Manama: Police in Kuwait have launched a probe in a debauchery case after a young man complained that he was being harassed by a young woman.
The police were initially amazed by the case alleged by the young man “as they are not used to receiving harassment complaints by men against women”, local Arabic daily Al Rai reported.
However, they launched the investigation after the complainant said that he had been receiving pornographic pictures from a young woman who said that they featured her and one of her friends. In his complaint, the young man said that he wanted an end to the woman’s harassment, prompting the police to request an investigation into the unusual case by the competent authorities.
In their comments, online readers said that they were shocked about aggressive harassment by a young woman and that a young man complained formally about it.
“We wonder what is happening to the values of our country,” one reader commented. Another wrote that the young man “could have saved himself the trouble by avoiding the pictures. “He should not have opened the picture files,” the reader wrote.
Kuwait’s constitution and laws do not discriminate between genders in cases of harassment. Even though they are often seen as a social taboo, sexual harassment complaints by men against women are becoming common in several countries.
According to a report attributed to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 16.4 per cent of all 2,094 sexual harassment claims were filed by men in fiscal 2009, up from 15.4 per cent, (1,869 claims), in fiscal 2006. Analysts said that the “spike in male sexual harassment claims coincides with a recession that has hit men harder than women.”
