Afghan woman's choice: 12 years in jail or marry her rapist and risk death

[Tank]

Afghan woman's choice: 12 years in jail or marry her rapist and risk death

Kabul (CNN) -- The ordeal of Gulnaz did not simply begin and end with the physical attack of her rape. The rape began a years-long nightmare of further pain, culminating in an awful choice she must now make.

Even two years later, Gulnaz remembers the smell and state of her rapist's clothes when he came into the house when her mother left for a brief visit to the hospital.

"He had filthy clothes on as he does metal and construction work. When my mother went out, he came into my house and he closed doors and windows. I started screaming, but he shut me up by putting his hands on my mouth," she said.

The rapist was her cousin's husband.

After the attack, she hid what happened as long as she could. But soon she began vomiting in the mornings and showing signs of pregnancy. It was her attacker's child.

In Afghanistan, this brought her not sympathy, but prosecution. Aged just 19, she was found guilty by the courts of sex outside of marriage -- adultery -- and sentenced to twelve years in jail...

I won't comment yet I still haven't clamed down from reading this.

[Too Few Lions]

I'm just glad I live in a secularised modern country, and not one stuck in the Dark Ages. With countries like Afghanistan, I never quite know which of their barbaric laws are due to Islam, and which are just old tribal laws. Either way, it's horrible and depressing that people still live in countries with laws like this.

[DeterminedJuliet]

Well, you know it's her own fault for getting raped. This is why women need male relatives around at all times; they just can't be trusted not to tempt men into raping them and ruining their families' honour.

[Heisenberg]

Sounds like gods will to me.

[OldGit]

I wonder if there's any penalty for the rapist, even if only in theory.

[Too Few Lions]

I wonder if there's any penalty for the rapist, even if only in theory.

He was jailed too, but they were both jailed for adultery, not rape (he denies raping her). Apparently she reported the alleged rape four months after it took place, and there was no evidence of her ever having been attacked, so police were unable to prove wether a rape occurred or not.

That first CNN post seems a bit dodgy concerning the facts of the case, painting it as a black and white rape case. Gulnaz may well have been raped, but in a country where adultery carries a long jail sentence, and she had become pregnant outside wedlock, it may also be possible that she might claim she had been raped rather than admit fornication / adultery. Of course she may also have been raped.

Apparently the Afghan prosecutor's investigation concluded that Gulnaz and her attacker had had consensual sex several times. Months later, when it emerged she was pregnant, the prosecutor says that their families met to try and settle the issue through a financial payment. When those discussions broke down, the accusation of rape was made.

I don't know enough about the case to be able to make a judgement on any of the above, it just may not be quite as black and white as the CNN journalist has portrayed it in that story.

[Recusant]

Ah, as I was typing this post, I see that Too Few Lions read the followup story from CNN and answered before I did:

"Jailed Afghan rape victim has sentence reduced, remains in jail" by Nick Paton Walsh for CNN.

Afghan prosecutors announced Wednesday that a young rape victim, jailed for adultery after reporting the crime and pushed into marrying her attacker, would have her sentence reduced from twelve to three years. The prosecutor said she would, for now, remain in jail -- with her child -- for not reporting her attack fast enough.

. . .

The attorney general spokesman, Rahmatullah Nazari, said their investigation had concluded there was no rape, but instead sex outside of wedlock, resulting in both the male attacker and Gulnaz being convicted of adultery.

"Gulnaz claims that she has been raped. But because she reported the crime four months later, we couldn't find any evidence [of an attack]," Nazari said. "She was convicted for not reporting a crime on time."

Gulnaz's attacker denied having sex with her. He told CNN he was serving jail time because he had been accused of rape. His conviction records show he is in jail for "zina", a Dari word that directly translates as "adultery." Human rights workers note that rape cases are often handled as adultery in Afghanistan's court system.

Women are still stoned to death in Afghanistan for "adultery," so she's luckier than some. I think that it looks likely that when the coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban will take power again, and the stonings will happen more often, as they did before the invasion. It's an ugly situation.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I'm not sure about this particular case, but in many instances the woman needs "trustworthy" male eye-witnesses (three, I think?) for her complaint of rape to be taken even remotely seriously. I've never heard of a woman actually pursuing this in Afghanistan, because the "dishonor" is already cast on her and she is probably more afraid about possibly being murdered by her relatives than trying to garner support from potential witnesses.

Edit: Even in the western world there is still the mentality that it the woman's responsibility to "not get raped' vs. focusing on what causes rape to begin with and addressing the actual issue.

[Too Few Lions]

yeah, I imagine you have to be very brave to pursue a rape case in a country like Afghanistan. I dread to think what things will be like when western forces withdraw if the Taliban seize power again.

[Asmodean]

yeah, I imagine you have to be very brave to pursue a rape case in a country like Afghanistan. I dread to think what things will be like when western forces withdraw if the Taliban seize power again.

If only one could get out of there, nail shut the borders so no heroin comes out and forget that dump even exists... Well, I, for one, would call it "problem solved".

[Stevil]

If a girl (lets call her Mary) lived in the middle east in the past (maybe a couple of thousand years ago) and got pregnant out of wedlock, would she be wise to suggest that it was a divine pregnancy?
Would the local Arabs be that gullible?

[Tank]

If a girl (lets call her Mary) lived in the middle east in the past (maybe a couple of thousand years ago) and got pregnant out of wedlock, would she be wise to suggest that it was a divine pregnancy?
Would the local Arabs be that gullible?

That thought has wandered across my mind in the past; was Mary the biggest con-artist of all time?

[OldGit]

She'd have had good reason to lie - the Old Testicle view of adultery is much like the moslems'.

Deuteronomy 22:22 "If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die."

Leviticus 20:10 "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death."

[Stevil]

That thought has wandered across my mind in the past; was Mary the biggest con-artist of all time?

Well, if she did exist, she just wanted to survive.
But of course no-one would have believed her, she would have been stoned or simply would have married Joeseph. The biblical story makes no sense as anything other than a children's fairytale.

As for this horrific rape incident, what would society look like if Christians got to set the law without an understanding of seperation of state and religion?

[Davin]

That thought has wandered across my mind in the past; was Mary the biggest con-artist of all time?

Well, if she did exist, she just wanted to survive.
But of course no-one would have believed her, she would have been stoned or simply would have married Joeseph. The biblical story makes no sense as anything other than a children's fairytale.

As for this horrific rape incident, what would society look like if Christians got to set the law without an understanding of seperation of state and religion?

Salem, MA?