Tunisian Police Officers Get Seven Years for Sexual Assault

Two Tunisian police officers have been convicted of rape and sentenced to seven years.

The case drew widespread protests after the victim was accused of “immoral behavior” (I will stop here as you scream “UGH” for five minutes). Via US News and World Report:

The officers came upon the woman, then 27, and her fiance in a car in September 2012. She said two of the men took turns raping her while the third held her fiance back, then forced him to withdraw money from an ATM.

[….]

An initial decision to charge the woman with violating Tunisia’s modesty laws drew widespread protests in Tunisia, where the case was closely watched for signs of how women’s rights would fare after the 2011 fall of the secular dictatorship. Those charges were ultimately dropped, and the victim published a book entitled “Guilty of Being Raped,” under the same pseudonym she used in the courtroom.

[….]

A third officer received a two-year sentence for extorting money from the woman’s fiance.

[….]

Both the woman’s accusation against police and the ensuing public uproar would have been unthinkable under longtime autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in 2011. Concerns that women would continue to suffer under the new leadership eased with the passage this year of a constitution that guarantees equality between men and women before the law and committed the government to protecting women’s rights.

If seven years in prison still sounds way to lenient to you for the rape of a young woman, you’re not alone. The woman’s lawyer, a human rights activist in Tunisia also called the sentencing bullshit, in much more eloquent words.

“It’s scandalous,” said Radhia Nasraoui. “They denied everything. They even had the nerve to suggest that she was making advances on them.”