Father who sexually assaulted teen daughters receives 25-year jail sentence

AMMAN — The Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced a 59-year-old Syrian man to 25 years in prison after convicting him of sexually assaulting his five teenage daughters for six years in Amman.

The court declared the defendant, a farmer married to three women, guilty of raping two of his daughters, who were over 18, and molesting three others aged between 15 and 17 years old from 2010 until April 2016, a senior judicial source said.

“The defendant did not utter any word upon hearing his verdict,” the senior judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The tribunal decided to increase his sentence from “15 to 25 years because the victims were his daughters; he caused two of them to lose their virginity and he sexually assaulted the five over 200 times,” the judicial source explained.

Court documents said the defendant, who was residing in Jordan since the mid-2000s, “began molesting his daughters in 2010 and, in 2015, he raped the oldest two who were over 18 by a few months”.

The matter was exposed when his daughters “became fed up from the constant sexual assaults and decided to inform the authorities,” the court added.

The Family Protection Department was notified, and the victims were examined before the father got arrested, according to the court verdict.

“The defendant was violent and would often beat up his daughters and three wives.  That is why no one came forward when the sexual assaults started,” a second judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The judicial source said that the court decided against "sending the defendant to the National Institute of Psychiatric Medicine for mental evaluation because the court concluded that he was sane and sit to stand trial”.

The defendant had pleaded “not guilty” in court and denied any wrongdoing during his trial, the second judicial source said.

However, the court said it relied on the victims’ testimonies and other medical evidence in addition to the defendant’s confessions in front of the authorities, the second judicial source explained.

The Criminal Court Prosecutor Sultan Shakhanbeh asked the court to inflict the maximum punishment.

The tribunal comprised of judges Fawzi Nahar, Loui Obeidat and Mohammad Hijazi.

Tuesday’s verdict will automatically be reviewed by the Court of Cassation within the next 30 days.