Saudi gang rape victim to be flogged

When I read stuff like this, I get the feeling that spreading democracy to a pack of enraged baboons would have a greater chance of succeeding than these backwards misogynists.

 

This is a perfect example of why we need to remove our dependency on oil. If we could actually get nations like this in the pocket book, where it counts, we might actually be able to necessitate change there. As long as we are dependent on Saudi oil, this will never happen.

 

It's very interesting to see a particular code which was originally supposed to be applied for the protection of women actually be used to turn female victims into equal offenders compared to their male attackers.

 

Come on, under a year for gang rape participation? That doesn't happen even with a very liberal criminal code in the West. Actually, rape is the one single crime for which the sentence typically approaches the minimum and practically never hits the max. Still, under a year for participation in gang rape wouldn't be possible where I live - that's 2 years minimum, up to 12. Sure, if it were possible, I guess judges would indeed sentence to less. I don't know why they insist on doing that.

Ninety lashes? Are they idiots? No one's health is going to survive that without permanent injury! No one should be forced to go and undergo a beating that will forever reduce his health to disability.

That's insane.

Lenient on the rapist, hard on the victim. And no lashing for the rapists, either, it seems.

Oh yeah. Hit the lawyer too.

Some stats:

http://www.womenagainstrape.net/indexpage.htm

Time for an international convention against rape?

 

Yeah, well, if you rape someone here in Denmark, you get a ridiculously low sentence as well.

 

OMFG!! Not only do they punish the victim, then double the punishment after she appeals, but to rub a little salt into the wound, they confiscate her lawyer's licence to practice? WTF?

 

The Saudis have been like this for a long, long time.

Which is why American conservatives harping on Iranian abuses while remaining silent about the House of Saud is so amusing.

 

This is a travesty. Reformatio in peius? In a criminal case? Regardless of the obviously chilling effect it must have on anyone else trying to appeal a verdict deemed to harsh?

Not to mention corporal punishment and the sentencing of the attorney etc.

Worse, I think that this is in accord with the local tradition of law enforcement. I doubt the locals so much disagree about the punishment per se, but if they do, they disagree about the application. In my view it is a folly to expect that people accepting such medieval a standard of justice would eagerly embrace an enlightened western democratic system with individual rights and an according legal system. This is the Sharia, and the locals like it that way.

People need to develop something like that on their own. The liberal crusade for Freedom (tm) in such cultures is doomed to fail. It is one thing to hold the view that individual rights are universal. It's quite another to try to force that view down the throat of societies who don't agree with that, and likely refuse if because it threatens the roots of their in comparison collectivist oriented societies. That doesn't make their views right, it only explains the resistance to change. People are quite willing to fight and kill for their ways of life.

 

In the eyes of the Saudi's, this woman was a victim of one crime while she committed another. That she was a victim does not mitigate her guilt and, according to their law, she must still be punished.

I do not believe this is fair, but then I do not believe riding with an unrelated man is a crime. I also believe the punishment is excessive (the first punishment, the second is ridiculous). However, my beliefs are based on MY interpretation of the laws I live with and the ethics system I was raised in.

I think it is foolish for western civilization to enforce standards and ethics on people in other countries. It will only invite hatred and hostility. I don't believe in flogging, I don't believe in stoning, I do believe men and women should be treated as equals -- but only a small portion of the world's population is on that bandwagon.

In their culture, this case is akin to a drunk driver who is severely injured when rear-ended by another driver. The drunk driver here would still be punished for driving under the influence. It does not matter the accident was not his/her fault nor does it matter how badly he/she was injured.

 

It says a lot about their values, though, when the woman is punished more severely than her rapists. They appear to see being driven by a male who is not a blood relative as a far greater crime than rape.

 

Nope, not really, I suppose it was a message that if you wander with foreign men in shady circumstances, knowing what they can do to you, then you are taking foolish risks. This isn't so far off - don't parents forbid children from dangerous activities under some penalties?

Partly true, I guess.

 

Chev,
I disagree with you, and sharply so. Despite entering the car she certainly did not want to be raped, and her having been foolish is not a reason to basically blame her (at least partially) for being raped. She is still victim of a crime. Of course, the causality is undeniable, hadn't she violated the Saudi segregation law, this rape would not have happened. But that they in Saudi Arabia enacted that segregation law that she violated - only to be raped - is in effect only adding insult to injury. One would think that, if it is to teach her, the rape would be lesson enough.

Not to mention that after a public flogging she has a good chance to be crippled for life, and the certainty that at the very least she'll spend a month or two in hospital. As a bonus lesson she will be ostracised in Saudi Arabia for having been raped (zero chance to ever get married for instance) after being released from prison.

What she has been sentenced to is serve as an object lesson, for all to see. After having been made an object by her rapists, she is being made an object by the Saudi courts so that other woman behold and beware. And to make an example is clearly what this episode has been about. For me that is irreconcilable with an individual's human dignity.

 

Come on. There's no such thing as irrevocable pro futuro consent in sex. No one wants to be raped unless a very, very disturbed person in need of medical assitance.

Yup.

However, didn't they actually sentence her for violating segregation laws (dissolute conduct implied), rather than for being a rape victim?

Someone who makes those laws probably knows what happens when an unguarded middle-eastern woman mingles with unruly middle-eastern men. They may actually be holding such laws in place in order to deter women from taking risks.

In this case yes. The doctrine of law (and some binding laws) knows such an institution as reducing or eliminating liability if one is a victim of the act (e.g. you bring about a calamity inflicting huge monetary losses, but it only harms your own property). If risky behaviours are penalised, actually meeting the bad consequences should eliminate the need for a criminal penalty in a concrete case.

I actually said that, believe me or not, but my post is already long, so I won't be quoting myself.

It is and whoever doesn't abhor the 200 lashes idea urgently needs to see a therapist. The lesson they're giving her has more to do with magic (I mean magical thinking) than with law.

The reason why I'm playing advocatus diaboli is that a subsequent rape doesn't eliminate the evaluation of preceding conduct of the victim in so far as it may have been criminal in the given country. Punishing a woman for getting raped is as I said, cruel, inhuman and horribly dumb. Punishment for a violation of the segregation law is a different matter. As a non-rape-related example, if you trespass and get assaulted by another trespasser it doesn't eliminate the fact you had trespassed yourself. If you insult someone and he reacts with a murder attempt, your previous insult still stands. Same way, if they have a crime of not keeping distance from the opposite sex, the violation of it is not eliminated by a subsequent rape. However, prosecuting it will be heartless and will give wrong ideas. In this case, it looks like they're looking for some semi-legal excuse to punish a woman for getting raped.

Any corporal penalty is, as well as any forcible disrobing which normally comes with it, or almost any publicly executed penalty for that matter.

 

chev,
thanks for your reply. I overread your earlier reference to flogging. As for ...

... that would then be the only remaining point I'd like to clarify: That, they did not. The court in her case did increase her penalty, something that would in my country not be permissible in a case where the accused appeals, for the reasons I lined out earlier. Whatever the Saudi Court took into account, it probably didn't have much to do with her individual culpability.

The problem I had with your previous post was that you IMO addressed this case on a level too abstract from the case to do it justice.

 

That only if the other side didn't appeal as well. If only she appealed, ne peius should protect her.

You're probably right with regard to the real motive, but I'm pretty sure they made it so the official grounds for the ruling had at least some formal merit.

We're discussing theory anyway. And even if we actually wanted to solve a painfully practical casus, we don't have anywhere near enough data to do that.

Seriously, though, they're insane. Any prosecutor with a shred of decency should drop the case supposing there even were anything to begin with. Pulling a gang rape victim through courts like that is abominable. The first sentence the rapists got was a joke. I just can't see any of the judges finding it fitting if it were his own daughter.

 

Yup.
Yup.
Hmm...
Yup.

 

I have been following this thread and considering whether or not to post. There is simply no way I can post objectively and unemotionally. So please bear with me.

The laws of Saudi Arabia are their laws and there is little I can do about them except to voice my disapproval and I do disapprove. Treating women as second class citizens is wrong. It is just as wrong as treating Blacks as second class citizens or any other group. 200 lashes? I don't know what they use but that could cripple or even kill her.

I will stop now because I want to go into a tantrum and throw things.