CAIRO: Winning the first sexual harassment case in the history of Egyptian law can be draining, as Noha Roushdy is finding out.
Ever since the North Cairo Court ruled in her favor last Tuesday, Roushdy has been doing non-stop press interviews, to the extent that she is unable to recall who she was talking to prior to our meeting and needs a few moments to catch her breath.
Yet there is a plus side. Right before we begin the interview, a distinguished looking elderly gentleman came up to her and said, “I’ve been trying to catch up with you from the end of the street, but your youth beat my old age. I just want to shake your hand for what you’ve done and congratulate you on your courage.
A beaming Roushdy stands up for the man and thanks him profusely. The waiters at the café we are at ask me who she is. “Only the most famous woman in the country at the moment, I’m tempted to reply.
Sherif Gomaa Gibrial, a driver, was sentenced to three years imprisonment and fined LE 5,001 for harassing Roushdy in broad daylight last June.
“I was so thrilled with this verdict, it was so surprising, she says. “I didn’t think it would ever be that strong. I trust the legal system; it didn’t discriminate between men and women.
Roushdy’s lawyer had told her that the ruling might be given in the first hearing, and because it was treated as a felony of sexual assault rather than a misdemeanor of attacking a woman, the sentence was three years rather than say six months to a year.
“This is a crime; there was an understanding of that and the criminal should be punished legally, not just maybe beaten on the street. He humiliated me and I got my own back, she says.
And in light of the ruling, her message is a simple one.
“Girls, just be more positive and powerful because no one is going to fight for your rights; you have to stand up for yourself. I feel it’s time to say no to being passive even despite archaic societal perceptions.
“You can’t make everyone love you, she says, “especially in situations like this you’ll see the differences between people. Some people will think I’m being very provocative or unrespectable, but the question is, how do I see myself?
“At least in the past, when a woman was harassed in the street, people would step in to protect her. That era has long vanished. I feel that people don’t know who they are anymore, she adds.
Many have posited their theories about the alarming rise in incidents of sexual harassment in the country, but Roushdy takes a slightly different tack to the limp justifications some might offer.
“Everyone [attributes] harassment to repression, but I think it is oppression, she says. “In psychological analysis, repression leads to depression and passiveness. There is political and economic repression [here] and no one has started a revolution. It [just] turns into more passivity. But the idea of oppression is what brought harassment out in society.
“Oppression makes people aggressive, Roushdy continues. “Each oppressed person has an ambition to oppress someone else to feel a balance, to not feel weak. So the regime oppresses the people and the people are split. So the man will oppress the woman he feels is less than him.
“So I believe people are passive because they are repressed, but they are harassing others because they are oppressed.
And Roushdy would like to see a break in this cycle, passivity again being the enemy.
“The image of women that they are weak is because they are passive. If everyone took action, this will end. At least it will make these men not take the women they harass for granted because they are sure they won t speak out, she says.
Not that it will be easy. “This is a long-term issue. We have a crisis phenomenon, so we have to deal with it the way we deal with a crisis. I don’t see that the implementation of a new sexual harassment law will make a big difference unless women use it. This trial was under the old law and the sentence was three years.
The sexual harassment occurred June 26, in the intersection between Rifaa and Gabarty streets in Heliopolis at 5:30 pm. As Roushdy and a friend were walking, Gibrial was driving by and stretched out his arm and grabbed her while he kept driving thus dragging her along with him.
“I felt so weak and was about to faint, I turned blue at that moment, but then my friend caught me and this car blocked his way so we ran after him.
Roushdy jumped onto the boot of his car to stop him.
“My friend Hind ran to the nearby district police station to get help and I insisted that he was not going to leave, but everybody was against us at that point. The low ranking policeman who was there refused to come and told her to call the police by phone, Roushdy says.
“I was getting really hysterical at that point because what happened was something very mean and hurtful to me, and the passersby were very negative and passive. [But] a man appeared who was sympathetic to us and he helped us drag him to the police station, she continues.
Asked why she reacted with such strength and why she was so adamant to not let the matter pass, Roushdy answers, “I was harassed once when I was a teenager.I was very young but I had this idea that if anyone did that to me I was going to get him, but actually I was so shocked I didn’t even shout.
Since then I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let anyone go, ever again.
She adds, “A lot of my friends have told me stories about how they have gotten harassed at work, in the streets, on [public] transportation, they didn’t take action and it [affected them] badly. They were broken.
“So while I was in this fight what made me more insistent was that I remembered each of my friends with her stories, I remembered my own story so I was like ‘you are not going to get away with this at all, I nailed you.’
At the police station the policeman refused to file the complaint and insisted on her father being present. The policeman then refused to provide a vehicle to transport Gibrial to the main police station, so they ended up taking him in her father’s car to the police station.
Roushdy says that the officers at the main Heliopolis police station and the Public Prosecutor’s office were very understanding and treated her with the utmost respect. The process was also speedy, and it was only a matter of hours before investigations had been completed and Gibrial was detained.
However, two days before the trial some people claiming to be police officers started showing up at her doorstep. They did not show her any identification.
“In the end we filed a complaint against that initial policeman at the Ministry of Interior and there should be an internal investigation, she says.
Did the impoverished state of her aggressor’s family prey on her mind at all?
“No, she replies, “and there is a reason. I was awarded civil damages of LE 5,001, which is the minimum amount.
I gave up all my civil rights in this case; I’m not going to ask for any money.
I have also decided not to pursue further civil claims because the point is not to give the family a hard time at all. I sympathize with anyone who is oppressed and the disenfranchised. He has six brothers so his family is not deserted. She adds, “In the case that his mother is heartbroken, well I would be broken if I didn’t take it to this extent. In the end being sympathetic shouldn’t make you a passive person, so we have to understand it in the right way. I’m not going to ask for money because I don’t want to give them a hard time but at the same time he deserves it [the jail term]. Anyone who does this deserves to be locked up.
