Dad finally jailed for raping daughter over ten years--with help of DNA testing (Afghanistan)

Without the DNA evidence, the daughter of UNNAMED DAD could have been prosecuted for his abuse.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33023247

DNA helps jail Afghan father for rape

By Kawoon Khamoosh BBC Persian 29 June 2015

The case of a woman taking her abusive father to court attracted widespread publicity

An Afghan court has passed a landmark judgement, using DNA evidence to convict a man for the multiple rape of his daughter.

The victim who cannot be named to protect her safety, was abused for more than 10 years, bearing two children.

Violence against women is endemic in Afghanistan and victims of sexual abuse are often themselves jailed for "moral crimes".

I met the victim, who is in her early twenties, for the first time last year after the trial against her father was suspended with the judge asking for DNA evidence.

She was pregnant as a result of the abuse and held her four-year-old on her lap. "This is my daughter and my father's daughter," she said. "She is the result of my father raping me. We are both mother and daughter and sisters at the same time."

As sunlight streamed through the drawn curtains of the impoverished home she shares with her mother, she told me the story she had presented in court for the first time last summer.

According to the victim, the abuse began when her father returned from Iran after eight years abroad.

She was 12 years old. "I was expecting that my father will love me the way my uncles love their children because I was thirsty for a dad's love during all the years I was deprived of him," she says. "But when I found myself in my father's arms it was too much."

She recalls how he touched her intimately, making her feel uncomfortable. "I went to my grandmother and complained but she blamed me. I was told that every father caresses his children."

Then one night her father raped her: "I was scared badly, I was shocked and lay in the corner of the room and didn't know what to do."

Afghanistan's patriarchal society is not used to women taking such cases to court

When she became pregnant, the father moved the family to another province. The baby was born but he took it away - she never saw it again.

The abuse lasted more than 10 years, during which the daughter went through multiple pregnancies and abortions.

She says that her father used a variety of drugs which she later learned were attempts at contraception.

Eventually another child was born. "When I became pregnant again, I kept the baby and didn't abort my child," she says: "I kept it to have proof for my claims against my father - my child was my only evidence."

With the support of her mother, she finally managed to end the abuse.

The final attack, she told me, happened in July last year, one day before Eid. "Me and my mother had told the whole story to the mullah, neighbourhood elders and the district police and they told us to inform them if I was attacked again."

That night the father sent his wife out of the home before assaulting his daughter again.

He was arrested as the mother returned with police and elders as witnesses.

The woman now faces the dilemma of what to tell her children about their father in the future

"What will I tell them when they are older?" she asks

Even though he was put on trial, the daughter's ordeal was far from over.

As the father denied all charges, claiming his daughter had extramarital relationships with other men, the victim herself was challenged in court.

"The judge questioned me, asking why I didn't kill the baby that was in my belly?" she told me. "I answered that if I killed the child I could be accused of aborting it because the father was another person. I kept my child to prove I have a case against my father."

The court then suspended the trial, asking for DNA samples of the accused, the victim and her daughter.

What followed was a campaign to seek justice.

The victim had taken the unusual step of appearing on Afghan television to tell her story. Women's rights activists began organising support.

There are virtually no facilities for genetic forensic testing in Afghanistan, making foreign assistance imperative.

The woman's supporters lobbied embassies and non-governmental organisations for help.

But it still took almost a year before a DNA test could be arranged, by which time the victim had given birth to another child.

Finally a committee of officials from the attorney general's office and the interior ministry took on the task. "They took blood and saliva samples from the father, the woman and her children and transferred them to the US via Bagram airbase," says Ruhulla, the victim's lawyer. "If we didn't have this test result, my client would have been punished based on the codes and laws of this country," she says.

The samples were processed by the US firm "Ideal Innovations", specialists in forensic testing who are also active in Afghanistan, providing fingerprint and biometric identification technology. They did the test for free.

When the results were finally returned they showed that the accused had indeed fathered his daughter's children.

The judge sentenced him to death.

The case is not yet closed, though.

The father is appealing against the sentence, protesting his innocence.

DNA evidence is very rare in Afghan court cases, making this trial highly unusual.

The victim, meanwhile, told me that even if her abuser is executed, she remains fearful.

"I'm so worried about the future of my children," she says "What will I tell them when they are older and ask me about their father?"

Dad gets 18 years in prison for stabbing death of 2-year-old daughter (Sydney, Australia)

Dad is identified as FARDEN FAZAH.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/farden-fazah-jailed-for-stabbing-murder/5318134

Sydney father receives 18-year jail sentence for stabbing murder of his two-year-old daughter

By court reporter Jamelle Wells

Updated Thu 13 Mar 2014, 4:15pm AEDT

A Sydney man who stabbed his two-year-old daughter to death has been jailed for at least 18 years.

After an argument on New Year's Day in 2011, Farden Fazah stabbed his wife Rasa 12 times in the stairwell of their unit in Canley Vale, in Sydney's west.

She sustained injuires to her face, hands and body.

Fazah, 25, then went into their unit and stabbed their daughter to death.

He pleaded guilty to his daughter's murder and to one count of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for the attack on his wife.

In his judgment Justice Peter Hidden said Fazah's actions were "spontaneous" on the day but he had a history of controlling behaviour towards his wife.

He stopped her having her own money and from going shopping on her own.

Justice Hidden said Rasa's mother, who lives in Afghanistan, told her daughter to stay with Fazah and "be an obedient wife".

The judge said Fazah grew up in Kabul and suffered a post-traumatic stress disorder after he was held as a prisoner by the Taliban.

However the offender had entered an early guilty plea and had reasonable prospects of rehabilitation.

Fazah will be eligible for parole in 2030.

Dad jailed for 6 months for killing 19-month-old daugher; agency "failure" blamed (Belfast, Northern Ireland)

A violent father murders an infant girl, and everybody and everything is blamed. Except Daddy, who only got six months for the crime. It was an agency "failure." It was Daddy's PTSD. It was this, it was that.

Read carefully, and you'll see that dad LIAM CULVERHOUSE was violent before he was in the Army. But notice that nothing more is elaborated about that.

None of this bull crap would fly with a mother. Oh, the poor little mommy suffered from trauma and that's why she slaughtered the baby? Nobody would care, and you can just about bet she'd be doing years of prison time.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/child-death-review-finds-failures-30044399.html

Child death review finds 'failures'

Liam Culverhouse was last month jailed for six years after admitting killing his 19-month-old daughter

26 February 2014

A serious case review has found failings by health professionals who missed opportunities to save a baby girl killed by her ex-soldier father who was wounded in Afghanistan.

The report said there had been a failure by agencies to "discover or take into account the troubled background" of Liam Culverhouse in the run-up to the death of his daughter Khloe Abrams.

There were also difficulties in information-sharing and communication, and an inability by medical services to identify and respond to Khloe's significant injuries.

Lance Corporal Culverhouse was last month jailed for six years after admitting killing his 19-month-old daughter.

He lost his right eye in a rogue attack at an Afghan National Police checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali, Helmand province, in November 2009.

Five of his comrades were killed in the attack.

Eighteen months after returning home, Culverhouse assaulted his then seven-week-old daughter Khloe at the family home in Northampton, leaving her fighting for her life in hospital for nearly 18 months.

Culverhouse, who was medically discharged from the Army, pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of the toddler.

Medical professionals found in 2010 that he had begun to have some Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD) symptoms and was feeling irritable.

A Serious Case Review (SCR) into Khloe's death by Northamptonshire Local Safeguarding Children Board found that there was a "failure to discover or take into account the troubled background of the father when providing universal services", as well as difficulties in inter-agency information-sharing and communication, and an "inability to identify and respond to the significant injuries suffered by the child".

The SCR found that nothing was ever discovered about the "maltreatment the child suffered during a short life" despite there being opportunities to do so.

In addition, had information about Culverhouse, who had a troubled and violent background that worsened following his injuries in Afghanistan, been properly shared it "should have led professionals to be very concerned about the safety of the child".

Khloe was admitted to hospital on May 8 2011 and found to have multiple injuries.