I’m sure many of you have heard the story of the young girl who suffered terrible injuries in a gang rape in Aleppo last month; you can read the story in English here. There has been a Facebook group set up to show solidarity (it’s mostly in Arabic) and a few websites have reported it, but apparently the mainstream Arabic media haven’t considered it worthy of reporting. Quite apart from the fact that such a thing happened, another awful aspect of this story is that four hospitals refused to treat her; a fifth gave her basic first aid, and sent her on to a sixth hospital (a children’s hospital).
I was surprised to find that not only was the girl named, but that both the Facebook group and most of the various reports had pictures of her, some of which show a pack of nappies branded “New Baby” on her bed. They also include graphic details of her internal injuries. Surely they could have left out the pictures showing the nappies and used a phrase like “severe internal injuries” and left it at that, since most people can imagine the sort of injuries rape could cause, particularly on a young girl, and I accept that they may need to raise money for her treatment, but it all seems a bit intrusive and undignified. After all, this girl will be a woman before very long, and surely nobody wants such intimate details about them to be in the public domain.
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This is a very distressing story indeed. I agree that putting out the details in return for support will be problematic for the girl in the future, but examining the issues surrounding this horrendous event: refusal from several hospitals, poverty, disregard by the authorities and the Syrian media, absence of established and transparent NGO, I am not surprised that this is their last resort.
Doess anyone know why the hospitals refused to treat her? What was their reasoning?
Horrific and shocking. This made my blood boil in a way that it hasn’t for a long time.
I too was sickened by this, and I could not believe the detail that the story went into. The people who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves. And as for the rapists, I hope they get a good torture and an “accidental” death by the Syrian police.
The Syrian police are perfectly capable of torturing people and accidentally killing them. However, they would probably find it easier to decide that people who had already been tortured and accidentally killed committed the crime.
However, I am dubious about whether the crime actually took place, or- if it did- in the way desribed. A state such as Syria with an official policy of suppressing news is a state where rumours have more power. In a state where something happens and the state doesn’t say so, then it’s easy- and fallacious- to assume that if the state didn’t say something happened, it must have happened. First, it seems improbable that there should just happen to be four young men together in the same place all of whose tastes are perverted enough for them to rape a small child and for them to have the opportunity to do so. The accumulation of detail also makes me dubious about the medical record- this isn’t the kind of detail doctors would tell a journalist or general inquirer. Finally I don’t believe that five hospitals would refuse emergency aid- the fact that the girl is supposed to have ended up at a children’s hospital suggests that- if she ever existed- the whole narrative is made up of exaggeration and rumour and the factual baisis is probably small or even non-existent. Do the actual hospitals named exist in Aleppo? Is there any traceable source for this story?