It also created the National Register for Sex Offenders, which records the details of those convicted of sexual offences against children or people who are mentally disabled.
In May 2012 the Western Cape High Court ruled that many of the sections of the act were not enforceable because they did not prescribe specific sentences for the crimes, which violated the principle of legality ("nulla poena sine lege").
[4] In an October 2013 judgment, the Constitutional Court found the statutory rape and statutory sexual assault provisions to be unconstitutional to the extent that they made it a crime for children between 12 and 16 to engage in consensual sexual activities with other children in the same age range.
[5][6] In 2015, Parliament amended the law so that consensual sex between two children between 12 and 16, or between a child under 16 and one over 16 if the age difference is less than two years, is no longer a crime.
[7] In June 2018, the unanimous Constitutional Court found that the twenty-year statute of limitations on sexual offenses was unconstitutional.