There are many stories about sexual abuse of young victims in which each victim has their own heart-breaking story. Yet most of these stories are never heard until years after the abuse due to the victims’ fear that they will be not be heard correctly or that they will be blamed.
There is a well known “horror story” in Turkey regarding this issue. It is told that a seventeen-year-old girl kept a diary about her sexual harassment by a 57-year-old, man who later left her pregnant, and wrote all of the things that were done to her in this diary journal. When one of her friends read her diary and shared the information with a teacher at school, the teacher aided her in going to court over the issue.
In her diary she wrote:
“I have been working for this guy since the age of 11. It is light housework to make some money after school. This man raped me once when I was younger but I kept it a secret because I was very scared of the consequences. I am 17 and just a few months ago he raped me again. I became pregnant.”
She was raped twice by this old man and became pregnant. After the diary was read in court, she was advised to get an abortion. However, there were no consequences for the 57-year-old man who never admitted to any of the accusations, but was proven to be the father of the aborted fetus after a paternity test. The girl complained to the court over this.
What is going on with young rape victims in Turkey? How is rape being dealt with in Turkey?
The idea of sex between two unmarried people is so strongly frowned upon in Turkish society that rape and sexual abuse in general go unheard of and are usually left in silence.
Unfortunately, in Turkey there are many told and untold rape stories. There isn’t much that can be done about those that are untold, but what about the ones that are publicly known? Let’s think about this case: The 57-year-old man who raped the young girl twice and made her pregnant. At first he denied all the charges, but later on he admitted to the crime, and thus his court trial charges begin with 39 years of jail time. Prison punishment this long may not help the girl who is having mental issues resulting from the trauma, but it is a good warning for the other men who rape girls without thinking twice. Yet there is still another problem: The man who admitted to the crime will not actually be kept in jail for more than 2 years. Yes, after raping and admitting to the rape of the young girl, this man will be set free after just 2 years of a 39 year sentence. This is a tiny glimpse of the grim situation in Turkey in which young girls are victimized by rape and the rapist is let off the hook without appropriate punishment.