Dubai: A divorced mother has demanded that her ex-husband be stripped of guardianship of her two children after she realised that her son had molested his sister ostensibly after watching porn with his father.

The mother lodged a complaint against her former husband before the Dubai Sharia Court after she noticed that her six-year-old boy was making indecent gestures and his actions and behaviour with his three-year-old sister started taking on a sexual connotation.

Following several clinical sessions at a specialised centre to assess the boy’s behaviour and attitude with his sister, it was confirmed that the child had been watching porn with his father and was seeking to imitate actions shown in those videos.

The couple got married in 2009 before they fell out after a few years. In 2015, the mother had surveillance cameras installed at home with the aim of keeping an eye on her children so she could ensure their safety while she was away without having to bother their father, who was still her husband then.

The woman once had to travel abroad on a business trip and, while she was away, she logged in online to check on her children via the surveillance cameras but discovered that her husband had brought an unknown woman to their house and engaged in a sexual activity with her.

Prosecutors charged the father of having consensual sex with an unknown woman and referred him to the Dubai Misdemeanours Court.

The man pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and denied the accusation of having sex with the stranger while arguing that he had hired a masseuse in his wife’s absence because he had been suffering back and muscle pains.

The court modified the charge from one of having consensual sex to one of incitement to commit a sin (being under the same roof with a woman not related to him). The defendant was fined Dh5,000 and ordered to be deported.

The woman’s civil lawsuit was also referred to the Dubai Civil Court.

The Appeal Court upheld the primary judgement.

“The couple divorced amicably and the father had the children’s guardianship. Sometime later, the mother started noticing her son’s indecent and unacceptable behaviour with his young sister. The boy was taken to a special clinic for behavioural assessment before it became apparent that he had been watching pornographic movies and films with his father. Thereafter, my client decided to have the father stripped of the guardianship because he was an inept and unsuitable father due to his bad influence on the children,” the woman’s lawyer Awatif Mohammad, of Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants, argued before the Sharia Court.

The six-year-old boy has been suffering mentally, psychologically and behaviourally due to the father’s unacceptable and immoral attitude, the lawyer argued.

“The boy was influenced by the immoral content of what his father had been making him watch … and then he started molesting his sister and practising on her what he had been seeing. My client took her son to a specialised clinic to have him examined, assessed and treated as well. Due to the negative influence of the father on his children, the mother lodged her lawsuit and is seeking a court decision to strip the defendant of the guardianship and have it transferred to her brother or father,” the lawyer contended.

The trial continues.