The enlightened judiciary of Saudi Arabia has sentenced a rape victim to 90 lashes for the crime of having been with an unrelated man.
Agence France-Presse reports:
In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, the 19-year-old said she was blackmailed a year ago into meeting a man who threatened to tell her family they were having a relationship outside wedlock, which is illegal in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.
After driving off together from a shopping mall near her home, the woman and the man were stopped and abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took them to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors.
Because the victim was alone with a man in his car, the court sentenced her to 90 lashes.
According to the Associated Press, the victim had left her home to retrieve a picture of her from a male former classmate. She was recently married and did not want him to keep a picture of her. While she was in that former classmate's car, two men climbed in and drove them to a secluded area. The victim said seven men raped her, and then three of them raped her former classmate as well.
For its part, the Saudi Justice Ministry claims rape could not be proved. The victim's flogging sentence has caused an uproar, though it rings hollow in a culture that tortures women for being alone with men and forbids them to even drive a car.