Casablanca — A 40-year-old man accused of raping an 11-year-old girl multiple times was just sentenced by a Marrakech court to two years in prison.
The little girl, reports the Moroccan daily Al Akhbar, was the man’s wife’s little sister, who was forced to go live with them after her parents were killed in a tragic car accident only 8 months prior.
According to the same source, the man was arrested after the girl’s teachers alerted authorities, who found out that it wasn’t the man’s first run in with the justice system for a sexual violence related crime.
The man would have reportedly been assaulting the girl since the night of her parents’ accident, reports Al Massae, and threatened to hurt her if she ever said anything.
Many have took to their keyboards to call out the court’s decision to sentence the Marrakech man to a mere two years. On a Le360 Facebook post about the case, one commenter wrote: “Only TWO YEARS for a recidivist who assaulted a little 11-YEAR-OLD girl…do our judges not have kids…?”
Another discussed the message this kind of sentencing sends to the community, saying, “And this is why Morocco is full of pedophiles who think they can do anything. What a shame. Our justice is shameful.”
Sexual violence has long been a problem in Morocco, but the issue has especially come to light in recent years after multiple cases of rape called attention to Article 475 of Morocco’s penal code.
Though the law, which allowed rapists to marry their victim in order to escape prison, has since been amended, the country still has a long way to go in terms of standing up for victims of sexual violence.
