“What were you wearing?” “Had you been drinking alcohol?” “Was there a prior relationship between you?” “Are you sure it wasn’t consensual?” “Do you have witnesses?” “Why did you wait so long to file a complaint?” “Do you have proof?”

These questions, laden with suspicion and stigma, were the first things Nour faced from a police officer when she tried to turn to the law to report being sexually harassed.

“No one cared about what happened to me or about my psychological state. Something broke inside me that night while I was at the police station, trying to take the path toward justice, because I was met with looks filled with suspicion and a lack of belief,” Nour said in a choked voice in an interview with Daraj.

Nour, who was harassed on one of Beirut’s streets, tried to recount what had happened to her when she filed a complaint with the relevant security authorities. But every word she spoke seemed to rebound as an implicit accusation. The questions directed at her were not merely procedural, she said; “they felt like knives cutting into me, shaking my self-confidence and deepening my sense of betrayal.”
She added: “I left the police station weighed down by pain and fear. I felt not only that the law I had turned to failed to protect me, but that it put me on trial twice: once through its silence, and once through its cold, unjust language.”

This is not an isolated story. It reflects a broader struggle faced by girls and women in Lebanon: the failure of laws addressing sexual assault to protect survivors or deliver justice. Lebanese law does not recognize assault in all its forms, does not include the concept of “consent” in defining the crime, does not treat marital rape as a crime, and does not consider psychological abuse or coercion based on power as forms of assault. Women also live within a social culture that rushes to blame the survivor rather than safeguard her right to justice. As a result, many women leave interrogation rooms more wounded than when they entered, if they dare to report at all.

Breaking the Legal Silence

In an effort to “redefine the very concept of sexual assault in light of human rights standards and gender justice,” and as part of a broader attempt to “dismantle what remains of a legal silence hidden behind legal texts,” the organization ABAAD prepared a new national study as part of its annual campaign calling for harsher penalties for these crimes, for recognizing rape and sexual assault as crimes of sexual violence, and for delinking them from notions of “honor,” “morality,” and “shame.”

The study exposed “the fragility of legal protection for people in Lebanon and the urgent need for legal reform to ensure justice for all,” while stressing “the necessity of removing these crimes from the guardianship of tradition and placing them within a legal framework that protects citizens.”

According to the study, 81 percent of respondents believe that current penalties for sexual crimes are insufficient, while 51 percent consider reporting sexual violence to bring “shame” upon the family. Meanwhile, 86 percent supported setting prison sentences at between five and twenty years, and 95 percent agreed on the need to increase penalties for sexual assault against minors to up to twenty years.

The findings also show that 78 percent consider forcing a wife into sexual relations a crime, while an equal percentage believe that authorities do not do enough to protect girls and women from sexual violence. Additionally, 71 percent called for replacing the term “assault on honor” with the more accurate and dignity-respecting term “sexual assault.”

These results reflect a contradiction in the Lebanese reality: a widespread public awareness that current laws are inadequate and non-deterrent exists alongside outdated legislation and a culture of “shame,” fear, and survivor-blaming that discourages reporting. At the same time, the findings point to a growing public desire to take a tougher stance against sexual violence and an increasing recognition of women’s bodily and sexual rights.

The Law Does Not Protect Survivors

Despite claims of legal progress in Lebanon in recent years, the reality remains far from offering genuine protection for women and girls against sexual violence. Legal texts, particularly Articles 503 to 521 of the Penal Code, read as though they belong to another era. They define these crimes through a patriarchal lens that does not recognize consent as a fundamental standard, and they differentiate justice based on the relationship between perpetrator and survivor rather than on the act itself.

The flaw is not limited to terminology. It directly affects the fate of survivors, who find themselves trapped in a system that compounds injustice against them. The absence of a clear definition of consent as the basis for criminalization, the denial of all forms of sexual assault, including marital rape, leaves survivors without any real path to justice or accountability. Even when the law does recognize the crime, survivors face procedural obstacles due to the lack of clear pathways for psychological and social support, weak mechanisms for safe reporting, a shortage of shelters, and the absence of an integrated protection system linking the police, judiciary, and health sector.

Gaps in Lebanese Law

Public discourse around sexual violence has evolved in recent years, yet the laws meant to protect women and girls remain stuck in an outdated framework. A review of Articles 503 to 522 is enough to reveal the gap between lived reality and legal language. The law lacks a clear and comprehensive definition of sexual violence or sexual assault, and categorizes certain acts under terms such as “assault on honor” or “indecent acts,” terminology that itself violates survivors’ dignity.

Rape is narrowly defined as an act committed “by force,” reducing the crime to physical violence alone and ignoring other forms of coercion such as psychological pressure, threats, abuse of authority or professional position, and fear that strips the survivor of the ability to refuse.

Although Article 522 was repealed in 2017, its effects persist through Articles 505 and 518, which allow for reduced accountability under the pretext of a “promise of marriage” or “child marriage,” leaving certain forms of assault less subject to prosecution.

The most serious gap, however, is the failure to recognize marital rape. Articles 503 and 504 define rape only when the victim is “not the wife.” In doing so, marriage is treated as a contract that nullifies consent and justifies sexual relations even without agreement.
Through these gaps, the legal process itself becomes an extension of the violence it is supposed to address.

Between Law and Society: A Double Battle

Every time the issue of women’s and girls’ rights is raised in Lebanon, a persistent gap emerges between legal texts and lived reality. Even if laws are amended, prevailing mindsets often remain unchanged, frozen within a patriarchal legacy shielded by claims of “customs and traditions” or “family honor.”

The law remains ineffective if the institutions enforcing it operate with yesterday’s mentality. Judges, officers, investigators, and social workers are all products of a cultural system that for years legitimized male control over women’s bodies and lives.

This inherited mindset continues to frame violence as a “family matter” and to treat complaints as a “scandal,” shutting doors in survivors’ faces and deepening their reluctance to seek justice.
Real protection for survivors is not limited to legal rulings. It requires creating an environment that does not turn pain into a burden, does not punish women for surviving, and does not force them into a cruel choice between silence and “shame.”

When Mindsets Outpace Legal Texts

Cultural reform may sound like a luxury, but it is in fact a necessity. The change required cannot be achieved through legislation alone. It demands time and the building of awareness that begins in school curricula, extends through media that must stop reproducing hate-driven narratives, and includes training for security and judicial professionals based on human rights standards. It also requires the economic empowerment of women, so they are less vulnerable to coercion and blackmail.

The issue is not merely about amending articles or redefining terms. It is about stigma, blame, society’s perception of women’s bodily autonomy and consent, and the concept of “honor” used as a weapon against them. Without this shift, the law will remain a façade, and survivors will continue to face the hardest battle alone.

A Law That Does Not Hear Survivors

The need for radical reform today is more urgent than ever. Women and girls in Lebanon need a law that places consent at the core of any definition of violation, recognizes all forms of violence without exceptions or justifications, and guarantees their right to justice, protection, and psychological and social support.

Change will not happen overnight, and the road ahead remains long and filled with intrusive questions and skeptical looks aimed at survivors before any accountability is demanded of perpetrators. What is clear, however, is that flaws in legal texts are not a technical detail. They are the gap through which injustice and violence seep into everyday life.