A Saudi woman has approached the Human Rights Society's office in Makkah to seek action against her “cruel” husband. The woman has alleged torture and deprivation at the hands of the husband who constantly beat her and even raped her during daytime in Ramadan. The husband even threatened to shoot her, the complaint said. The woman alleged that the inhuman treatment her husband meted out to her has forced her to become a drug and alcohol addict, Al-Hayat reported on Tuesday. The woman, Noor Halawani, has 5 children from a 20-year marriage – 4 girls including two currently living in a girls' protection center in Makkah, and a boy who is an inmate in a juvenile correction house. “My suffering began about 20 years ago when I was forced to marry at the age of 15. My parents were divorced then which made me drop out of the school,” she told the Arabic paper. Her husband prevented her from meeting her parents and confined her inside the house without basic amenities, she alleged. The husband even accused her of being not a virgin at the time of marriage, she said. The woman said she was often beaten by a belt. Sometimes her husband even used a cleaver to beat her, she alleged. Her husband managed to wriggle out of the case she registered with the police complaining against his raping her during daytime in Ramadan, she alleged. A case for divorce was not entertained by a court in Makkah for lack of circumstantial evidence, she said. Noor claims that one night her husband awakened her and forced her to have alcohol with him. It was the beginning of her addiction to alcohol and drugs, she said. The woman said she endured all this over the years for the sake of her children hoping that they would grow up and save her. A source at Makkah's Human Rights Society told the newspaper that Noor Halawani's case is under consideration. He said the society would soon assign a lawyer to follow up the case. Meanwhile, a psychology professor has called for an immediate solution to domestic violence cases saying that the issue is continuously aggravating. Addressing a symposium recently, Dr. Abdul Mannan Molla Bar of Umm Al-Qura University, said women who sustained violence and remain silent are “masochistic,” meaning they like being tortured. He added that statistics showed an increase in domestic violence as the practice is rampant among 44 women and 42 men. __
