Thursday, June 17, 2010

Update to the Update.


Ok, I was just busted doing some one-sided reporting of my own. After reading my last post, Seacrest commented on the fact that the 18-year-old woman who alleged gang rape was sent to jail for a year while the six men apparently went free.

Not true, and I apologize for my willful omission. I was trying to make a point by highlighting only the woman's punishment, but now I see that I have unfairly characterized the sentence.

One of the men got a one-year jail sentence as well.

Four of the men were fully acquitted of the rape charge. Then, of those four, two of them received 3-month jail sentences for "illegal mixing with the opposite sex."

Finally, two of the six men were fined 5,000 AED (about
US $1400) for "violating public decency."

This is all more than a little mysterious to me still-- I mean, did the court decide that the woman was raped or not? If she willingly participated in non-marital sex, then wasn't she-- as a Muslim woman-- supposed to get life in prison? Or, if she was an unwilling participant, then shouldn't she have gone free? And what of the disparate sentences for the five men-- does that mean that some raped the woman while some watched? What's the difference between "illegal mixing with the opposite sex" and "violating public decency"? Was the man who got the year in prison the only one to actually have had sex with the woman??

Sigh. I guess I still have a lot of learning to do about how things work around here.

I still think it sucks that the woman was sent to jail.

1 comment:

Al said...

OH! "violating public decency" you say? Well had I known that they were indecent in public I would never have been so hard on that women - who is, after all, completely at fault here. Right

Please come home!!!