Shocking footage obtained by MailOnline reveals Saudi police beating women who are detained inside secretive facilities where families send ‘disobedient’ women and girls for punishment.
The women in the video were reportedly participating in a peaceful sit-in protest to highlight the poor living conditions at the ‘care home’ in Khamis Mushair, located in Asir Province.
Security and police officers at the ‘Social Education Home for Girls’ are captured on camera rushing in and physically assaulting the women, some while they are lying defenseless on the ground.
Women were seen being dragged by their hair, beaten with belts and sticks, and subjected to other forms of physical abuse.
The video, which caused outrage among rights activists in Saudi Arabia when it first circulated in 2022, re-emerged as former detainees bravely spoke out about their experiences held in ‘Dar al-Reaya’ facilities across the country.
Dr Maryam Aldossari, a Saudi academic at Royal Holloway, University of London, told MailOnline that despite recent reforms, many women remain held in these de facto prisons, unable to leave until a male guardian permits them.
She cited examples of women enduring horrifying conditions inside the facilities, some reportedly even moved to take their own lives due to alleged abuse.
‘It still exists,’ she warned. ‘We still know people who are there and God knows when they will leave.
‘They completely cut them [off]. There are cameras everywhere. If you misbehave you must go to these small individual rooms, you are separated.
‘Anything can be considered as a violation of women’s rights.’
Dr Aldossari, who left Saudi Arabia in 2008 to study and work in the UK, today works with Al Qst (ALQST), a human rights organisation that documents and promotes human rights in Saudi Arabia.
‘What we do hear – it’s such a dark time in Saudi Arabia. This is becoming a police state,’ she said. ‘People are scared.’
After the harrowing video first emerged, the local authority said it was ordering an investigation into the incident.
It did not condemn the security officers for the ‘blatant and brutal assault on the women’, Al Qst noted, assessing that any investigation would ‘lack all credibility’.
They described violence at the hands of the authorities as a ‘hallmark’ of the Saudi prison system.
‘In this respect, care homes for young women and girls (even if not officially for female criminals) and juvenile detention centres are no different from prisons, where violence mostly takes the form of ill-treatment, physical assaults and sexual harassment.’
A spokesperson for the Saudi government recently denied that the care homes were detention centres, claiming ‘women are free to leave at any time’ and can leave without permission from a guardian or family member.
They also said that ‘any allegation of abuse is taken seriously and subject to thorough investigation’.
Dr Aldossari dismissed the claims. ‘The regime lie and lie and lie and lie,’ she said.
She maintained that women as young as 13 could be sent to a facility for ‘disobedience’ and held until a male guardian allows them to leave.
Despite recent reforms nominally strengthening women’s rights, she said, there is no ‘trial’ to be sent to a facility that is not officially a prison, there is no process of appeal, and there is no consistent interpretation of the law.
‘A woman might be legally allowed to apply for her own passport because of the reforms,’ she explained, referring to the Saudi Personal Status Law (PSL), codified in 2022 and supplemented this year.
‘But her male guardian can still prevent her from travelling by filing a case of disobedience – and they didn’t even bother to define what disobedience means,’ she said.
‘So anyone and every male says “my wife or my daughter” is being disobedient and then all those rights will go.’
‘It [has become] like a tool of the Saudi regime to control women,’ she added. ‘The reason could be anything. You could, for example, run away from your home because you are facing abuse, then you will be arrested by police.
‘It could be the accusation of behaviour that doesn’t align with norms. For example, being seen with a man who’s not your husband. It could be because your family thought you’re out of control or even being a feminist.’
The care homes have existed since the 1960s, initially presented as a rehabilitative ‘shelter’ for women accused or convicted of certain crimes. They are said to hold women between the ages of 7 and 30.
A Saudi government spokesperson told The Guardian: ‘Women are free to leave at any time, whether to attend school, work, or other personal activities, and may exit permanently whenever they choose with no need of approval from a guardian or family member.’
But campaigners contest the claims, citing women who have experienced the facilities first-hand.
If a male guardian is not willing or available to release them, the authorities will move them to a similar ‘guest’ facility – from which they will also require the consent of a male guardian or relative to leave.
Dr Aldossari explained that under the ‘ridiculous’ system in Saudi Arabia, this role is ‘inherited’. If a woman’s husband or father is unavailable, her son could end up responsible for his mother.
In some horrifying cases, women have allegedly been sent to facilities after defying the men sexually abusing them at home.
‘She ends up in the situation that the abuser has to release her,’ she said.
Women have shared harrowing testimonies of being sent to the facilities as punishment for not ‘obeying’ sexual abuse at home, and then flogged or locked away in isolation until they ‘reconcile’ with their abusers.
Sarah Al-Yahia, campaigning to abolish the homes, told the Guardian that her father had threatened to send her to one of the homes as a child ‘if I didn’t obey his sexual abuse’.
‘If you are sexually abused or get pregnant by your brother or father you are the one sent to Dar al-Re’aya to protect the family’s reputation,’ she explained.
Women may have to make the impossible choice between enduring abuse at home and the gruelling conditions inside the camps, she explained.
Some have reportedly been killed by abusive relatives soon after release.
One woman told the Guardian that she was taken to Dar al-Re’aya after complaining about her father and brothers.
She was then allegedly abused at the institution and accused of bringing shame upon her family for her social media posts about women’s rights.
She was held until her father agreed she could be released, despite his being her alleged abuser, the outlet reports.
While testimonies from the facilities remain underreported, some women have bravely spoken out over the years.
In a 2021 ALQST report, women described being made to stand for six hours at a time by way of punishment for disobedience.
One former inmate told MBC in 2018 that she and others were made to eat their own vomit after throwing up bad food.
‘They let men in to hit us. Sometimes the girls and kids face sexual harassment, but if they talk, no one listens.’
In other cases, local media has documented reports of suicide at the centres, blamed on the conditions inside.
In 2015, a woman was found to have hanged herself from the ceiling of her room at one of the shelters, writing in a note: ‘I decided to die to escape hell.’
An inmate at the Makkah facility had said earlier: ‘Dying is more merciful than living in the shelter.’
