ONE of the most frequent stories I keep reading in newspapers, almost every day is the story that goes along the lines of the arrest of a man who was embezzling and blackmailing women for money. Most of the time, the reason for the coercion or extortion is either the man has gotten the upper hand by gaining knowledge of an embarrassing or intimate issue of the woman or of a member of the woman's family or the man had gotten hold of private pictures of the woman and is threatening to expose these pictures in public domain if his demands are not met. In most cases the demands by these charlatans are monetary for they use the material gained to milk more money from women. But some men also make demands for sexual favors from the victims. Some of the blackmailers are proficient in computer use, and they use their knowledge to hack into other peoples' accounts. These hackers manage to hack into personal computers and extract pictures, which the women may have left in the hard disk inadvertently or in the mistaken confidence that it was safe from prying eyes as it was in their personal computer. But the majority of these blackmailing cases are a result of previous relationships in which the women willingly give these pictures to the blackmailer. In a society that is considered conservative and deals with oversensitivity toward any issue that involves women, what drives a woman to do such a thing? It is like a woman handing over a gun to man to threaten her or shoot her with in the future. There are many stories including of a woman from a Gulf country who was blackmailed by a man. This man through his constant threats managed to rake in more than one million riyals, before the victim finally opened her eyes to the situation and took remedial action. The woman when seeing this conundrum was going nowhere, took recourse to a proactive measure. She contacted the Commission for the Promotion of Virtues and Preventing of Vice (Haia) for help. The Haia, after listening to her story and ascertaining the facts, lured the cheater into a trap and arrested him. Another story that really made the news was that of a Saudi, who was taken into police custody for blackmailing young women in Dammam. He posted the photos of several young women on a social media account he had created specifically for this purpose. He lulled the women into false security by posing as a woman and enticed them to send their photographs. The victims sent him their photos thinking they were sending them to a young woman. The women were then shocked to see their photos posted online and called the police once the man began blackmailing them for money. The most recent case of a extortionist making the headlines was the sentencing of the criminal to six years in prison and 150 lashes for blackmailing a young woman. The man had captured the victim's photo on a mobile phone and a year later, started blackmailing the woman. He threatened her to have illicit relations with him or else he would publish the photos. The sentencing so far is the longest jail term issued by a Saudi court to a blackmailer. The problem of blackmailing women by threatening to make her pictures public is not recent, as cheaters have been using this modus operandi in the past, and for many years. I wonder why — despite the many reports published of such blackmailing tactics and the awareness campaign warning women about the outcome of such problems — women still fall victims to such tactics. I may excuse women who had their computers hacked because they are innocent of the problem as they are victims of an intelligent fraud. Here, I am talking about women who during their relationships inexplicably give their pictures by choice and later when the relationship fails they cry for help when the man resorts to blackmail in order to either admonish or punish her or is just plain greedy for money. Why do they not learn from the experience of other victims? Why do they still insist on walking by themselves into the trap of a blackmailer knowing fully well that the end result would be mostly her suffering? We have reached a level here that we are bored from reading or hearing such stories because we know how it begins and how it will end. The commission has specified a unified number and a specialized team to deal with such cases. Almost all the cases that lands in their hands ends with the arrest of the blackmailer. But yet the cases are piling on. Why can't then we get to the root of this problem in order to solve it? First of all, what is the root of this problem. Although I am all for handing stiff punishment for those who are blackmailing innocent women, I am also all for punishing the women who are careless enough to give their photos to these men. There should be some sort of deterrent because if they were careful at the outset then this problem would have not arisen at all. They should be held responsible and accountable for their actions. Although many women have not learned from the many stories of pain and suffering of other women from the numerous news articles in various newspapers and online outlets, then they will only learn if they see the women being punishment for their follies. They should not be looked at as victims only.
— The writer can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @anajeddawi_eng
