Rabat – Moroccan association Jossour Forum for Moroccan women joined the chorus of condemnation against a light sentence handed by a Moroccan court against three adults charged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Tiflet, a town in northwestern Morocco.
On March 20, the criminal division of the Appeals Court in Rabat sentenced three men involved in repeated rape against a minor to two years in prison.
The 11-year-old girl, who is now 13, suffered from repeated rape and violence under threat. The rape resulted in pregnancy.
Denouncing the light sentence against the defendants, the Joussour association described the verdict as “unfair.”
“This is an unfair verdict for the victim,” the association said, emphasizing that defendants guilty of such crimes deserve “severer penalties.”
The case of the child in question sparked a nationwide uproar, with media and citizens alike denouncing the light verdict.
Earlier this week, Sociologist and university professor Soumaya Naamane Guessous published an open letter in which she denounced the “unbearable lightness of the sentence” as well as the court’s incomprehensible “normalization of a culture of rape and impunity.”
The letter addressed to Minister of Justice Abdelllatif Ouahbi, stressed that Morocco’s penal code gives a minimum of 10 years prison sentence against anyone guilty of sexual assault against a minor.
Article 486 of the penal code stipulates that the penalty for raping a minor under 10 is imprisonment for 10 to 20 years.
The victim, who is now 13, is the mother of a one-year-old boy.
Many activists have raised concerns about the light sentences ruled against perpetrators of similarly heinous crimes on minors and adults alike. Others also expressed concerns about Morocco’s law criminalizing abortion.
The concerns intensified when a 14-year-old died in September last year after undergoing a clandestine and unsafe abortion.
“Time to grieve … Meriem, 14 years old, raped, died on September 6th following an unsafe abortion, due to the unjust system of law we all know and live under,” social change organization Moroccan Outlaws 490 said.
Many activists have been calling on the government to legalize abortion.
Article 453 of Morocco’s penal code criminalizes abortion except in cases where the mother’s physical health is threatened.
