British woman 'raped' in Dubai tells of arrest ordeal.

[birdie1971]

Great isn't it? You're raped in Dubai and you are thrown in jail!

It may be a technologically sophisticated country but it is still a country with a criminal justice system firmly rooted in middle-aged, moronic, misogynistic thinking.

Absolutely disgusting.


http://www.telegraph....of-arrest-ordeal.html

[123everton]

This is an awful story, no two ways about it.
But to refer to these attitudes as belonging to the middle ages, just doesn't wash I'm afraid, unless the middle ages ended in the mid 1980s.
In the 1920s right the way through to around the 1950s women who had been raped often ended up getting locked with the the prostitutes, one woman was put in an institution and remained there for 70 years until she died, in another case I read of a woman reported being attacked and was promptly arreseted when her sister heard what had happened she went to the station to protest, she was also arrested.
In 1979 there was fly on the wall documentry in which a woman went to the police to complain of rape, she was savagely interviewed and wholly disbelieved, this show ushered in the change in values.
In those days a rape victim would be made to wait in the corridor and seated on a hard wooden chair, if she squirmed she'd been raped was the assertion.
All through the 1980s there was a conversation in the media as to whether it was possible to rape your wife (perfectly legal a 100 or so years ago), Dubai has been an independent sovreign country for about 50 years, we for just under 1000.
Yet our attitudes towards this were only set 20 years ago, how do you explain that?

[jno]

In the UK, the conviction rate is 6.5% - and that's just of reported rapes; only 5% are estimated to be reported at all.

http://www.guardian.c.../rape-convictions-low

I don't think we have great grounds for sneering at at other countries.

[naomi24]

^^ Sorry you've lost me there, jno. I thought this question was about the unjust practice of punishing the victim, rather than the number of reported rapes and the conviction rates in the UK.

I agree Birdie.

[jno]

if a victim has virtually no chance of getting justice, she is punished, naomi.

[naomi24]

Oh, I see what you're getting at, but that doesn't address this question. It's a different issue entirely.

[birdie1971]

^^^ but she's not thrown in the clink though is she?

[birdie1971]

My last post was to Jno not naomi.

[birdie1971]

123everton – I agree that the treatment of women in the UK who have been raped has hardly been exemplary in the past. But we're not living in the past are? It may have escaped your attention but it's now 2010 and there should be no so-called civilised country in the world that punishes women for the 'crime' of being raped.

Arguing that because over 30 years ago the UK didn't treat rape victims correctly therefore it's wrong to 'sneer' (I would use the word 'criticise') another country's plainly inadequate, unfair and misogynistic laws is totally irrelevant.

[123everton]

Birdie the point I'm trying to make is that Dubai is a new nation, like other countries formed in the second half of the 20th century it has to form it's own view of the world and make it's own way there.
The treatment this woman recieved was par for the course in Britain 20, 30 years ago that's not that long ago, yet in Britain women have had the vote for some 80 years, we've been a democracy of some form for a few hundred, women's rights and universal suffrage are new ideas only very recently achieved in Britain.
We had to undergo a journey to get there, so do they.
Rome wasn't built in a day.

[keyplus90]

I am sure Everton and JNO are missing the point birdie is trying to make. WHY DUBAI? Try to understand.

[naomi24]

It's difficult to believe that people here are even attempting to defend this. It seems that with the birth of the muddle that is political correctness, common sense has been abandoned completely. This is simply wrong - and nothing excuses it.

[123everton]

Noone's defended it Naomi, it's a simple fact, that this woman's experience was no different to countless other women's experiences here only a few years ago.
Why is that?
How did that change come about?
Why do we in the west suffer from this bizarre collective amnesia when it comes to things we dislike in our own recent past?
Dubai has been a nation state for roughly 1/20th of the time we have, and yet women have only been close to truly equal for the last 20 years (arguably so) why is that?

[naomi24]

I haven't researched the history of Dubai, Everton, but what you appear to be saying is that in the year 2010, its leaders are not only very much behind the times, they also have no sense.

[123everton]

I'll fill you in quickly, I'm not that au fait myself, Dubai was a British protectorate (effectively a subject state) until around 1956 (it was ceded around about the time of the Malaysian crisis I think) it was part of the British Commonwealth of nations but then opted out.
All nations take time to change, we certainly did, a state does not go from subjagation to emancipation overnight.
As frustrating as it may be, it is a fact of life.

[naomi24]

No, Everton, you're making excuses and it simply doesn't wash. Right is right and wrong is wrong. The people who make these laws are living in the dark ages. They haven't changed for hundreds of years, and they are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

[jno]

She was not thrown into jail because she'd been raped, she was jailed because she was suspected - correctly - of having sex with someone she wasn't married to and of illegal drinking. In other words, she broke the laws of the country she was in. I believe this also happens in other countries, such as the UK. Indeed, many Brits constantly demand that any foreigners in this country should abide by our way of life or else. Seems they do the same in Dubai; perhaps they learned it during their years as a British protectorate.

[birdie1971]

123everton – No one has amnesia about our past. We all know that the UK and many other countries have done shameful things in their past. The point is, they implement laws based on equality in an to attempt to ensure that appalling inequality does not happen. You are making the point to divert the argument away from what is happening right now.

It's 2010 and a woman who has been raped was thrown in prison in a supposedly sophisticated country. Let's keep in mind.

You ask, “How did that change come about?”. Because of the rise of secularism in Western societies, Governments started to make laws based on equality and logic rather than on intolerant religious teachings.


Keyplus has hit the nail on the head. Why indeed? Maybe he can explain why Dubai has such misogynistic laws and treated this woman and her fiancée so appallingly?

[birdie1971]

Jno - “... she was jailed because she was suspected - correctly - of having sex with someone she wasn't married to...”

Of course she had sex with someone she wasn't married to. That tends to happen when you're raped by a stranger.

[birdie1971]

Combustible - “A jolly good tale, what?”

Yeah. Muslim women are always crying 'Rape!' whilst on their holidays with their fiancées aren't they?

She probably made the whole thing up eh?