Here's a highly educational story from my local paper. It goes like this:
An 18 year old woman reported to the police that she was gang raped by 6 men. The police arrested her. She has been in custody since making the report, and is now facing charges.
To put a little more flesh on the bones, the prosecutor claims that she agreed to get into a car with one of the men, who was presumably someone she already knew. The prosecutor claims that by agreeing to get into his car she was clearly agreeing to have sex with him.
The man then called five of his friends, who raped her.
She is now accused of having extramarital sex with all 6 of them. That is, of course, a crime in this country.
I am not sure whether the prosecutor believes that agreeing to have sex with one man means you automatically consent to having sex with any of his friends he cares to invite round. It may be that in the eyes of the law, the simple act of accepting a lift from a man means that you have in effect consented to being used by him and all or any of his friends.
The main thing that comes across is that this woman must be punished - though it isn't clear whether she's simply being punished because she complained.
Two other points worth noting: she has no lawyer to represent her, and her family were not in court...
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100518/NATIONAL/705179850/1010
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About Me
- Sarah
- This started as the home and away thoughts from a broad Brit living and teaching English in the Middle East, but now I'm back in the UK for the indefinite soon, and based in the Fine City of Norwich. I write - fiction, non-fiction, poetry. My book 'Ghosts International: Troll and Other Stories' is published by OUP Bookworms Library. I'm working on a novel set in Norwich in the seventeenth century. Translates Italian to English. Tells stories from around the world. Has cats. Grows potatoes and other things in an allotment.
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Roxy and the mogs
2 comments:
It is depressing and even more so when you think that after she returns to the family (if you can call it that), she may well be abused or even killed for "dishonouring them".
I suppose in a sexually repressed society (at least for some), when young men get a girl in the car, it's too good an opportunity to miss. But I wonder if they would want their mothers or sisters treated as a sexual object.
The fact that the stupid religion and subsequent law permits it is also depressing. Hardly an incentive for men to improve their behaviour. And it's 2010!
An friend has suggested that the fact that she was "placed in custody" (what I would call being arrested) was for her own protection - to keep her from being killed by her family.
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