Gulan Kılıçgedik/JINHA

ÇEWLIG – As women in Northern Kurdistan continue protesting a Turkish court's decision to acquit or give light sentences to eight military officers who sexually abused a 15-year-old girl based on the claim that she "consented," the same court has made a similar decision in the case of a girl impregnated by the sexual abuse of seven men.

The Heavy Criminal Court in Bingöl province recently acquitted two military officers and gave short sentences (the longest being less than two years) to six others in the case of the sexual abuse of a 15-year-old girl. Women's groups have widely denounced the soldier child molestation decision, saying it violated multiple international human rights agreements. The court's decision in the case had argued that the girl "should have known" that meeting with the soldiers would end in her sexual abuse and that therefore she had given consent to have sexual relations.

Yesterday, it emerged that the court made a similar decision recently in the case of a girl who became pregnant after three years of systematic sexual abuse by seven suspects, starting when she was 12. The girl has since given birth.

The court acquitted the majority of the defendants. The three who were not acquitted received sentence reductions—including Kenan Tali, proven by DNA evidence to be the father of the child from rape. Kenan Tali was originally charged with 17 years. The court decided based on his "good attitude" in court that he should receive a sentence reduction to 14 years.

The four acquitted defendants, it emerged, had learned of the sexual abuse and threatened to upload videos of the girl on the Internet if she did not also have sexual relations with them, as well. Over the course of the three years of systematic abuse by multiple abusers, the girl reached the age of 15 (which according to Turkish law can be considered an age of consent). The court ruled that by not informing anyone of the abuse at this time, the girl had consented.

The court's decision argued that, "given thta someone being threatened must always choose one of two options that will do the least harm to herself; and that in our event on every occasion one of those options was to tell her family and friends about the situation, with the other being for the participant to show consent to the defendant at the site of the event," there was consent in the case. The court argued that it would have been "against the natural flow of life" for the defendant to stay quiet for this long if she did not accept the situation.

(fk/cm)