Rape in Oman

THE IDENTITIES OF 3 of this blog's authors have been combined in places in order to protect privacy and identity. All the OPNO girls still feel safer in Oman than in any of the other Arab country(ies) they have previously visited and/or lived in. We also have to thank one of the bravest girls you'll ever meet, for writing the following introduction for this subject:

Let's begin with the personal: I am a 23 year old female British expatriate currently married to an Omani. I have never been raped in Oman.

But I have been sexually-molested by 2 Omani taxi drivers on two different occasions, and another OPNO girl whose tears I dried by a group of Pakistani/or/Indian men [she couldn't tell the difference in the moment] on a baiza bus [which I had previously thought were a safer option than the orange and white taxis] and my bestfriend who happens to be a Canadian was nearly abducted by an Omani man [not a taxi driver] in Barka just walking home from the local Lulu. You can call these near-misses. They could have wound up rapes if we had been less prepared or less lucky or less willing to fling ourselves out of moving vehicles and act like crazy witches with rocks.

Everyone out there is going... moral of this story is, no woman should ever take a taxi alone in Oman. Or walk home late at night by herself because that's just asking for trouble. But the moral of the story is a lot less moral than that.

To continue with perspective: In my native U.K. I was raped as a teenager.

I will never forget the traumatic event.

I was at a party for one of my friends. It was a house a grew up in, that I felt safe in. I wasn't drinking and the person who raped me wasn't drunk although pretty much everyone else there was. Which is what the rapist was waiting for I guess. When everyone else would not be able to help me or understand my cries for help.

To this day I don't know why he targeted me. There were a lot of other girls there that would have been a lot easier prey than me. They were drunk. I wasn't. Why me?

The question of "why me?" has haunted me for many years. What made me stand out? What made him choose me? Now I certainly never thought I was deserving of it like some victims do, but what made me appear weaker or more attractive than any other number of potential victims?

I don't like to describe the actual rape. It didn't really hurt me, thankfully, but it was about power. He had it and I was nothing, and I didn't know what would happen to me after. I knew who he was. I knew his name. He went to the same school as me.  His ugly presence will always be attached to me and I think he knew that and liked that more than anything else.

To this day I am not a touchey-feeley kind of person. Only with my own children, not even my husband. I blame the event of my rape for that. I don't know if the two things go together. I've never found therapy to be overly helpful.

I also never felt safe. I check behind shower curtains, always make sure I am seated to see everything and have an exit strategy from any room.

After it was over and he was "done" with me, I guess he never thought I'd say anything. But I did, and he served jail time. Still, his stay in jail was short compared to how long I will have to deal with issues of feeling powerless. I still don't feel that justice was done.

Other OPNO girls [from Canada, and USA] report similar situations in the native countries, with multiple attempted molestations, or near abductions but with very little aid from the police in doing anything about these matters. All of us OPNO girls have at least one close friend or family member who was raped.

In Oman, when we asked our Omani friends and family, no one knew of anyone personally who had been raped except through news stories.

Which I thought was weird. But then I thought about it a little more. So we asked housemaids.

They told us that 3 of their friends [Philipino housemaids] had been raped by Taxi drivers, one [Sri Lankan] housemaid was molested by a taxi, one little Omani girl in Sur was nearly abducted by a Pakistani man, and one [Idonesian] housemaid told us she had been raped when she worked in Saudi Arabia and in UAE. Alhamdulillah, in Oman she said: "I never have to take a taxi. My family are nice, and the men are good. And they drive me everywhere." In Saudi she was raped by one of her male employers, in UAE by a taxi driver from India.

My husband told me a story about the only rape incident he knew of where he knew the woman personally although he was not born when it happened: "In our village there was a man who was very handsome. There was this girl, who acted kind of slutty whenever he came around her. So he told her to meet him at his house. When she got there, the man she liked wasn't there, just a group of men. They all had sex with her. She moved away from our village after that." This story horrified me, because it showed that at least to the older generation, the fact that a girl wanted to have sex outside of marriage with one man, meant it was ok for anyone to force himself on her, and that she'd never report it, even if everyone knew about it.

Statistics say that in the U.K. alone say that between 75-95 percent of rapes go unreported ["Without Consent: A report on the joint-review of the investigation and prosecution of rape offences" Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate. January 2007. p. 8.].

I can only imagine if I had the same culture to deal with at the time of my traumatic event, or a foreign legal system to deal with, what other issues I might have had or not had to come forward.

The situation of rape in Oman, the statistics:
Apparently, according to the UN, the reported per-capita rapes in 2008 for Oman are 183 [http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/CTS12_Sexual_violence.xls: but the report made note that the list did not include unreported, unrecorded rape cases, and many countries included in the study did not specify between reported, brought to trial, or convicted so numbers do not reflect in the slightest the percentage of rapes that occur in Oman]. Also, many countries do not count the rape of its male citizens or children in rape statistics. Human Rights Groups and Basic Expat Advisory websites are 100% right on when they report that media coverage of rape in Oman is minimally reported. Whether this is at the request of those pursuing legal justice or just a matter of saving face, I am not qualified to make that assumption. In 2010, the Royal Oman Police charged 227 individuals with rape or attempted rape, which may clarify a smidgeon the 2008 basis for statistics generated.

The sentencing for rape in Oman is based on Oman's penal code, not Sharia Law [Sharia law requires a rapist be put to death]. The sentence for male-female rape should be between 5-15 years in prison, whereas male-male rape is up to 3 years as it is still something considered a taboo subject. Spousal rape is not considered a crime in Oman and the only recourse for a woman in this case is through male relatives and her own family. Sexual exploitation of children of any kind is punishable by 5-15 years jail sentences. Most of those charged with rape and minimal evidence are convicted and serve at least the minimum time. Which I will concede, is better than in countries like UAE, where rape cases with actual DNA evidence (i.e sperm) http://otheroman.blogspot.com/2007/02/more-unhappy-news-for-women.html are dismissed with this kind of misogynist line: "These are considered evidence which are insufficient to confirm whether she was subject to any rape or body assault. Besides, the woman had lost her virginity a long time ago," . I only mention this UAE case, because one of the creeps who gang-raped this woman and got off free, was an Omani national. Other OPNO girls can tell you just how badly justice in UAE... sucks... if a local Emirati creep tries to have fun with you, even as a British, Canadian, or American citizen, let alone being a poorer woman with an embassy no one gives a flying hoot about.

The Human Rights Report from 2010 also states that housemaids who made rape charges were often repatriotized by their sponsors before the cases would be considered. Some sponsors were charged with rape, others apparently did not want to "deal" with the reputation of having a housemaid who had "gotten herself raped" by "going the wrong places". I don't think I would be wrong to think, that logically, the same case of persons in criminal cases in Oman not being allowed to leave the country  until the cases' proceedings are closed "such as in the case of fingering an f-you to the lame-o who cut you off on the highway" should also apply to rape victims, regardless of sponsorship???? I honestly can't imagine this happening to an English-girl here in Oman, but the 2010 Human Rights report did say this was an issue of concern, but that it had not been researched.

I knew a Philipino girl who decided to go to Rock Bottom night club. She met a seemingly nice Omani guy who offered to take her for a swim at Qantab. They'd both been drinking. He was mad at first that she'd gone all the way out there with him and didn't want sex. So he tried to rape her. She called our pre-Islam guy friends howling to be picked up from the side of the road with scratches all over her face, lucky as anything she'd gotten away and that the man was as drunk as he was so she'd managed that.

Don't get me wrong, my pre-Islam guy friends, Omani, Syrian, Jordanian, are great. They'd never hurt a woman except maybe break her heart. But when they picked her up, they were like, what can you expect?! The moral of the story is, don't trust guys. Don't go places with guys!" They took her to the ROP, but as far I know, the case never went to court.

Is that really the moral of the story? Or is that the immoral thing about it? That a woman should always know better?: or isn't it, that a man should always understand "no"?

From cases that I know have happened, rape statistics in Oman are actually a lot higher than reported to the ROP. I don't know of a single Omani woman (or most Omani men) who'd tell me she'd been raped because that's just the culture. In fact, a law was recently passed (but I cannot look it up in English and I am waiting for one of the other OPNO girls to get it for me) in Oman that hospitals are not required to report rape cases to the Royal Oman Police. [Added after posting: it was a notice sent by the ROP to hospitals in Arabic below]:

تعميم مكتوب ومختوم من الادعاء العام صدر عام 2009 وانتشر مؤخرا على مواقع الانترنت
مجمله انه الطبيب او احد المأمورين بـ الضبط القضائي غير ملزمين بـ الابلاغ عن ..

حالات الاغتصاب سواء اكان المعتدي عليها من اهلها او من دون
حالات الحمل بدون زواج سواء اكان المعتدي عليها من اهلها او من دون
حالات حمل المريضات عقليا سواء اكان المعتدي عليها من اهلها او من دون
حالات حمل واعتداء لمن يقل عمرهن دون الـ 15 سنه سواء اكان المعتدي عليها من اهلها او من دون

This is supposedly to protect the rights of the victim to privacy.

Which is a lot of bull crap. It just contributes to the problem.

While few girls I know have been raped of Omani origin (mainly due to affluence, and the protection/confinement afforded by always moving in large groups of women or with a husband or father) many Omani men I know have. Maybe because I was a rape victim to they opened up to me?

One guy was attacked by an older boy in the shower when he was at school. Another, also as a child, by a male neighbor. Sadly, I and others have heard of many cases of unreported male-male child rape. Another Omani male, grown, by a taxi driver. Many more of my guy friends laugh about stories about where gay taxi drivers tried to grope them. It isn't a laughing matter but sometimes it is easier to laugh then to cry. They find it embarrassing.

Not one of these cases were ever reported.

Apparently that school shooting in Shinas, the father of a son who'd been raped reported the rape to ROP but it seemed nothing was being done, and so he got a gun and shot the rapist while the rapist was attending school. One of the OPNOs contributors can confirm this from the hospital where the rape victim was being treated.

I think the media has to have a greater role in issuing warnings and alerts when violent crimes like rape are committed and a monster is on the loose. Women need support groups that help them integrate back into society knowing what happened to them had nothing to do with them, and most certainly hospitals need to be legally required to report evidence of rape. Men need to realize that rape happens to them too, and be encouraged to report it without shame, to prevent future rapes, and society as a whole needs to realize sexless children and expat migrant women are usually the most vulnerable targets for predators. And do something to change that.

-From OPNO's editor:
I promise to keep on top of this subject and update this article as new information comes my way. Thank you to the girls, who don't mind me texting in the middle of the night.