Four medical exams on a minor to determine rape

A child in the eastern province of Erzurum appealed to the police because she was sexually abused. She was sent for a genital medical examination. A fracture and slit were detected on her hymen. 

For whatever reason, the office of the prosecutor sent the child for a medical examination again. This time there was no slit detected. When the court returned the indictment due to the contradiction between the two reports, the office of the prosecutor sent the child for a third medical exam. The third report was disregarded for unknown reasons and it was decided that the child would be examined a fourth time. 

In the story by Hümeyra Pardeli from Do?an News Agency, the father of the child was reported as saying: "My daughter is depressed. She does not eat or drink; she is under psychological treatment. I cannot take my child to another medical examination. I have taken her three times; she was examined by grown men. Each time, she came back to me in tears."    

One of the founders of the Association to Fight against Sexual Violence, lawyer Yasemin Öz, said, "The Turkish Penal Code evaluates a full penetration and a non-penetration as two different acts. The crime system is penetration-based. This is a result of the patriarchal viewpoint. There is no coverage for unconsented touches and sexual acts? Nobody can touch anybody else's body without consent."

Lawyer Habibe Y?lmaz Kayar also said that a medical examination could be demanded to find evidence of the crime, but the fate of the case should not be narrowed to the result of the examination. "The file should be regarded as a whole. Inside the file there are the statements of the victim, there are witnesses, there are other legal evidences. The genital examination is only part of the...