Morocco: Outrage after 11-year-old girl’s rapists sentenced to just two years in prison

Morocco: Outrage after 11-year-old girl’s rapists sentenced to just two years in prison

Two years in prison for repeatedly raping an 11-year-old girl, who became a mother at 12 as a result of the sexual assaults she suffered for months. How can one accept such a lenient prison sentence? In Morocco, the March 20 conviction of three people accused of raping young Sanaa in a village near Rabat, the capital, continues to spark outrage.

Following a sentence deemed “scandalous,” many advocacy groups, intellectuals and internet users have spoken out to demand a revision of justice. They are raising the alarm about the perceived “leniency” of the punishments that often characterize cases of sexual violence against minors and women. In response, a sit-in was held on Wednesday, April 5, in front of the Rabat Court of Appeal, organized by the Spring of Dignity, a coalition of Moroccan human rights organizations. Meanwhile, the appeal trial is scheduled to start the following day.

“The law provides for up to 30 years of imprisonment for this type of crime, yet the perpetrators received only two years in prison! What mitigating circumstances did the judges find? In fact, there are only aggravating circumstances in this case. This is not justice!” said Fouzia Yassine, the coordinator of the coalition.

An ‘unacceptable injustice’

“Does this mean that the life of a little girl is not worth much? What about her physical and psychological integrity? Is it that the culture of rape is part of the judges’ mindset? Or that the female body doesn’t deserve protection and respect in our society?” denounced anthropologist and writer Yasmine Chami in a text published on Facebook. Chami is also the creator of a petition that has gathered over 30,000 signatures to date.

The collective outroar led the justice minister to react. In a statement to the press on Saturday, Abdellatif Ouahbi said he was “shocked” by the sentence and announced that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had appealed the judgment.

As the first to have brought the case to light, sociologist Soumaya Naamane Guessous denounced it as an “unacceptable injustice” in an open letter to the justice minister published on March 28 on the news website Le360. In the letter, the academic recounted the story of Sanaa, who comes from a village near Tiflet. She is the daughter of a shepherd and a farmworker and a school dropout.

Guessous told Le Monde that “on a market day when Sanaa was alone at home, she was raped by a 22-year-old man. He raped her repeatedly. She was also assaulted by her 37-year-old uncle and a 32-year-old neighbor. The uncle has a niece who he implicated in their crime: He asked her to keep watch, and the teenager witnessed the rapes repeatedly.” Threatened with death if she spoke out, Sanaa stayed silent, according to Guessous’ testimony.

Mitigating circumstances granted by the judges

“One day,” she continued, “the three men realized that Sanaa’s belly was swollen. They spread rumors that the girl was promiscuous. That’s when it all started.” The father was alerted to these rumors by a neighbor and took his daughter to the doctor. Sanaa was eight months pregnant. The three men were arrested. A few days later, Sanaa gave birth to a baby boy, and a DNA test proved that one of the rapists was his father. “However, no law requires him to acknowledge the child, let alone support him,” said Guessous.

On March 20, the three men were found guilty of statutory rape and indecent, violent assault on a minor, according to the judgment handed down by the criminal chamber of the Rabat Court of Appeal and reported by the website Medias24. One of them was sentenced to two years in prison and the other two to 18 months in prison and six months of a suspended sentence. The three defendants were also ordered to pay damages totaling €4,500. Yet, rape of a minor can be punished by imprisonment of 10 to 20 years under the Moroccan penal code and the sentence can be increased to 30 years if there was a loss of virginity.

The verdict revealed that the judges granted mitigating circumstances to the defendants, justifying them by their social conditions, lack of criminal history and the fact that “the legally prescribed sentence is severe in relation to the incriminated facts,” according to an excerpt published by Medias24.

‘Gender stereotypes’

Stephanie Willman Bordat of Mobilising for Rights Associates (MRA), an NGO based in Rabat, said, “There is a real issue with the criminal procedure here: Moroccan criminal law leaves it entirely up to judges to grant mitigating circumstances to the guilty, thereby reducing or even not applying applicable penalties. This gives them complete freedom to base their decisions on sexist stereotypes. In cases of sexual assault against minors or women, the use of mitigating circumstances is widespread in order to find excuses for the guilty and promote their impunity. In this sense, the case of the young girl from Tiflet is not an isolated one.” As Morocco considers reform of the criminal code, many voices are calling for the creation of a child code.

In 2012, a 16-year-old girl named Amina Filali committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist. An article in the penal code at the time allowed men accused of rape to avoid prosecution if they married their underage victim. The teenager’s death sent shockwaves in Morocco and sparked a debate on rape and women’s rights. The clause was abolished two years later. “Just like Amina, Sanaa is a sacrificial victim,” said Guessous. “I hope that her ordeal will lead to progress. This kind of injustice must not happen again.”