A court has sparked outrage after sentencing three adult males found guilty of repeatedly raping and impregnating an 11-year-old child in Tiflet, a town in northwestern Morocco, to only two years in prison.
The verdict, which was issued on March 20, has sparked frustration among Moroccan citizens who have been expressing shock and disappointment at Morocco’s judiciary system.
Many media outlets across Morocco have joined the chorus of condemnation, conveying frustration from ordinary citizens and public figures alike.
The news website Le360 recently published an open letter by sociologist and university professor Soumaya Naamane Guessous, who denounced what she called the “unbearable lightness of the sentence” and the court’s incomprehensible and unconscionable “normalization of a culture of rape and impunity.”
Addressing the Minister of Justice, the open letter narrated the case of the victim , who has endured a series of nightmares due to sexual assaults and threats.
After being raped, the victim received threats from her rapists; they said they would kill her and her family if she ever spoke up about the situation.
In denouncing the lightness of the sentence, Naamane Guessous’s open letter stressed that Morocco’s penal code gives a minimum of 10 years against defendants found guilty of sexual assaults against a minor.
According to Article 486 of the Moroccan Penal Code, the penalty for raping a minor under 18 is imprisonment for 10 to 20 years.
In her open letter, Naamane Guessous also identified the suspects — saying that one of them is a father of three, that the second is the nephew of the married suspect, while the third is their neighbor. The suspects are aged between 30 and 40.
“The most heinous? Two years in prison for the rapists. Two of them must pay the victim 20,000 dirhams and the third 30,000 dirhams. And that’s all,” the letter fumes.
The victim, who is now 13, is a mother of a one-year-old boy. Activists have raised concerns about the situation, stressing that although a DNA test confirmed that one of the rapists is the father of the victim’s child, the court still chose to give the culprits a sentence of only two years.
Naamane Guessous’ letter echoes a similar cry for help-themed open letter by Moroccan novelist and filmmaker Abdellah Taia. In August 2018, Taia expressed his shock and outrage over the case of Khadija, a 17-year-old girl who was allegedly kidnapped and repeatedly raped in central Morocco.
Like Guessous, Taia used his open letter to draw attention to what he also saw as the “banalization” of female bodies and the “normalization” of rape in some parts of Morocco.
He also criticized “circumstantial condemnations,” urging Moroccan and authorities in the country to do something that will adequately tackle the distressing reality of sexual abuse, instead of just issuing condemnations that will ultimately not bring about the much-needed change.
“It is now more than ever urgent to rethink the social contract that binds us. We cannot wash our hands of the Khadija affair. It is certain that there are other Khadijas in Morocco,” he wrote.
