Brussels Court Seeks 50-Month Sentence for Man Accused of Raping, Imprisoning Arranged Marriage Partner

Seeing himself old with a woman who could not give him a child, Saïd A., a Moroccan residing in Schaerbeek, asks his aunt to find him a young woman. She succeeds in her mission. In March 2020, she makes him meet in Morocco a young woman, the neighbor of his grandfather living in a poor village of the kingdom, reports La Capitale. An arranged marriage will then be celebrated. The quadragenarian settles in Schaerbeek with his new partner just before the confinement.

It is the beginning of a calvary for the young woman married sixteen years younger than her husband. She lived in the "house of horror," described the deputy prosecutor of the king before the 54th chamber of the Brussels correctional court. "The victim came from abroad in the hope of obtaining papers, a situation, stability, a more comfortable life. One might think that she filed a complaint for rape against her husband to emancipate herself and continue her life, but that is not the case," he continued.

According to the magistrate’s explanations, the victim has no one in Belgium and she told the police that she did not want to divorce. "She found refuge with a distant cousin who declared that it was the first time they had met and that he was unaware of her existence until then," he said, adding that the victim claimed to have lived a real ordeal in the "house of horror".
"There is no rape between married people," the victim’s father-in-law told the police.

"We are in a very particular cultural context, this must be raised. The victim managed to confess to her relatives that she was being raped. Imagine the courage of this woman, she risks stigmatization even though she is a victim, and yet she denounces the facts, which shows the distress in which she finds herself," insists the standing magistrate. He requests a sentence of fifty months in prison against Saïd A. The verdict will be handed down in three weeks.