Experts warns of the emergence of incest in Egypt's slums

Despite being a shocking crime, incest became a social phenomenon in the Egyptian community. It has not been limited to the poor people, while extended to the different categories of the society. The emergence of such phenomenon will lead to a serious disaster so it was necessary to discuss the reasons behind this problem and the ways to deal with such cases.

Recently, a female teenager  (17 years) gave birth to a child after sexual relation with the husband of her sister. The security forces received a complaint from the hospital over the case. They transferred to the hospital and conducted investigation with the girl who acknowledged of the relation. The security authorities arrested the defendant who also acknowledged of his crime. The authorities referred him to the trial.

Professor of Sociology Shadia Qenawy said that the phenomenon appears strongly in the slums and poor districts where the whole family, composed of a large number persons, lives in a small room. She underlined the danger of the existence of males and females in small areas for long periods of time in the light of shortage of their basic needs. She stressed that such conditions could lead to the occurrence of such a crime.

She pointed out that there are a large number of researches and conferences that discussed the reasons behind the emergence of such phenomenon, saying that it has social, economic and cultural dimensions. She raised the necessity of meeting the basic needs of the people to contain such problems and to turn them into individual cases.

She stressed the need for turning to the religion, underlining the importance of the role performed by the religious institutions to contain the phenomenon.

In the same context, Professor of Criminal Law Fadia Abu Shahba said that there is no clear statistic over this crime, saying that the families turn not to complain to avoid scandals. She blamed drug addiction and absence of religious values for the emergence of such a phenomenon.

The legal expert stressed the need for tightening the legal sentence against those people who commit such a crime to death saying that it is the only way to contain the phenomenon during the coming period.