25-year jail term for man who molested his five daughters over 200 times

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a March Criminal Court ruling sentencing a 60-year-old Syrian father to 25 years in prison after convicting him of sexually assaulting his five teenage daughters in Amman for six years.

The defendant, a farmer who is married to three women, was declared guilty of raping two of his daughters, who were over 18, and molesting three others aged between 15 and 17 years old from 2010 until April 2016, and was handed the maximum punishment.

The court decided to increase his sentence from “15 to 25 years because the victims were his daughters; he caused two of them to lose their virginity and he sexually assaulted the five of them over 200 times”.

Court documents said the defendant, who was residing in Jordan since the mid-2000s, “began molesting his daughters in 2010 and, in 2015, he raped the oldest two who were over 18 by a few months”.
The matter was exposed when his daughters “became fed up from the constant sexual assaults and decided to inform the authorities”, the court added.
The Family Protection Department was notified, and the victims were examined before the father got arrested, according to the court verdict.
The defendant would often beat up his family and wives “and they were afraid to file a complaint against him when the sexual abuse began”, according to court transcripts.
The defendant contested the Criminal Court’s ruling charging that there were “inconsistencies during the trial and contradictory statements by the victims and witnesses”.

However, the higher court ruled that the Criminal Court followed the proper procedures and the defendant deserves the verdict he received. 

The Court of Cassation judges were Mohammad Ibrahim, Naji Zubi, Yassin Abdullat, Saeed Maghid and Majid Azab.