Hong Kong Special Administrative Region authorities will table a sweeping legislative overhaul of the city’s sexual offenses regime before its lawmakers on July 7, including proposals to widen the scope of rape, establish new offenses for sexual encounters lacking consent, and significantly strengthen legal protections for child victims and those with mental disabilities, the Security Bureau has said.

A 30-day public consultation period is also set to begin the same day.

Officials pledged that the formal amendment bill would be referred to the Legislative Council for review later this year, in order to enact the reforms before the current administration’s term expires on June 30, 2027.

A paper submitted to the legislature for discussion on Monday outlined “five areas for improving” Hong Kong’s sexual offense laws: non-consensual sexual offenses, child sexual offenses, offenses involving people with mental impairments, miscellaneous sexual offenses, and other related amendments.

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In the paper, the bureau stated that the existing sexual offense clauses under the Crimes Ordinance — which are still largely patterned on English statutes from 1956 — are “outdated” and no longer fit for purpose, given changing public attitudes toward and growing awareness of sexual crime issues.

It pointed to several glaring gaps, in that certain offenses are still tethered to genders, others do not encompass the full spectrum of abusive behaviors, while certain punishments fail to match the gravity of the offenses in question.

The proposed overhaul is the latest effort to follow through on Law Reform Commission recommendations on sexual offenses. In 2021, Hong Kong criminalized voyeurism and upskirting, and Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s most recent Policy Address promised to study a comprehensive revision of the legal framework.

Key proposals include introducing a statutory definition of “consent” in the context of non-consensual sexual offenses. The SAR government paper lists 11 scenarios that would constitute circumstances in which a victim does not consent.

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The government is also planning the creation of two new sexual offenses to replace the existing “indecent assault” charge, along with a new offense criminalizing the act of intentionally causing another person to engage or take part in a sexual act without consent, which would replace the existing “procurement by threats” law.

Each of the three new offenses would carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

On sexual offenses involving children, the government is set to standardize the age of consent at 16 and introduce eight new child-specific offenses to replace the current four and make life imprisonment the maximum punishment.

For sexual offenses against persons with mental impairments, the proposed amendment seeks to update the legal terminology from “mentally incapacitated persons” to “persons with mental impairment” and create 18 new offenses. These would criminalize sexual acts with individuals of severe mental impairment to the extent of incapacity and afford strengthened protections for the vulnerable group against exploitation through coercion or deception, as well as abuses of care, trust, or authority.

Further proposals include an expansion of the incest offense to cover a wider range of family relationships. New offenses would be created for bestiality, sexual exposure, and administering drugs or other substances for sexual purposes, with life imprisonment as the maximum penalty if the victim is under 16.

To shield victims and vulnerable witnesses from being re-traumatized during court proceedings, it is also proposed to extend existing safeguard measures to cases involving new or revised sexual offenses.

Hong Kong recorded 68 rape cases in 2025, a year-on-year decrease of 11.7 per cent, and 1,137 indecent assault cases, down 4.1 per cent, according to the Hong Kong Police Force’s latest year-in-review report.

Clearance rates for the two categories stood at 95.6 percent and 78.9 percent, respectively.

Contact the writer at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com