Cassation Court upholds 3-year sentence for man engaged in sexual activities with minor

AMMAN — The Cassation Court upheld a May 2023 Criminal Court decision to sentence a man to three years in prison after convicting him of engaging in consensual sexual activities with a minor in Amman in July 2022.

The Criminal Court handed the defendant a three-year prison term after convicting him of engaging in sexual activities with a 17-year-old girl five times.

Court documents said the defendant and the victim developed a relationship a few years before the incident via social media outlets.

The two decided to meet alone in July, the court maintained.

“The defendant took the victim to a furnished apartment in an Eastern Amman neighbourhood,” the court stated.

The two engaged in “consensual sexual activities five times,” according to court papers.

The matter was exposed a few months later “when the defendant met the victim and her mother in the local market and threatened to expose the relationship to her brother,” the court added.

“The defendant showed the victim’s mother several chats he had with her daughter that were of sexual nature and threatened to show it to the victim’s brother,” court papers said.

The victim’s mother immediately filed a complaint and the victim was referred to the Family Protection Department for further examination and questioning, the court maintained.

The defendant had contested the Criminal Court’s ruling through his lawyer claiming that the “victim gave contradictory statements regarding the incident”. 

Meanwhile, the Criminal Court’s attorney general asked the higher court to uphold the ruling.

The Cassation Court ruled that the Criminal Court’s judgement fell within the law, that the proceedings were proper and that the sentence given was satisfactory.

"The court relied on an expert who verified the mobile chats between the victim and the defendant, which was ample proof that he sexually assaulted the minor," the higher court ruled. 

The Cassation Court tribunal comprised judges Mahmoud Ebtoush, Majid Azab, Fawzi Nahar, Rizeq Abulfoul and Ibrahim Abu Shamma.