Iraq to lower age of consent for girls to just 9 years old and allow men to marry young kids: ‘This law legalizes child rape’
World News - November 10, 2024
Iraq is poised to pass a new law that would lower the legal age of consent from 18 to nine, allowing men to marry young girls, according to a new report.
The Shia conservative groups that dominate Iraq’s parliament have proposed an amendment to the country’s “personal status law” that could see a Taliban-style rollback of all women’s rights.
The chance would allow young girls to be married off and put nearly all family decisions in the hands of religious authorities, said Raya Faiq, who is coordinating a challenge against the bill with female Iraqi representatives.
“This is a catastrophe for women,” Faiq told The Guardian. “This law legalizes child rape.”
Bishop Accountability - December 23, 2025 Brampton, ON - A Catholic priest in Brampton, Ont., has been charged with sexual offences and removed from the ministry, the Archdiocese of Toronto says. It says the man is accused of one count of sexual assault and one count of sexual interference, an offence that applies when the victim is under 16 years old. It says the decision to remove the man from the pastoral ministry was made in accordance with its protocols and procedures relating to allegations of misconduct.
Free Press - September 23, 2025 Somerset, MB - The Archdiocese of St. Boniface has denied a man’s claims he was sexually abused by one of its priests in rural Manitoba decades ago. The man, who’s in his late 60s, claimed in a lawsuit filed in the Court of King’s Bench earlier this year that he was sexually abused by now-deceased Catholic priest Rene Touchette in the village of Somerset, about 150 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg. In a statement of defence filed in late July, the archdiocese argued the lawsuit should be tossed out — and that the man has provided no proof of the alleged abuse.