MAKKAH, 12 January 2008 — Two expatriate laborers working in a grocery in Makkah have been charged with sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl, local police said recently.
The girl, who lives with an elderly relative (police didn’t specify the relation), was late from returning from an errand to a local grocery store. The relative said she noticed the girl was visibly in pain and had what police believe was semen stains on her clothing. The woman said the girl told her that the two men threatened to kill the girl if she let the secret out. The woman immediately called the local police who arrested them for interrogation.
Commenting on the increasing instances of sexual abuse of children, Dr. Sami Al-Lihyani, a mental health specialist in Makkah, told Arab News that the root cause of behavioral aberrations in people who commit sexual harassment was a lack of religious and moral education.
Al-Lihyani also blamed the parents who send out girls to suspicious places to be preyed upon by unscrupulous men. The doctor stressed the need for educating families about the care they should take to protect their children on the one hand and the need for explaining to the children about the sexual organs that they should not allow anyone to touch. If they suspect someone is attempting to abuse them they should resist or flee and inform their parents immediately, the doctor said. Ahmad ibn Qassim Al-Ghamdi, director of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Makkah, said that it was primarily the responsibility of the family to protect their children from sexual abuse by avoiding situations in which their children are left alone with men and also by educating the children on the matter.
Maj. Abdul Muhsin Al-Mayman, spokesman of the Makkah police, told Arab News that police received a number of cases of sexually motivated attacks on children lately. He called upon the parents not to let their children go out alone particularly to groceries at lonely places or other unsafe locations.
