"Transfer of Women and Girls into “Preventive” Custody"

Libya’s Social Rehabilitation Facilities

Initially it was for women who had no family. it’s for people with families who want them to stay there, for families who want to get rid of their daughters for any reason.
— Libyan attorney , Tripoli, May 4, 2005

She can’t leave when she wants. We don’t let them go out in the street where there is no protection for them. It is a type of protection for them. Everything is provided for them.
— Mohammed Youssef al-Mahatrash, Head of Prosecutions, Tripoli, May 2, 2005

"Women and girls are transferred into social rehabilitation facilities by the office of the public prosecutor, which is normally notified of cases by the police. Some women and girls report to the police voluntarily out of fear that their families would attack them if they found out that they had been sexually assaulted. Others are sent to the police by families no longer willing to provide them with a home.

Libya’s social rehabilitation system for women and girls operates as an exception to article 4 of the penal code, which states that “deprivation of freedom should not take place outside the prison realm.”39 The public prosecution may place “women who are in preventive custody and others who are sentenced to punishments that deprive them of their freedom (those whose freedom is monitored) in social rehabilitation facilities identified by the secretary of social affairs with agreement of the General People’s Committee for Public Security.”40 There is no mechanism for women and girls to appeal their transfer into these facilities."

http://hrw.org/reports/2006/libya0206/4.htm#_Toc127869351


There is also a rant about this @
http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2006/03/05/south-dakota-and-libya-blood-brothers-in-misogyny/#comment-13831

which were "charities" run by the good nuns of Ireland for girls who were impregnated or who just looked like someone might want to impregnate them. Their children were taken away six months to two years after they'd given birth and sent off to be adopted (at a profit, usually to the US) after the mothers had been allowed to bond with them. The women were forced to work in prison conditions and had no recourse, no appeal, no right to leave. It was insanely cruel.

Here in the enlightened US, the way to get rid of a woman who was troublesome was to check her into a state mental hospital against her will. I remember the women in the one I worked in back in the 60s, women whose crime had been to question just why they were shunted into domestic slavery to a man they had little affection for. Fully a third of the "patients" where I worked fell into this category, rejecting their "natural role" and threatening to become nuisances that would shame the family. That was enough to get a woman labeled mentally ill and shipped off to the nuthouse.

Now we're humane and simply shunt women who don't fit in and commit the sin of having extramarital sex she enjoys off to the sidelines, reducing her career possibilites, keeping her in poverty, teaching her she doesn't matter and to shut up and hope nobody notices or she's going to lose another job, another place to live, contact with her children.

Patriarchal societies always have ways of dealing with women who upset the Father Knows Best applecart, and they're always pretty ugly.

Just shows how far down the road we've come.

Whew. Close call.