Law and Justice on Sexual Abuse

This is a comment (slightly tidied up) which I posted in response to another blogger's comment on the howl of anguish and rage that I posted yesterday in the UAE Community Blog, and subsequently wrote about here:

It has been established for decades that people in positions of care or authority who sexually abuse children find strategies - psychological or physical - to prevent their victims from speaking about it.

Even if the judges were not aware of this, surely it is relevant that a grown man, resident in the girls' home, used a knife to get what he wanted?
Surely it should be recognised that the man who is capable of using a knife to force four adolescent girls in his care into incest and adultery, as they are defined here, would have no hesitation about intimidating them with reminders of the legal penalties for 'their' actions, should the authorities ever find out?
Surely, in a region which places such emphasis on female honour, there should be some understanding of how ashamed these girls would feel, and how reluctant to speak of their shame to anyone?
And surely, someone should have given serious thought to the climate of apprehension, shame and fear that this man must have created in that household, and the cumulative effect on those girls as they saw their turn coming, across a span of twelve years?

Doesn't the combination of an abusive stepfather, a helpless or complicit mother, and a wall of silence surrounding the birth of eleven children suggest how helpless and hopeless these girls must have felt?
Shouldn't all this raise serious doubts about how much choice, control, and therefore culpability can be ascribed to them?

With hindsight, would the youngest sister still report her stepfather to the police?
Do the four older girls think that their new 'freedom' is worth the cost?

The sentence of death by stoning will no doubt deter some potential offenders from sexually abusing children in their care. Unfortunately, there will always be those who think that they can get away with it; and now they have a new weapon to encourage silent submission: eighty lashes if you tell.

Therefore, I will hope for a review of the law through which this case was prosecuted, and the drafting of guidelines for judges who have to rule in such cases, these guidelines to be informed by proper research into the effect of longterm intimidation, and physical and/or sexual abuse on adults and minors.

Thoughts, anyone?

Death and Lashes

Yesterday I read a Gulf News article about the tragic outcome of a fire in Sharjah. It states that the mother panicked, and dropped the children from their 8th floor apartment in order to save them. One died, and one is in hospital.

This Emirates Today front page article of the day before explains that the reason she couldn't get out was that her husband, as was his custom, had locked her and the children in when he went to work. Apparently this is a common practice. He'd changed the lock too, without telling, or leaving a duplicate with, the watchman.

That poor woman has enough guilt to live with, Gulf News. She didn't panic - she threw her sons down to the crowd below, saving one. Maybe if the police had been there in under half an hour, or the fire brigade in under forty five minutes, things might have been different. (Shades of the recent Al Attar fire which started at about 4.15 a.m. but didn't attract a fire crew til 6 or 7 - What is going on in this country of multiplying high-rises?) Maybe if her husband had not locked her in.

Today there was this.

I don't hold with stoning, for reasons I'm too sad to go into after these stories. But if I'd met the judges who sentenced those girls, in the half hour after I'd read the second article - assuming I could stop crying long enough to see straight - I think I'd have cast a few stony opinions.

Both of these men were cast in the role of protector, the ultimate authority in the lives of the 'their' women and children. Yet when they abused their authority, one deliberately, one through fuzzy thinking, both the judges and the Gulf News writer - one after long deliberation, and the other with a, perhaps thoughtless, choice of words - assigned blame to the protegees.

Female children should have the protection of law.
Male and female adults should have equal status in law and practice.
Male and female adults should be prepared to give, take, and accept equal responsibility in personal relationships, especially when it comes to raising families.

Then we can start dishing out equal blame for crime and stupidity.

Damn!

As a formula for the day-to-day business of living with each other and raising a family, mutual respect, consultation, consent, and compromise may be a pain in the ass at times; but it does spread the load, and provide a check for the more foolish decisions that one tired or over-conscientious person might come up with alone. Like locking up his wife for her own protection.

As for the law.

And those who interpret it.

Well.

I'm looking for an upbeat one-liner, but I've broken my rose-tinted specs. Sorry.

GOOD Wives - 1955

You may have seen this before: it's certainly done the rounds; and yes - it's authentic, though I've never seen a by-line.

(As a professional educator, I feel that it is part of my responsibility to instil a proper understanding of the world in the young men and women in my care.)

The Good Wife's Guide from a 1955 issue of Housekeeping Monthly
1. Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

2. Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

3. Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

4. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.

5. Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc. and then run a dust cloth over the tables. Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

6. Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all the noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.

7. Be happy to see him.

8. Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

9. Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.

10. Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquillity where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

11. Don't greet him with complaints and problems.

12. Don't complain if he's late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

13. Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

14. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

15. Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

16. A good wife always knows her place.

.. I suppose I could try this for a week, but I think that Habibi would be frightened..

If this has made you feel all trembly inside, you might want to read this - um - variation.

Invisible Women

Checking out Archer's Adda, I found today's entry, 'A consulate of any purpose?' and his link to GN's vox pop on minimum wage. (OK I haven't worked out how to get to the entry rather than the comment page. Will ask Habibi and come back. In the meantime, you know what to do!) One long comment later, I realise that I'd focused entirely on the male workforce, probably because they are the most visible. Hence this.

Expatriate women workers frequently work in caring or ancillary jobs in homes and nurseries. Which makes them invisible. As long as their employers are decent and honourable, as many are, there's no problem.

But who will help the young woman whose passport is in the safe, whose employer arbitrarily deducts 'fines' before handing over wages and pays late or in installments which may or may not be up to date by the end of any given month?
Will her two or three equally miserable co-workers go and stand up to the boss with her?
Will they insist on back wages and threaten to withdraw their labour and go to the Ministry unless they are paid what they are owed?
Will they in fact pop down to the Ministry for a chat over a cup of chai and a doughnut, confident that the understanding official, who is of course as fluent in their language as they are in his (hers?) will come straight back with them and persuade their employer of the error of her ways?

Who can the invisible turn to?

We have seen the awful stories of garment workers locked in at work and at 'home', denied proper A.C., sanitation and healthcare, fined for illness and misdemeanors, or not paid for months on end. We know what some maids have suffered. This is certainly visible.
The trouble is that it usually takes the intervention of outsiders - neighbours alerted by a stinking dumpster outside an overcrowded villa or sounds of weeping from locked windows - to attract attention. How long might that take?

And then what? A flight home with no savings. How pitiful. How absolutely pitiful. But at least those women go home alive. How many maids don't?

And is that little housemaid confident that rape by an employer will not somehow turn into seduction of an employer, occasioning free accommodation for a fixed term, a delivery in handcuffs, bonus exfoliation afterwards and a free trip home?
The mechanisms are in place to protect workers'rights. But the vulnerable don't know their rights: that's part of their vulnerablity.

And it takes confidence to deal with officialdom, even when you're an educated professional with a proper contract which you signed without help. Housemaids are not noted for their kick-ass confidence.

Isolated expatriate women workers need to know that their consulate is there for them, proactive on their behalf. Consulates do follow up the abuses and deaths that make the headlines. But while rights are limited, and expatriate women work out of sight and out of mind, preventive work is needed: consultation with the powers that be, to encourage positive and appropriate policy and practice on workers' rights, and a minimum wage. Yesyesyesyesyes!

And a properly focused community outreach programme ensuring that individuals know their rights, who to turn to if these are abused, and - most importantly - that they will be listened to with compassion, and the primary assumption that their claims are valid.

As they say, prevention is better than cure. At least that's what I think.

The Mix

The good thing about a multicultural city like this (and I mean multicultural, there's contact and cross-fertilisation but no melting pot) is that sooner or later your phonebook and email contact page looks like something out of the UN directory. When you have regular contact with people from Lebanon, France, India, Ukraine, South Africa, the Philippines, Egypt, Scotland and Mexico, stereotypes begin to lose their power, and foreign ways become part of your landscape. I'll pass on Fatma's cardamom coffee, Rafael's gazpacho, and Hamad's mutton mansaf (arghgh!) and let you off peasepudding, haggis (Don't ask..) and Merlot. Eid, Diwali and Bonfire Night all within a week of each other? OK. Let's do our own thing, but enjoy everyone else's lights and fireworks too. Ramadan Kareem to you. Happy Christmas to me. It works here. We grumble about the bits we don't like, may be wary of the unfamiliar for a time, may find someone's cooking, religious observances or family traditions incomprehensible, but if it works for them, and ours works for us, then that's ok.

But it would be good if we could have a national standard on time management, some kind of protocol, like a published table of relative time to assist in cross-cultural appointment making, so that if you tell me 2pm I know you mean GMT, GMT+/-3/4/7, bukhara, insha'llah, toute de suite, mañana baby or in your dreams buddy!

Arab culture is very much about family, often an extended family. Even here in Dubai, where Emaratis live further apart than they used to and are outnumbered nationally by something like 85% foreigners, 75% from the sub-continent, and the rest of from all over the world (not sure, especially after recent expansion, but I've heard these sorts of numbers) family ties remain important, and people can place second cousins, aunts and nephews. I can do that up to a point, but there's no comparison. (I was reading a Spanish blogger who explained that, because women keep both their mother's and their father's surname on marriage, she can trace her relatives through four generations on both sides.)

Even in a social and cultural oddity like Dubai which is part New Town, part family business with global expansion plan, local culture remains family orientated, private. This, in a world with a global-information culture governed by the assumption that everything is or should be open to public view and tourism.

Here we routinely grumble about one another from time to time, and get on with it - isn't that the point of grumbling - a little grease to ease the axle? But when people elsewhere look at middle eastern culture (as in contemporaray life rather than heritage), there's not a lot to see, apart from exposés of hideous abuse and honour killings. Yes these happen, far, far too frequently, and it is important that they are reported because that's how ideas shift, consciences stir, and change begins - just as in Britain after poor Damilola Taylor was murdered by racist fellow students, and in Spain, where the tragic suicide of 14 year-old 'Jokin' has at last forced public awareness and official recognition of bullying in schools.

In KSA and here in the UAE private efforts are being made to curtail domestic abuse, through education, legal action and the provision of shelters, and while there is also opposition to all this, and the effort is piecemeal at this stage, attitudes and provision are changing. KSA presenter Rania al-Baz made international headlines last September when she showed her battererd face on TV after another severe beating from her husband - and said that 1) she was not the only wife this was happening to, and b) it was WRONG and what was to be done about it?

Here in Dubai, a newspaper article around about the same time (perhaps as a result?) on a shelter for battered wives, caused outrage among men and women, some of whom sympathised with the wives and condemned the husbands for brutality and betrayal of religious principles, and others who condemned the wives for their betrayal of family values and religious principles. The other immediate outcome was that disgruntled husbands were able to identify the shelter and go after their wives. The shelter relocated amidst continued public debate, which is increasingly supportive of the principle that a women should not live in fear of her husband, and that the 'rule of thumb' (A husband may beat his wife with a stick no wider than his thumb.) is outmoded. Newspaper coverage and debate continue.

In fact, despite the constant criticism of the local press, some of which is dire, it has come a long way in the last five years. In the past, as a public watchdog its best trick was bark, wag and roll over. Actually, forget the bark, because the occasional snap got journalists on the next plane out of here.

Nowadays there is proper national and international news coverage; there are features on contentious social and economic issues (and we certainly have plenty of those); there is public debate. And if you're not satisfied, you can get major international broadsheets at the supermarket, switch on a satellite news channel in virtually any major language, or go online.

So yes, the bad things you hear about are generally true, but they are not the whole truth by any means. Arab girls pursue degree courses, work for a living and run their own businesses in the UAE and Oman - and no doubt in Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. KSA, Afghanistan and Iran are topical, not typical! Of course it isn't perfect over here. But where is it perfect?