High-stakes rape trial for woman seeking to record biological father on daughter’s birth certificate goes to final appeal

Amal Abdel Hameed has been trying to obtain a birth certificate for her two-year-old daughter that bears her biological father’s name for at least a year without success. The problem? Her daughter was conceived when Abdel Hameed says she was raped in 2018, and Egypt’s personal status law fails to mandate paternity registration for children born out of wedlock.

To fight for her daughter’s rights, Abdel Hameed launched court proceedings on two fronts in July, 2020: pursuing a criminal case against her child’s biological father for kidnapping, physically assault and raping and a paternity suit in family court that seeks to issue a birth certificate to her daughter with the father’s name listed.

“The criminal rape case will be the cornerstone for the paternity lawsuit,” Sayed Badrah, Abdel Hameed’s lawyer, tells Mada Masr. Without a rape conviction, the lawyer says, the current legislation will render it impossible to make the state formally recognize the paternity of the biological father, despite DNA results proving the fatherhood.

After the defendant was twice acquitted by lower juvenile courts — both Abdel Hameed and the accused were high school students at the time of the alleged rape — the Public Prosecution submitted a final appeal before the Court of Cassation on Tuesday.

Abdel Hameed’s court battle brings further scrutiny to the heavy toll women face in matters of  marriage, parentage and family affairs due to the Egypt’s controversial personal status law at a time when a new draft of the law that is pending discussion in the House of Representatives has elicited criticism for failing to alleviate negative impacts on women. Head of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law Intissar al-Saeed told Mada Masr the ruling at the Cassation Court has the potential to introduce a new principle that could further discourage women and their families from reporting rape due to fear of social stigma.

Abdel Hameed published a video testimony online in the summer of 2020 amid a wave of high-publicity social media campaigns around incidents of sexual violence, including the 2014 Fairmont Hotel gang rape case and the serial incidents of harassment and assault perpetrated by former American Univeristy in Cairo student Ahmed Bassem Zaki. The Public Prosecution then took on her defense.

According to Badrah, the defendant denied that he had any relationship with Abdel Hameed during July interrogations carried out by the Public Prosecution. However, the prosecution decided to pursue a criminal case based on threats the defendant had sent to Abdel Hameed on social media and the testimony of a witness who asserted the defendant told him about the rape.

The prosecution ordered a DNA test for Abdel Hameed’s daughter, which proved the defendant to be the biological father, Badrah says, adding that this led to an arrest warrant for the defendant.

Yet the DNA match is not enough for Abdel Hameed to secure a birth certificate for her daughter bearing the biological father’s name. According to current legislation, the only route to secure a birth certificate for the mothers of children born out of wedlock, with or without a corroborating paternity test, is to record the father under a pseudonym. Abdel Hameed, however, is determined to register her daughter’s biological father, Badrah says.

According to Badrah, the current law only grants positive paternity rulings in cases when a child is ruled to have been conceived within marriage, whether a formally documented or customary marriage.

“There are thousands of cases like Amal’s,” the lawyer says. “Al-Azhar should discuss this issue and give us a solution. DNA should be sufficient proof of parentage.”

The current personal status bill before Parliament, which was drafted by the Cabinet, “duplicates” a version previously submitted by Al-Azhar, Mohamed Abu Hamed, a former MP, told Mada Masr at the end of February. According to Abu Hamed, the bill is “predominantly strict and reactionary.”

After his arrest, the defendant was referred to criminal trial at a juvenile court but was acquitted in November 2020, with the court ruling that the relationship between Abdel Hameed and the defendant had been consensual and that there was insufficient evidence to rule on the rape charge, according to Badrah.

In December 2020, the Mansoura Public Prosecution appealed the decision, only for a second acquittal to be issued in February. The Public Prosecution’s Wednesday decision to appeal the last verdict takes the case to the Court of Cassation, whose ruling will be final. A court date is yet to be set.

Abdel Hameed’s paternity suit will be heard by a family court on April 8.