Man Sentenced to 5 Years for Sexual Assault of 6-Year-Old in Moroccan Cemetery

A mother filed a complaint against a married man and father of three children for assault on a minor, after her six-year-old child told her that he had been abused in a cemetery in the Slahma douar in Sidi Bennour, reports Assabah. The gendarmerie elements opened an investigation after this complaint and during his hearing, the victim confirmed his mother’s statement.

On the orders of the public prosecutor’s office, the gendarmes arrested the suspect. Questioned, he does not admit the facts he is accused of and gives another version. He claimed to have met the victim, whose parents live in a house near his, when he was going to a grocery store to buy ice cream for his children. The six-year-old minor would have asked him for money to buy an ice cream and he would have given him 2 DH before leaving to return home.

The investigators do not believe this version of the facts and present him before the king’s prosecutor. The latter prosecuted him, in custody, for indecent assault and presented him before the investigating judge. The accused and the civil party were heard. The magistrate then referred the defendant to the court of first instance of Sidi Bennour. Dissatisfied with this decision, the Attorney General appealed to the criminal chamber.

The charge was therefore reclassified as a crime. Tried before the Court of Appeal of El Jadida, the accused was sentenced to five years in prison.