ABU DHABI // A man raped his 14-year-old daughter while her mother was out begging, a court heard yesterday.
The father, who has a history of alcohol abuse, waited until the mother and his three sons - aged 8, 11 and 13, were out before carrying out the attack, prosecutors told the Criminal Court. The family of six, from Morocco, live in one room.
The mother reported the father to police after her daughter complained he was abusing her. When officers interviewed the child she said she had been raped more than 20 times.
Forensics tests found evidence that she had been anally raped on numerous occasions. The tests also found traces of the father's blood on her underwear and golden jalabeya.
Chief Justice Sayed Abdul Baseer, head of the court, asked the mother to leave the courtroom while he questioned the girl.
"This is your father, don't be scared to say anything but the truth," the judge then advised the girl.
She then told him her father had raped her on two occasions. She said she could recall only the second of these vividly and that she had been sleeping while her mother was out begging when her father attacked her.
The father told the court there was "no way" he could have raped his daughter.
When the chief justice confronted him with the forensics tests, he said: "I have regular sexual activity with my wife, and she shares clothes with our daughter because they are the same size... Maybe that's how [my blood traces] got transferred to my daughter."
The mother was called back into the court and asked about the father's relationship with the girl.
"Does he usually beat her or treat her harshly?" asked the chief justice.
The mother said her husband was a respectful man and that she was shocked to hear the child's accusation.
"He is usually strict with her, he sometimes returns home late and wakes her up to cook for him," she explained. "I offer to do it instead, but he insists that he wants to teach her responsibility."
The case was adjourned until January 21.
hdajani@thenational.ae
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Indika
Developer: 11 Bit Studios
Publisher: Odd Meter
Console: PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox series X/S
Rating: 4/5
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
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Sour Grapes
Author: Zakaria Tamer
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Pages: 176
