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Alia Saeed*
05 July 2026
One night, while she was in bed, Rima* felt a hand groping her and touching her private parts. For the five-year-old, it was a nightmare.While her family was asleep and her mother was in the next room, her uncle crept into her bed to molest her. He had come to stay with Rima’s family because her father was away. Her aunt was also staying with them at the time.
The child had no understanding of what being molested meant, but when her uncle’s hand reached towards her, she was overcome by fear and humiliation.
Rima Salem (not her real name) suffered physical abuse for years following this incident. Each time, her uncle would make sure everyone was asleep; then, under cover of darkness, he would slip into the little girl’s bed to carry out the abuse. It happened several times a week, and every morning he pretended that nothing had happened. Rima came to dread the night.
Rima says that as time went by, her uncle did more than just molest her while she was asleep and began taking photographs of her private parts. Five years after the abuse began,when Rima was ten, he left the family home.
Rima was too scared to tell her parents “I was afraid of everyone,” she says, her voice trembling. As for her aunt, she says: “Sometimes I had the feeling she knew.” Rima was not the only one. She says her uncle also molested her twin sister and her brother, who is slightly older than her.
Rima is now 19, but her voice still falters when she recounts the details of what happened. She says what she went through left her feeling ashamed until quite recently: “I was very hard on myself because of it.”
Rima’s case is not an isolated one. A study in Oman of 34 children who had been sexually abused, revelaed that nearly half of them were rape victims, showed that the assaults mostly took place in the residence and around.
According to this 2020 study which was conducted by a team of researchers from Al-Masarra Psychiatric Hospital, the only government psychiatric hospital in the Sultanate of Oman – the abuser is usually someone known to the child. In around a third of cases, the abuser was a first-degree relative. The researchers noted that most children stayed silent about the abuse they had suffered for long periods of time.
Cases of sexual abuse of children in Oman have risen significantly in recent years. Data from Oman’s public prosecutor’s office shows a doubling in the number of sexual assaults on children between 2021 and 2025.
The number of reported sexual offences against children rose from 245 to 1379 in this time period according to the Public Prosecution statistics. And 106 cases of child rape were recorded in 2025, compared to 11 in 2021. In just one year, from 2024 to 2025, the number of sexual offences against children rose by 980.
Source: Statistics of the Omani Public Prosecution.
Our investigation looked into a number of sexual abuse cases heard by the Supreme Court in Oman. The court ruled on these cases between 2019 and 2022, rejecting appeals lodged by the defendants’ lawyers.
The Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal had found the defendants in these cases guilty of either sexual harassment or indecent assault against children. But the sentences handed down in these cases were shorter than those stipulated by Oman’s Child Law.
In the thirteen cases we looked into, prison sentences ranged from a one-year suspended sentence to three years. The ages of the 15 victims, half of whom were girls, ranged from eight to 16 (in cases where the age of the victim was specified). The judgment made no reference to Article 28 of Oman’s Law on Juvenile Accountability, indicating that the defendants were adults.
In one case, the Supreme Court openly stated that the judgment had been “flawed by an error in the application of the law.
“The appealed judgment is flawed by an error in the application of the law, as it failed to impose the fine in addition to the statutorily prescribed term of imprisonment,” the court pointed out in its ruling.
Sentences for sexual offences under the Oman Child Act are shorter than those prescribed by the General Penal Code in similar cases. Omani law defines a child as anyone under the age of eighteen.
The section of Oman’s Penal Code, amended in 2018, that deals with what is referred to as “offenses against sexual integrity” prescribes life imprisonment for those found guilty of rape if the victim is under the age of fifteen. But under Article 72 of the Omani Child Law, sentences are lower ranging from five to ten years for crimes of rape, sexual harassment and molestation, along with a fine of between five thousand and ten thousand Omani rials (US$13,000 to 26,000).
Lawyer Anas Ali explains that specialised law, namely the Child Act, takes precedence over the general law, because when legislators create a specific rule, they intend to treat that particular situation differently from the general law.
Ali notes that general legal provisions (rules) apply broadly to all cases, but if there is specific provision that focuses on a particular situation, that takes precedence. The general provision is then set aside, as it is not applicable in that specific case.
Anas Ali says that sexual offences against children, as set out in the Children’s Act, are public offences. This means that even if the victim decides not to pursue the case, this has no legal effect and does not mean the public prosecution will be dropped, either at the investigation or trial stage.
However, he says that Omani law does not prevent mitigating factors from being taken into account when sentencing in cases of child sexual abuse. Mitigating factors provided for in the Omani Penal Code include diminished capacity or weakened willpower at the time the crime was committed.
Ali also explains that there are other mitigating factors which, though not spelled out in the law, the trial judge may apply at his discretion, weighing the circumstances of the case during the hearing to reduce the sentence within the authority granted to him. These factors include the perpetrator being unaware that the victim was a minor because of their physical appearance; and, in cases of child sexual abuse, there being no indication that the victim objected to the sexual act. Under Omani law, however, consent is not considered a relevant factor in sexual offences against children.
An Omani study published in 2024 indicates that prison sentences given to offenders in sexual assault cases were, on average, shorter than terms stipulated by the Penal Code.
This study looked into 176 sexual assault cases heard by Omani courts in 2017 – three years after the Child Act became law. In the 134 cases where defendants were convicted, the average sentence was 30 months. The study documented 269 cases of sexual abuse recorded by the Public Prosecution Service over the course of a single year and found that a fifth (17%) of cases resulting in conviction had received reduced sentences.
In a rural area of one province in Oman, “Khamis Rashid” (not his real name) used to sexually harass local children who visited his shop to buy candy, according to “Samar Mohammed” ( not her real name), who spent her childhood there.
Samar explains that children used to go to his shop, which was inside his home and was open all hours. But later, they made sure to go there in groups to avoid being harassed. “As kids, we used to chat together and we knew full well he was a bad person,” she says.
“I remember we’d buy something, leave and just chuck the money back at him … He wouldn’t do anything to us as long as we were together.”
Samar thinks the local people were aware of what the shopkeeper was doing; he was also the neighbourhood muezzin. “They used to tell us not to go to his shop alone.” She thinks ignorance of the law was the reason they did not do anything about him.
Samar stopped buying the type of candy she used to get from the shop: “They made me feel sick.” She says that the same man molested her when she was playing in one of the water canals at just six years old. He came up to her, pretended to arrange her clothes so they would not get wet, and touched her private parts. Later she was also harassed in his shop.
Recent data from the Omani Public Prosecution Service indicates that in most sexual abuse cases recorded the perpetrator was not part of the household.
The researchers who conducted the 2024 study argue, however, that “it is possible that in a traditional society such as Oman, where extended family, tribal identity, and kinship are widely present, a clear distinction between intrafamilial and extra-familial sexual abuse is difficult to apply.” It is also possible that families may conceal their connection to the perpetrator when they report sexual abuse and when cases are documented.
There are various ways to report child abuse in Oman, including direct reporting to Family Development Departments, police stations, Child Protection Committees and the Public Prosecution service, as well as through the Ministry of Social Development’s dedicated Child Protection Hotline and online portals. Reporting can also be made through partner organisations like schools and hospitals, that become aware of, or are informed of any violation of children’s rights.
Official figures for child sexual assault vary. In 2025, the Omani Public Prosecution recorded 1,379 ‘sexual assaults’ of children, yet the number of ‘sexual abuse’cases dealt with by the Child Protection Committees at the Ministry of Social Development had reached no more than 176 by the middle of 2025. The ministry has published no further updates since.
Researchers who conducted a sociological study of obstacles hindering the protection of children’s rights in Oman, explained that the country is an example of a “collective” society, which sees the family, rather than the state, as the primary element safeguarding the well-being of the individual.
They also said that social and cultural constraints, including authoritarian parenting and an upbringing that relies on feelings of shame, could be putting children at risk of abuse.
According to this study, published in the Child Indicators Research journal, reporting cases of child abuse requires exceptional courage from the victim’s family, if they are to put the victim’s safety and rights above “family honour and shame.”
for cases of child abuse get reported, there must be extraordinary moral conviction and courage on the part of the victim’s family and supporters place his/ her well-being and rights above family honor and shame
It may be a “culture of silence” that prevents a child or their family from reporting the abuse they have suffered, particularly when it occurs within the family, according to the study.
The lawyer Anas Ali points out that there is a Child Protection Committee in every province in Oman, whose role is to gather complaints of child abuse, but that incidents are, in many cases, not reported. Reasons for this include concern over reputation or a failure to take seriously what the child is saying, as well as lack of awareness and an inability to recognise the psychological signs in the victim.
Furthermore, people may cover up for the perpetrator if they are a relative – something that occurs in the majority of Arab countries, in Ali’s view.
He argues that, despite the progress Oman has made in recent years in dealing with cases of child abuse in schools and in reporting such cases, there is still a degree of tolerance towards abuse of children in general because of social norms.
* Not her real name
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