JINHA

ANKARA – Two fathers sexually abused their own daughters in a single day in Turkey in the wake of a religious ruling by the state Directorate of Religious Affairs that it was “not unlawful for a father to feel lust for his own daughter.”

Recently, a ruling appeared on the website of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs. After a commenter asked for a fatwa on the question, “Does the lust that a father feels for his own daughter break his engagement with his wife?” the answer was listed as, “It does not generate this kind of unlawfulness for a father to feel lust for his own daughter by touching her through thick clothes or looking at her body.”

After the ruling justifying child abuse, two instances of a father’s sexual abuse of his child emerged in a single day in Turkey, three days after the fatwa was issued.

According to a local news website, a man named S.A. in the Akçaabat district of Trabzon province was arrested for sexually abusing his daughter. Eyewitnesses reported that on January 11, the man took his 12-year-old daughter into an empty container near their house.

When eyewitnesses became suspicious and entered the container, where they found the man naked. He was turned over to the police, while the girl was hospitalized. The man testified that he had been sexually abusing his daughter for two years. The man has been arrested and jailed.

Meanwhile, the same day in Erzican province, witnesses informed the police of an older man who had entered an unused building in the area with a young girl. When police broke the window and entered the house, the 37-year-old man, M.A., was found naked with his 14-year-old daughter. The girl, who testified along with a psychologist and lawyer, said that her father had sexually abused her in isolated areas since she was seven years old. She said that she had been scared to tell anyone.

The man has been arrested and sent to jail, while the girl is in the custody of the provincial office of the Ministry of Family and Social Policies.

The state fatwa had contained detailed instructions, saying that “the kind of touching leading to this result” must not occur with skin touching or must occur through fabric that does not “transmit the warmth underneath.” It also said that the girl must be older than nine years old.

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