Morocco Permits Rapists to Marry their Victims (and so do we?)

Barbara Roberts sent us the Avaaz.org link as a place where we can all go and sign a petition to turn up the heat for repeal of laws that permit travesties like this one —

Days ago, 16 year-old Amina Filali, raped, beaten and forced to wed her rapist, killed herself — the only way she saw to escape the trap set for her by her rapist and the law. If we act now, we can stop this unspeakable tragedy from happening to anyone else.

Article 475 in Morocco’s penal code allows a rapist to avoid prosecution and a long prison sentence by marrying his victim if she is a minor. Since 2006, the government has promised to strike this down and pass legislation prohibiting violence against women, but it hasn’t happened.

As horrible as this is, I realized as I was reading it that the so-called conservative, Bible-believing church is actually guilty of a very similar travesty.  Women who have been raped and sodomized repeatedly by their husband/abuser are being told that they cannot divorce him.  They have to remain married to him.  In other words, when we prohibit abused women from divorcing their abuser husband, I simply ask – how is that really much different than what is being done in Morocco?  Well, unless we really, in fact, believe that it is just fine for a husband to rape and sodomize his wife.

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UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.