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Rabat – Moroccan police have arrested a 15-year-old boy for his involvement in a sexual assault case against a woman in Tangier.
Moroccan television channel SNRTNews quoted a security source, saying that police arrested the suspect on Sunday.
The arrest followed a disturbing video that went viral online, showing several teenage boys and one girl assaulting a woman in public.
The disturbing video showed teenagers surrounding the woman, grabbing her arms, touching her inappropriately and lifting her dress up.
The assault took place while passersby, both men and women, looked on.
One person eventually intervened and helped the victim, asking the teenagers assaulting the woman to release her.
Investigations are ongoing to determine the circumstances of the case, the source said, noting that police successfully identified the rest of the people involved. .
A recent report by the Moroccan Citizenship Center (CMC) states that women are more prone to sexual assault, with one in three women experiencing it on social media.
The year 2018 marked the implementation of law 103-13 on gender-based discrimination.
The law provides that anyone involved in sexual assault acts in public space will be imprisoned for one to six months. Harassers will also pay fines between MAD 2,000 to 10,000 (approximately $200 and $1,000).
Within the same law, perpetrators of cybercrime, including broadcasting or disseminating a combination of false allegations, will face one to three years in prison and a fine ranging from MAD 1,000 to 20,000 ($100 to $2,000) if found guilty.
Many activists, however, have pointed to loopholes in the law, citing a lack of details as to how the law actually works.
“What the law basically did is create a couple of new crimes or it increased the prison time for the crimes that already existed,” international human rights lawyer Stephanie Willman Bordat commented to Morocco World News in a previous interview.
“The problem is that for those to be implemented, the law has to include items related to the reporting and investigation and prosecution. In other words, to be implemented, the law has to put into place the implementing mechanisms,” he continued.
