the Department of Community Rehabilitation, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney General's Chambers and four ministries is reviewing whether current maximum penalties "adequately reflect the seriousness of sexual offences" and whether mandatory minimums should apply. The figures behind the debate come from the RCIPS 2025 Crime and Traffic Statistics Report, released on 22 April 2026, which recorded a 20% rise in sexual offences to 125 incidents, with 58% of victims children at the time of the offence.

Minister calls for life sentences within families

Rolston Anglin MP, the Member for West Bay North, went further than the motion. Reading from the Penal Code during the sitting, he said a person who has sexual intercourse with a close family member faces life imprisonment only if the victim is under 13 and otherwise a maximum of 20 years. He called the current position unacceptable. "A man can have sex with his 17-year-old daughter and only be up for 20 years. Give me a break. Life in prison. Period," he said.

He also read the current penalties for defilement of a girl under 16: a maximum of 20 years where the girl is under 12 and 12 years where she is between 12 and 16. "Not enough," he said. He told the House he had seconded a 2001 motion by Captain Eugene Ebanks that first raised those penalties, and that the pair had been "horrified" at what they found in the law books on entering Parliament in 2000. He said that at that time the Penal Code still referred to people with a mental impairment as idiots and attached a sentence he recalled as three years to sexual offences against them. He said that a person whose mental capacity is equivalent to a five-year-old's still does not get the same protection as a child under current law.

Anglin then made a commitment that goes beyond the motion. He said it was "time to rip the band-aid off" and roll out an age-appropriate sex education curriculum through every stage of the school system. He told colleagues that when parents complained, they should send them to him. "It is needed. It is needed," he said. He described himself as "a hardliner" on sentencing and said mandatory minimums belong in law "when courts hand down sentences that shock the conscience of good people", while acknowledging that lawyers and judges regard them as blunt instruments.

What the law already allows

Nickolas DaCosta MP, Minister for District Administration and Home Affairs, told the House that mandatory minimums already exist in Cayman law for one child sex offence. He said section 228L of the Penal Code, which covers abuse of a position of trust involving a child, carries a minimum of five years where the offender pleads guilty and seven years otherwise, with the court able to depart from the minimum where it finds and states exceptional circumstances. DaCosta said the motion asks Parliament to consider extending that approach to other serious child sex offences, and that the existing section shows strong sentencing and judicial discretion "can coexist".

DaCosta also raised an issue the motion does not name. He said the Constitution protects persons under 18, while Part VII of the Penal Code generally defines a child as under 17 and some offences use 16. He said there may be sound reasons for the different thresholds, but that any review should establish why the law "draws different lines at 16, 17 and 18" and whether they remain justified. He compared the proposal to the 10-year minimum sentence Parliament has already set for possession of a gun. "While a gun can take a life, seeking to exploit a child can certainly ruin a life for a much longer period," he said.

He listed what his ministry already does at the border, including a consent form introduced by Customs and Border Control for certain minors travelling without a parent or guardian, and said offender management after release is part of the same system. "A sentence is not simply a number pronounced in a courtroom," he said.

Registry defence cut short by the Speaker

The debate produced one intervention from the chair. Pearlina McGaw-Lumsden MP, the Deputy Speaker and opposition member for George Town West, moved the earlier private member's motion calling for a sex offender registry, which the House passed earlier in this parliamentary meeting. She said she had received queries over the weekend asking why the proposed registry would not be publicly searchable. She said the purpose was to let police and safeguarding agencies "identify, monitor, assess and manage the risk posed by convicted sex offenders", and that public access alone "does not guarantee that offenders are properly monitored". Whether the register should be open, closed or available only where there is a safeguarding need was, she said, a question for consultation.

Speaker Ezzard Miller stopped her. He said she could not revive the registry debate and had to confine herself to the motion on penalties. McGaw-Lumsden said "it all intertwines into one" but complied. She then said offences against children "are amongst the most serious offences that our criminal justice system has to address" and supported the review.

Kenneth Bryan MP, Deputy Leader of the Opposition and member for George Town Central, was also pulled up by the Speaker when he tried to refer to a parliamentary question that had been withdrawn earlier in the sitting. He then asked the government to widen its review beyond sexual offences to cover online harm to children, including bullying and dangerous online challenges, and said he hoped the Attorney General's recommendations would reach the government before the Attorney General retires.

Two earlier attempts, two different outcomes

Christopher Saunders MP, the independent opposition member for Bodden Town West who seconded Seymour's motion, told the House he had brought a near-identical motion in 2018. Private Member's Motion 19 of 2017/18, moved by Saunders and seconded by Anthony Eden, sought minimum sentences of 15 years for sex with a girl under 12, 10 years for a girl aged 12 to 16, and 10 years where the victim had diminished capacity. He said the government of the day rejected it on the ground that "the courts needed the flexibility in sentencing". He said he received about 15 responses from the public on that motion, against more than 400 on a question he filed the same month about free-to-air World Cup football.

Saunders said parliamentary standing orders prevent him from criticising the courts over individual sentences. "I will leave you all to fill in the blanks," he said. He credited the current government for its approach to the motion and said he was "optimistic that we do have a government that is willing to listen".

Roy Tatum MP, the opposition member for Red Bay who seconded the registry motion, said he knew of two cases in which friends' daughters had been harassed near a school. He said those were not theoretical concerns. "They're actually happening here in our islands," he said.

Private sector reports less, minister says

Rankine used the debate to raise a point about who reports suspected abuse. He said the "overwhelming majority" of child abuse and neglect referrals to the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub come from government entities, and that private schools, hospitals and organisations serving children report "at significantly lower rates". He said the data from Cayman and elsewhere shows abuse happens "across all economic and social brackets", and that private citizens and private entities "must join in" to keep children safe. He did not give the referral numbers.

He linked the review to the Children (Amendment) Act 2024 and its regulations, which he said are due to be tabled during this sitting. He said they cover care planning, regulation of children's homes, information sharing and the creation of an Office of the Commissioner for Children and Young Persons. He said no single amendment would eliminate child sexual abuse and that prevention, early intervention, support for families and support for victims all form part of the response. Health Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP also backed the motion, saying "the courts can only work with legislation as provided to them" and that a strong deterrent is itself a preventive measure.

What happens next

Attorney General Samuel Bulgin KC said his chambers sit on the working group and that its recommendations will be debated in Parliament as a bill. He said the last substantial review, in 2018, introduced grooming offences, but that offenders "have changed their modus operandi" and the law must keep pace with technology. He said he hoped the bill would reach the House "before I take my leave".

Closing the debate, Seymour said he wanted no more five-year sentences "for these unconscionable choices" and asked parents to question their children about contact with strangers and their online activity. He said that as a former minister he had received statistics showing sexual acts being performed in primary school bathrooms by children under nine, which he called alarming. He told the House that his personal preference for offenders would have been castration, adding, "I think that can be said in the House." He said he hoped that within two years the number of child victims would have come down drastically. He asked members to send "a united message" that was "not government, not opposition, not independent opposition, but one in unity".

The motion now sits with the government, which has said the working group will report. Three of the questions raised on Monday are not covered by the motion as passed: whether a sex offenders register should be public, whether the age thresholds of 16, 17 and 18 should be aligned, and whether online harm short of a sexual offence should be brought into the review. No date was given for the group's recommendations, for the tabling of the Children (Amendment) Act regulations beyond "this parliamentary sitting", or for the bill the Attorney General expects to debate.

Editorial note: Hansard had not been published at the time of printing. All quotations are reported from journalists' contemporaneous observations.