Cairo: Prosecutors in an Egyptian province on Sunday ordered a local man be remanded for four days pending further questioning on charges of abducting and sexually assaulting a 20-month-old child, legal sources said.
The 35-year-old labourer allegedly grabbed the toddler from outside her house in the Nile village of Damlash, north of Cairo, and carried her to a deserted place where he purportedly assaulted her, the sources added.
The victim suffered a severe bleeding as a result and was taken to a local hospital for emergency surgery.
As the word went round about the alleged assault, angry villagers set the suspect’s house on fire, semi-official newspaper Al Ahram reported.
Police had evacuated the house’s residents before the torching, the paper added.
The suspect was arrested while hiding in the village’s cemetery and confessed to the assault, Al Ahram reported. He was identified only as Ebrahim.
The incident sparked outrage in the Egyptian media, which branded it the “diaper rape.”
Hosts of several talk shows Saturday night condemned the alleged assailant as a “human predator and monster”.
“I have been working in the media for years and covered many rape crimes, but this the first time I hear about raping a child at such an age,” celebrated television anchor Moaetz Al Demerdash commented on private station Al Mehwar.
“After this incident, we must offer an apology to Satan,” said Jaber Al Qaramuti, another host, on private television Al Nahar.
He urged tougher penalties against sex offenders. “Unless we enact deterrent legislation, girls as little as one week can be raped,” Al Qaramuti added, as he fought back his tears.
“He who always blames rape victims for inciting assailants with their clothes has to reconsider his stance. We have reached the situation where children wearing diapers are raped.”
A United Nations report released in 2013 found that 99.3 per cent of women in Egypt have experienced some form of sexual harassment.
Conservative members of society usually blame women for the offence.
Child rights activists also denounced the alleged assault on the toddler.
“The perpetrator should undergo an examination to determine his sanity,” the National Centre for Childhood and Motherhood in Dakhalia said in a statement.
The governmental group called for imposing the “maximum penalty” on the man if he is found mentally sound.
If convicted, the suspect can face death.
In recent months, Egyptian courts have issued tough jail sentences in cases of sex assaults. The verdicts were delivered following a short number of hearings. Previously, such cases took long years before a ruling was delivered.
