WOMEN activists, deeply concerned with the alleged increase in sexual assaults and rapes against women and girls, have deplored the court verdicts, which, in many cases, are disappointing to the victims and their families. When reminded that dozens of rapists have been sentenced to capital punishment, the maximum penalty in the Egyptian penal code, the activists promptly observe that judges hand down the death sentence only when the victim has been abducted and raped by more than one man. “The death sentence would be reduced to a few years in prison if the judge discovers that the rapist was alone when he sexually attacked or raped his victim,” argued Amal Abdul-Hameed, a Cairo woman activist, in a study she jointly made with lawyer Ziad el-Alami. The study warns that the mitigated sentence handed down to rapists or other sexual offenders was not acting as a deterrent. “Many judges presiding over hearings of rape cases, would safely make use of Article 17 of the Egyptian Penal Code when only the suspect is standing alone in the dock,” the study regrets. The article allows judges to use their discretion and, in accordance with their subjective judgement on the different dimensions of the case, give a lenient sentence. Substantiating its argument, the study discusses a verdict announced in absentia by the Cairo Criminal Court to give the rapists of a mentally-impaired girl seven years each in a heavily guarded prison. Suggesting that the victim's family must have felt dismay when the judges announced such a ruling, the study questions because she was kidnapped by force at a knifepoint, and was raped several times.” The study also examines a verdict made by a Benha court in Cairo's neighbouring province of Qaliubia. According to the study, a young man was given three years in prison after he was found guilty of storming into the victim's house, robbing it and finally raping the woman in the house before escaping. Sympathising with victims, who refuse to make a complaint and disclose their sufferings, the study accused investigators of carrying out traumatising and scandalising interrogations, compelling many victims of rape and their families to keep away from police stations. “The Egyptian society callously and outrageously refuses to sympathise with the victim of rape, who prefers to suppress her agony to avoid torturing looks from neighbours or friends,” the study says. “Worse, the victim undergoes a further traumatising and scandalising experience if she attempts to seek the help of the police to arrest her rapist,” it regrets. Since 1997, the Ministry of Interior has inexplicably stopped the release of annual or quarterly reports about the number of rape incidents, which would have taken place in the corresponding period. Judges in the criminal court, in which rape cases are heard, regretfully confessed that the majority of rape victims would prefer to remain in the dark, refusing to reveal in public their sufferings. According to unofficial estimates, only 20 per cent of rape cases reach the criminal court.
