Professor who offered sex in exchange for good grades sentenced to two years in prison for rape and sexual harassment

An economics professor at the University of Settat, south of Casablanca, has been sentenced to two years in prison in the “sex for good grades” scandal involving allegations of sexual harassment of female students that affects several universities in Morocco.

Professor who offered sex in exchange for good grades sentenced to two years in prison for rape and sexual harassment

This sentence, handed down yesterday afternoon by the Court of Appeal of Settat, is the first for a university professor since a few months ago, when the complaints of female students at the universities of Settat, Oujda (in the northeast of the country) and Tangier (northwest) began to be known.

The Settat case was the first to come to light and five professors are accused, four of them from the Department of Law and the fifth from the Department of Economics.

The first four, accused of sexual harassment, abuse of authority and psychological violence, among other charges, are being tried by a local court of first instance.

The fifth, a professor in the Economics Department with the initials M.M., was convicted yesterday by the Court of Appeal, according to the Moroccan Justice portal, which reports today that the conviction came after the victim withdrew her complaint and the Prosecutor’s Office decided to continue with the process.

According to the sentence, he has been convicted of the crimes of rape with violence and sexual harassment.

WhatsApp insinuations

The case broke out last September after the publication of some conversations between the director of the law department and a female student.

According to the police report, in the case, statements were taken from eleven alleged victims and one of them – the protagonist of those conversations – assured that the head of that department made advances to her late at night via WhatsApp.

“The conversations are mine, they are messages with that person (the professor) who asked me to have sex with him in exchange for interceding for me (before other professors) to get good grades in the exams because he knows the professors,” she assured.

In addition to these five professors, last week the Moroccan Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of a professor at the Higher School of Translators of Tangier, belonging to the Abdelmalek Essaadi University of Tetouan, for sexual harassment of a student.

At the University of Oujda, another professor at the National School of Commerce and Management is under investigation for allegedly sexually blackmailing one of his female students.

Following these cases, which the Moroccan press assimilated with a wave of “me too” university demands, several feminist NGOs called for stiffer penalties against sexual harassment committed by professors against students in universities.

The organizations launched the hashtag “#Hta_ana_ana_baraka_harcèlement_université (me too, enough of university harassment)” to denounce these abuses.