11 March 2015

Teacher sparks backlash after telling students they ‘deserve rape’

A schoolteacher in the Central Anatolian province of Tokat has enraged parents after reportedly telling her teenage students that they deserve to be raped and treated cruelly because they do not wear the Islamic headscarf.

The teacher, identified as L.Y.I., was substituting for an optional Quran class at Halil Rifat Pasa Secondary School on Monday. According to the private Dogan news agency, the teacher was angered by students' failure to remain silent despite her pleas and said: “You don't cover your heads either. You deserve rape, you deserve cruelty.”

There were 17 seventh-grade students, both girls and boys, in the class, according to Dogan. L.Y.I., a teacher of religious culture and morality, also chided students who attended a march in memory of a young woman named Özgecan Aslan who was brutally killed in February after she allegedly resisted rape. [Today's Zaman] Read more