A chilling cycle of abuse!
If you are in any doubt about how the police/legal system works in Dubai........just have a read of the following from Emirates Today newspaper (5th October 2006)
UAE women beaten by their husbands are encouraged not to take any legal action if their wounds heal within 20 days, says a social worker with Dubai Police.
“When women come to us, we send them to the forensic medicine doctors who examine them and give their report within a couple of days,” said Fatma Al Shaibani, a social worker with the Dubai Police Human Rights Department.
“If the report says the wounds will heal within 20 days, we call the husband and wife and invite them to try and solve the problem in the station. If he agrees to this, we make him sign an agreement not to beat his wife again and instead do the things she wants.
“We also make the wife sign an agreement saying she will listen to her husband and not irritate him on purpose. However, if the wounds take more than 20 days to heal, we file a case against the husband,” she added.
She said the vast majority of men who beat their wives come from families where their fathers hit their mothers.
A staggering 90 per cent of men encountered by the police for such crimes fit into this category, while the other 10 per cent are made up of people who said work pressure and other problems were to blame.
“Even if the husband was educated and intelligent, we find that he beats his wife as he learnt this from his father,” said Al Shaibani.
She added they do so because visual memories are stronger than any other type of memory. “That is why many health experts say the first three years of a child’s life is so important as they build their personalities during this time,” she said.
Al Shaibani said her department has to deal with many cases each week involving both UAE nationals and expatriates.
“We found that national men who beat their wives were mainly sons of expatriate mothers and aged below 30 years of age.
“That is why it is always better to have equality between the husband and wife to guarantee a stable married life as well as family life for the children,” she said.
Al Shaibani went on to say the women who were beaten fell into two categories.
“There are two types of women: those who keep quiet when their husbands beat them, and those who complain to the police,” she said. She added that most of the women who complain to the police do so in order to solve the problem. “They try to avoid such behaviour in the future by allowing themselves and their husbands to get consultation in the social section of the police station,” she said. “The other type of women are those who seek police help when the problem between her and her husband has reached the courts. She needs the police report showing her husband beat her in order to get a divorce. This represents almost 50 per cent of the cases we see.” She pointed out the cases they receive are almost always serious. “We see cases where women suffer from serious injuries such as bleeding, eye injuries, and wounds to the head, although it is rare to see a women with broken bones,” Al Shaibani said.
20 days is a lot of healing!
