CAIRO: Her first mistake was when she went to the police to report being raped by 6 men. Upon investigating, the United Arab Emirates decided to, on top of charging the men with rape, has charged the 18-year-old woman will consensual sex before marriage with one of the culprits. According to The National newspaper – Emirates leading English language daily – the prosecution has said the young woman initially consented to having sex with one of the men, an Emirati friend of hers. In citing proof, the prosecution said she went for a ride with him on May 2, where they allegedly had sex in his car. The 19-year-old man then “invited” five of his friends to join in. The culprits include four Emiratis and one Iraqi, The National reported on Tuesday. The men are being charged with raping the woman in the back seat of the same car. The same newspaper quoted Rima Sabban, a sociologist at Zayed University saying that Emirates law views women in a traditional manner. “The view of women in the legal system here is still traditional,” she said. “So if a woman was raped, they believe that she did a certain move to trigger the rape and look at her as someone who had sex out of wedlock and not as a victim.” It was also reported that the vast majority of women in the rich Gulf emirate do not report rape incidents for fear of similar reprisals as the 18-year-old woman received. At the same time, the young woman's family did not attend the court sessions, and a number of women's groups worry that the family might be looking for a way out that is “honorable.” Honor killings sometimes occur in the Middle East, where the family will kill their daughter if she has, even allegedly, done something to affect the “honor” of the family. They are most common in Jordan. “Her family did not even go to the rape trial,” said The Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women (ADEW) on their Twitter account. “I am curious to know if they want to cleanse the family honor now,” they wrote. Here in Egypt, women continue to complain of poor treatment at the hands of police, where they are often belittled and talked out of filing charges. One woman, Manal, recently went to the police station to report being assaulted on the streets. Police, she said were abusive and refused to deal with her. “They simply told me the prosecution wouldn't be able to do anything and that the man would most likely counter accuse me of something and it would go nowhere,” she said, adding that the police then commented how horrible it would have been had the victim been a foreigner or a diplomat. “This is part of the problem Egyptian and Arab women face across the region. We are the victims no matter what,” Manal continued. “So when a woman is beaten or raped or worse, it must be her fault.” As for the Emirates case, it sounds eerily familiar. BM
