The ordeal of rape victim Amina Filali has shocked Morocco

The ordeal of rape victim Amina Filali has shocked Morocco

Marrying the Molester: A Moroccan teenager committed suicide to escape the torment of being forced to marry her rapist.

The suicide of the 16-year-ood Moroccan girl has provoked outrage across social networking sites. Amina Filali was raped at the age of 15. instead of observing justice in the form of her attacker being imprisoned, she was forced to marry him.

In Morocco, as in Bangladesh until recently, one thing very noticeable is the lack of women out in public in the evening. You rarely see a woman in the street -- unless they are homeless and begging. And Morocco is in fact renowned for being one of the fairest of the Muslim countries for women's rights. 

In February 2004, King Muhammad VI introduced forms to the law, which raised the minimum age of marriage for women from fifteen to eighteen. Beforehand, men had been allowed to divorce women outside of court but mutual consent and a cort hearing are now required by law. 

The wifr's duty of obedience to her husband was also abolished and there could now be Pren-style agreements regarding assets in divorce, so they did not automatically belong to the husband. Inheritance and custody of children was no longer a male right and it was mandated that 10 percent of seats in the lower house of the Moroccan parliament be reserved for women. Though not banning polygamy, it is now massively restricted (it can be approved by judge under "special circumstances", as with other laws, including marriage under the age of 18).

Although this long overdue re-evaluation of Moroccan law might have gained King Muhammad VI a great deal of respect for attempting to bring equality into the country's legal system, one law which was left in, however, was Article 475. This allows rapists to marry their victim to escape prosecution. A

A woman losing her virginity outside of marriage is often reputed to bring families into dishonor, so the law is said to be enforced to allow a woman's virtue to be restored. The "special circumstances" in this case forced an underage girl to marry the man who sexually assaulted her. After months in a violent marriage with the man who should have been locked away so he could not repeat such a crime, Amina felt she had no other choice than to take rat poison to end her own live. 

An online Moroccan newspaper even reported her father as saying that it was the court officials who suggested marriage. A government study last year found that about 25 percent of Moroccan women had been sexually assaulted at least once. That is up to a quarter of women who would possibly have to make the choice between keeping their attack a secret, ior reporting the violent crime and rick facing a live married to their rapist.

Despite this, Morocco has a reasonably low rate of reported rape in comparison to other countries. In 2009, the UN revealed the there were 3.6 cases of rape reported per 100,000 women. This might indicate that may women are deciding against reporting their attack, as they face dishonor or forced marriage as a result.

Although the introduction of Mudawana (or "family code") in 2004 may have brought the African country leaps ahead in terms of women's rights, this tradition still prevails here and in many parts of the Middle East. 

Amina Filali is one tragic example of why the law needs to be abolished, but her legacy will draw global attention to the horrific choices women are still being forced to make.