Franco-Moroccan Woman Files Rape Complaint Against Ex-Husband in Forced Marriage Case

The young woman had non-consensual sexual intercourse with her husband, three days after her wedding. "I was married a month after I turned 18. My father had taken my papers. I was in a country I didn’t know. I was terrified. Three days after my wedding, the man who is my husband on paper took me, at my father’s request who wanted the marriage to be consummated. It’s the only intimate relationship we had. I managed to divorce when we returned to France and I left my parents’ house," Ariane details to Midi Libre.

Today, even though she admits not having said no to him, she maintains that she was a victim of sexual abuse and wants to be recognized as such. "How can you tell a woman who is a victim of sexual abuse that she isn’t one, simply because she didn’t express a refusal? I was in a country where I hadn’t grown up (She grew up in France, Editor’s note), deprived of my identity papers, without resources, without help or support. The act was imposed on me, just like my marriage. It’s essential to understand that all of this was decided without my consent ever being taken into consideration," she explains.

Ten years after the events, Ariane decides to file a complaint for sexual assault against her ex-husband. On the advice of her lawyer, Me Florian Medico, she wished to file a second complaint for rape. But the police station in Béziers, her city of residence, initially refuses to take her complaint. After insisting with the prosecutor’s office, she finally succeeds on May 22nd. "I’m told, at the police station, and this is true, that I didn’t say ’No’. I couldn’t do anything else. So, for them, there’s no rape and I can’t make myself heard, even by female police officers," Ariane laments.

In a letter to the prosecutor in charge of sexual violence in Béziers, her lawyer elaborates: "You will observe that contrary to what the investigators explained to you, she (Ariane) never indicated that she had ’at no time an attitude allowing to let him understand that she was opposed to this sexual intercourse’. But she showed no sexual desire. The intercourse took place on the floor on quilts, she asked the man not to remove her top, even though the latter complied with this requirement, you can at least agree that this does not seem to allow for circumstantiating free and informed consent."

"Regarding the rape facts she denounces, she specifies that she went up to the room with the accused spouse and indicates: ’I gave him what he wanted, I let him do it and let it happen to me’... Thus, and without anticipating the decision I would be led to make regarding the denounced rape facts, and without minimizing the impact these facts may have had on her, it seems to me, at this stage, that in the absence of being able to demonstrate intentional element, this offense cannot be characterized," the Béziers prosecutor’s office reacted for its part. Ariane, for her part, is only waiting for one thing: "to be recognized as a victim of a husband who was imposed on me. Nothing more."