JORDANIAN DOMESTIC ABUSE SURVIVOR SAYS TRADITION PROLONGED HER ORDEAL
▶ UN study finds 37 per cent of Arab women report having experienced some form of violence during their lifetime
A Jordanian woman who suffered decades of domestic violence at the hands of her husband until he blinded her says she regrets staying silent in the years before the attack.
Fatima Abu Akleek’s former spouse gouged out her right eye with charcoal tongs, often used in shisha pipe preparation, and destroyed the nerves in her left eye.
She now encourages other women to learn from her ordeal.
Ms Abu Akleek, 38, says her suffering was prolonged by societal pressure to “keep the peace” at home and not to approach the authorities about her abuse.
“There are laws in place to protect us. But do women resort to the law at the right time?” she says from her parents’ home in Jerash, where she now lives.
“I was beaten every day,” she says. “Our traditions make it shameful for a woman to file a complaint against her husband. People question how a woman is supposed to return to her husband’s home afterwards.”
Last month, Jordan’s highest court upheld the maximum prison sentence for her husband – 30 years for attempted murder – overturning an appeal by the defendant’s lawyer arguing that his client’s actions had disabled Ms Abu Akleek but were not intended to kill her.
Local newspapers at the time reported that Ms Abu Akleek’s husband had raised a knife at her on the night of the attack.
According to the UN organisation for female empowerment, UN Women, 37 per cent of Arab women have been subjected to a form of violence in their lifetime and “there are indicators that the percentage might be higher”.
More than six in 10 women who have survived violence also refrain from asking for protection or support, its researchers found.
Ms Abu Akleek thinks about the pain her family feels when they see her.
“My father says that if I had been killed, my family would have mourned me for a period of time. But with me here in front of them every day, the pain remains alive and is renewed in their hearts every time they see me.”
Ms Abu Akleek says her ability to perform duties as a mother has been drastically reduced.
“I was the main person in my children’s lives,” she says.
“I cleaned their clothes, I tutored them. They used to rely on me.”
Her youngest child is 4.
“I cannot remember what she looks like. I cannot remember,” she says.
Ms Abu Akleek’s lawyer, Eva Abu Halaweh, says the publicity her client’s case received has served as a warning to abusers.
She says the lengthy sentence the perpetrator received will discourage other people from committing similar crimes.
“We started hearing of instances where men threatened to give their wives the same fate that Fatima suffered,” says Ms Abu Halaweh, who founded the Mizan Law Group for Human Rights in Jordan.
“We want to show perpetrators that this is not acceptable and we want to tell authorities that they should do more to protect victims.”
In 2017, Jordan’s Parliament amended several laws that affect women and girls, most notably repealing a penal code article that absolves perpetrators of sexual violence if they marry their victims.
A similar law was repealed in Morocco in 2014, after a woman who was forced to wed her rapist killed herself, non-government organisation Human Rights Watch said.
In 2019, the year in which Ms Abu Akleek took her case to court, Jordan’s state news agency, Petra, said police had received 10,000 reports of domestic violence in the first eight months of that year.
While rights defenders have praised Jordan’s court decision in Ms Abu Akleek’s case, they say a much work is still needed to tackle domestic violence.
“Tens of cases of murder and violence against Jordanian women and girls are stuck in the mazes of the justice system,” says women’s rights activist Banan AbuZaineddin.
“We don’t know their names or whether justice was served for them.”
While Ms Abu Akleek says she is satisfied with the verdict against her former husband, her life has changed for ever.
“I would agree to his release if that means I get my sight back,” she says.
“That way he would have to pray for me to be able to see again.”
We want to show the perpetrators that this is not acceptable and to tell authorities they should do more to protect victims EVA ABU HALAWEH Fatima Abu Akleek’s lawyer