Mexican sexually abused in Qatar is sentenced to 100 lashes and 7 years in prison

The political scientist documented the event and managed to obtain a medical certificate that demonstrated the aggression. Later, she went to the police together with Luis Ancona, Consul of Mexico in Qatar, however, because it was an extramarital relationship, she went from accuser to accused. With the help of the World Cup Organizing Committee and Human Rights Watch, she managed to leave the country.

Mexico City, February 17 (RT).- The Mexican intellectual Paola Schietekat Sedas suffered sexual abuse while working in Qatar, in the Organizing Committee of the World Cup that will begin on November 21.

But, instead of punishing the aggressor, the authorities of that country imposed on her a sentence of 100 lashes and seven years in prison.

The sentence did not materialize thanks to the fact that the economist, anthropologist, and political scientist managed to leave Doha, but she cannot return to what she describes as her “dream job”. And she considers it an injustice.

The events occurred on June 6 of last year but were made known by Schietekat Sedas in a recent article in which she recounted in detail the violence to which she was subjected and in which she also recalls a previous abuse she suffered as a teenager.

“I was 16 years old when my first boyfriend locked me up in his apartment, raped me and threatened to kill me after beating me that left visible marks for several weeks, all because of a jealous rage,” he said to demonstrate the recurrence of the aggressions that women suffer.

FROM A PREVIOUS ABUSE TO QATAR

“I remember the way back to my house, thinking about what I was going to say to my parents to justify the hours in which I did not answer the phone, how I was going to hide the marks, because I clearly felt that it was my fault, and because She was a girl, without the ability to rationalize that what she had just experienced was an attempted femicide, and because she was a victim of sexual violence, she internalized, as many do, the guilt and shame of what happened,” she added.

Schietekat Sedas took a decade to share that experience that cost him therapies, medications and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

“In those ten years, my attacker got married and had a daughter. I was furious with myself for not having denounced, for not having loved and respected me enough to denounce someone who did such damage. There was no shortage of occasions when people I trusted with my testimony asked me, puzzled, why I hadn’t filed a complaint. That only added fuel to a fire that I had not even started, and that it was not my place to put out, ”he explained.

The young woman continued with her life. She studied careers such as International Relations, Behavioral Sciences, Anthropology and Public Policy in Mexico and abroad, at universities in Kuwait and Oxford. She until she was hired as a behavioral economist at the World Cup Organizing Committee.

Everything changed on the night of June 6, 2021, when an acquaintance she considered her friend and who belongs to the Latino community in Doha, entered her apartment while she was sleeping.

“After a brief struggle, as his strength exceeded mine, I ended up on the floor. Hours later, bruises appeared all over my left arm, shoulder, and back. I kept a cool head: I told my mom, a colleague from work and I documented everything with photos, so that my memory, in an attempt at self-protection, would not minimize the events or completely erase part of them, ”he detailed.

He also immediately denounced so as not to repeat the history of silence and impunity that had covered the abuse of which he was a victim as a teenager.

GUILTY OF HAVING EXTRAMARRITAL RELATIONSHIPS

With the medical certificate that demonstrated the aggression, he went to the police together with the Consul of Mexico in Qatar, Luis Ancona. Later, she was summoned back to the police station. They wanted to confront her with her aggressor, who claimed that they were her boyfriends and that she had given consent for him to enter the apartment.

Schietekat Sedas thus went from accuser to accused.

The problem is that in Qatar extramarital relations are a crime. That was what worried the policemen who had already ruled out abuse.

With the help of the Organizing Committee of the World Cup and Human Rights Watch, she managed to leave that country on June 25 and return to Mexico, where the authorities did not help her at any time, despite the fact that she also denounced the indifference and inability with which the Consul had acted.

The sentence, which was announced in her absence, acquitted the aggressor and she was sentenced to 100 lashes and seven years in prison. She was guilty of having had an extramarital affair. To avoid her conviction, her lawyer dared to recommend that she marry the abuser. Schietekat Sedas still can’t believe it.