Thursday, November 15, 2007

A Close Reading

Saudi gang-rape victim is jailed

The above headline from the BBC News caught my eyes today. It effectively stimulated the outrage vector of my brain so that I had to read the whole article:

Saudi gang-rape victim is jailed
By Frances Harrison
BBC News
An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped.


The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack.

When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.

The attackers' sentences - originally of up to five years - were doubled.

According to the Arab News newspaper, the 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago.

Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years.

But the victim was also punished for violating Saudi Arabia's laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man.

On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence. The rapists also had their prison terms doubled. But the sentences are still low considering they could have faced the death penalty.

The Arab News quoted an official as saying the judges had decided to punish the girl for trying to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media. The victim's lawyer was suspended from the case, has had his licence to work confiscated, and faces a disciplinary session.

Original article can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7096814.stm

So, of course we should feel bad for the victim, but the story is somewhat misleading. She was raped, and the men responsible were sent to jail. However, the headline implies that the victim was sent to jail because she was gang-raped. Reading the article, that is obviously not the case. She's going to jail for breaking the Saudi sex segregation law and for appealing the case while criminally (and unethically) using media pressure to influence the judge.

Now we may think that the segregation law is a silly one, but the US has its own share of silly laws. For example, you could spend life in prison for growing a certain species of plant. That aside, there seems to be outrage among readers that she's being punished for a crime while she is the victim of another. Is that silly? No. Imagine if you were selling drugs and a couple of thugs beat you up during the sale. The cops come and break it up. Do you think you won't be prosecuted for dealing after your trip the hospital?

What makes this case seemingly outrageous is that we look at the segregation law as a farce. It isn't any more of a farce than drug laws or public nudity laws in this country. What we need to consider is that the woman's punishment is separate from the gang-rape. It is not as if the gang-rape was a punishment for the transgression; it is a heinous but non-related crime, but it seems many readers unconsciously make that connection. My heart goes out to her for her pain, but that doesn't excuse her from following the law. 6 months and 200 lashes seems fair.

Upon re-reading I can't help but feel what a heartless bastard I am sometimes. I think I learned it from Reno DiOrio, but I could be wrong.

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