Man sentenced to 15 years in jail for kissing daughter on lips

Mesut Hasan Benli - ANKARA

A Turkish court sentenced a man to 15 years in prison on July 11 for kissing his daughter on the lips while the prosecutor demanded his acquittal.

According to the court files seen by daily Hürriyet, a woman, who was unidentified, had filed for divorce from her husband claiming he had cheated on her.

The Ankara First Family Court ruled for divorce in December 2017, while entrusting the custody of the couple’s two daughters to the mother.

Seeking his help to do her homework, the couple’s 11-year-old daughter called her father to their home on March 9, 2018 with the permission of her mother.

After her father left the house, the girl told her mother her father had kissed her on the lips, which led the woman to file a criminal complaint against him.

“I had called my father to come to our home. He kissed me on my lips and I felt bad. He had also kissed me on my lips when I was sleeping with him at my aunt’s house. It was not a long kiss. When I reacted angrily, he had told me I was his daughter,” the girl told the police, adding she believed the man had no bad intentions and his hug was “like the hug of her mother.”

In his testimony at the Ankara Sixth Heavy Penal Court, the man said he had not engaged in any abusive acts against his daughter and argued the woman’s criminal complaint could be “an attempt at revenge” in their divorce case.

The prosecutor demanded his acquittal, citing there was no evidence against the father, but the court ruled for a 15-year jail sentence, stressing the mother and daughter’s testimonies were enough evidence.