Widow Gangraped, Forced To Perform Oral Sex As ‘Punishment’ For Having An Affair With Married Man

A 25-year-old Indonesian widow who was gang-raped by eight ‘vigilantes’ as punishment for having an affair with a married man, is now to suffer the further indignity of being caned in public.

The rapists caught the couple together when they barged into her house in the northern Indonesian province of Banda Aceh and accused her of having ‘improper sexual relations’ with the 40-year-old man(pictured below).

The province’s Shariah police, or Wilayatul Hisbah, generally handle such cases, and officials confirmed that the couple in the Langsa raid was brought in for questioning on the grounds of “tarnishing the village’s reputation” – after the woman had been raped and her companion beaten up.

The widow

“We want the couple to be caned because they violated the religious bylaw on sexual relations,” Ibrahim Latif, the head of the Shariah office in the eastern town of Langsa, said of the woman and her companion.

“Before they turned over the couple to the authorities, the men who caught them also doused them in sewage,” Ibrahim Latif, the head of the Shariah office in Langsa, told the Globe.

He said the men had not told the Shariah officers about raping the woman, with officers only finding out during their interrogation of the victim.

“The men beat up [the companion] before tying him up. They also forced the woman to perform oral sex on them and groped her,” Ibrahim said. “We later confirmed through tests that the woman had been raped by the eight men.”

He said his office was working closely with the police to arrest the vigilante mob.

It was only after the terrified woman was dragged to a police station by her attackers and reported for breaking strict Sharia laws against extra-marital sex then it was learned she had been raped.

Three of the vigilantes were immediately detained and charged with rape as their companions fled – but that did not prevent police deciding to punish the woman with a caning for breaking religious laws.

‘The woman and the man will both be caned because they have violated a religious bylaw on sexual relations,’ Mr Ibrahim Latif, head of the Shariah office in the eastern town of Langsa, told the Jakarta Globe.

Ibrahim said the fact that the woman had been raped would not be taken into consideration in determining the punishment for the religious crime that she was accused of committing.

“They have to be [caned] as a form of justice because the rapists will also be processed, but in a criminal court,” he said. “Besides, they’ve confessed to having sex on several previous occasions, even though the man is married and has five children.”

Mr Ibrahim said the woman and her companion had confessed to having sex on several previous occasions even though the man is married and has five children.

Extramarital sex is prohibited in Aceh, which exercises a limited form of Shariah, or Islamic law, and vigilante raids against suspected violators, though illegal, are common and even condoned by the local clergy and authorities.

Under the religious law, the woman and her lover face up to nine strokes of the cane each – and the punishment will be carried out in a public place.

The three arrested rapists – who include a 13-year-old boy – would have faced the same number of cane strokes if they had been charged under Shariah law – but they are facing charges in a criminal court.

This is not the first case in Aceh of a rape being committed against a woman accused of inappropriate conduct with an unrelated male.
A 20-year-old university student was raped by three Shariah police officers in Langsa in January 2010 after being caught riding on a motorcycle with her boyfriend.

The town’s Shariah police chief, Syahril, was subsequently fired and two of the perpetrators were later sentenced to eight years in prison each. The third perpetrator was never caught.