The victim’s lawyers said they were “satisfied” with the verdict and Moroccan society felt heard. On Friday April 14, the Rabat Court of Appeal greatly increased the sentences of the three men accused of having repeatedly raped the young Sanaa, 11, in a village near Tiflet, and now the mother of a child born of this violence. One of the defendants was sentenced to twenty years in prison, the other two to ten years. At first instance, on March 20, they were sentenced to two years in prison.
In Morocco, this verdict had raised an outcry, bringing in its wake an intense wave of indignation. Citizens, activists, intellectuals had in turn mobilized against a sentence deemed outrageously lenient, against the laxity from which aggressors tend to benefit in cases of sexual violence against minors and women. And to demand a change in the laws of this country.
Because the tragic story of Sanaa, far from being isolated, echoes many other cases. Some shook Moroccan society, like that of Khadija Souidi, a 17-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2016 after her rapists were released. Or that of Amina Filali, 15, who ended her life in 2012 after being forced to marry her rapist. But many similar cases go under the radar.
However, “if we look at the decisions rendered by the courts, we realize that every day there are dozens of Sanaa to whom justice is not rendered and as many aggressors who escape the law”, underlines the lawyer Laila Slassi, co-founder of “Masaktach” (“I am not silent”), a collective that denounces violence against women and the “legitimation of the culture of rape” in Morocco.
In 2020, the collective had carried out a study on the judicial treatment of cases of sexual violence. It emerged, on the basis of 1,169 trials, that 80% of defendants convicted of rape had received sentences less than those provided for by law, i.e. imprisonment of five to ten years, ten to twenty years when the victim is minor (up to thirty years in case of “defloration”). “The average length of sentences for rape, including in pedocrime cases, does not exceed three years and one month,” continues Laila Slassi. The lightness of the sentences is systematic. »
Use of mitigating circumstances
The Sanaa case crystallizes “all the aberrations of the judicial system in terms of sexual violence”, analyzes Amina Bouayach, president of the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH). Starting with the charges: “misappropriation of a minor” and “indecent assault”, rather than “rape”.
In addition, the judges, at first instance, granted mitigating circumstances to the defendants, justifying them by their “social conditions”, the “lack of criminal record” and the fact that “the sentence provided for by law is severe with regard to of the offending facts”. A “miscarriage of justice”, denounces Ms. Bouayach, while “the facts describe organized and repeated gang rapes with the use of violence on an 11-year-old child. This is an aggravated rape.”
This use of mitigating circumstances, left to the discretion of judges, “is used quite systematically in cases of sexual violence to promote impunity for rapists”, reports Stephanie Willman Bordat, lawyer and co-founder of Mobilizing for Rights Associates (MRA), an NGO based in Rabat. “It gives judges the latitude to unleash their gender stereotypes and find excuses for the culprits,” she said.
“There should be safeguards. It should not be possible to grant mitigating circumstances in cases of sexual violence against minors as well as adults. It would be a way of setting in stone that sexual crimes are the most serious,” defends Youssef Chehbi, a lawyer in Casablanca, who also advocates for specialized criminal chambers, “with magistrates who know what sexual assault is, aware of the seriousness of the sequelae that this engenders”.
The penal code has “gaps”
To these difficulties in obtaining justice is added the risk of switching from the status of victim to that of culprit. Because in rape cases, article 490 of the Moroccan penal code, which criminalizes sexual relations outside marriage, is a sword of Damocles that weighs on the victims. “Very often, this article is used by men as a blackmail tool to continue to perpetrate their crime with complete impunity, explains Stéphanie Willman Bordat. And if the victim nevertheless decides to file a complaint for rape, but she cannot prove it – because this requires proof of physical injuries – she takes all the risks of being prosecuted in return for sexual relations. illegal. »
One of the reasons that may explain why the number of victims who file complaints is so low in Morocco: only 3%, according to a 2019 report by the High Commission for Planning.
The criminal code also has “gaps” in the framework defined for conducting investigations, according to Ms. Willman Bordat: “Often, the investigators first seek to find out whether people knew each other before. If so, they will consider it proof of consent, without further investigation, without looking at the act of violence itself, the behavior of the aggressor or the circumstances. »
In 2018, the kingdom adopted a law against violence against women. While the text was hailed as a step forward – it criminalizes sexual harassment in particular and provides for mechanisms to support victims – it was however deemed largely incomplete by feminist organizations.
It is urgent to legislate
“Spousal rape is still not criminalized; it is considered a marital duty of wives. The marriage of minors, which promotes sexual exploitation, is still possible by obtaining authorization from a judge. The culture of rape, which is universal, continues to permeate the entire judicial system in Morocco,” laments activist Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, coordinator of the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (MALI).
Finally, this law did not change the definition of rape, enshrined in the Moroccan penal code in the chapter of “crimes and offenses against the order of families and public morals”. “It’s as if what is really denounced is not so much the fact that there was violence and an attack on the other, but that there was a sexual relationship outside the traditional framework, namely marriage. This may partly explain the very light sentences that we are seeing, ”underlines Amina Bouayach.
While a reform of the penal code – long announced but successively blocked, withdrawn, postponed – is “in the finalization phase”, according to the Ministry of Justice, the president of the CNDH calls for the reclassification, according to international standards, of rape in “sexual violence”, “that is to say, a serious crime infringing the physical integrity of the victim”.
In his eyes, it is urgent to legislate. Because the taboos surrounding sexual violence – often suppressed for fear of scandal, of hchouma (“shame”) – tend, according to her, to fade away. And because the indignation aroused in Morocco by the story of Sanaa is indicative of “a rejection of the normalization of sexual violence and archaic stereotypes that are now outdated”.