For more than a year, B.A., an Iraqi journalist aged 30, has been trying to heal from wounds she sustained when an unusual harasser crushed her soul with a few text messages that put an end to her career and left her languishing at home, while her husband grapples on his own with ever deteriorating economic conditions.

Every day at 8 a.m., she would sit at her desk in a local newspaper, tie back her hair, turn on her computers, scroll the news, and put together the news map of the day and suggestions to field reporters.

As a “desk editor,” she was in direct contact with the newspaper staff, totaling 15 persons of whom 13 are men. Hence, she had to endure, on a daily basis, loathsome macho comments to which she managed to set some boundaries.

She made it clear to everyone that they must keep their patriarchal beliefs out of work and that she is a mother of two children and the wife of a good man. By doing so, B.A. thought she could restrain their unfettered masculinity in the office.

A large proportion of society is aware of widespread harassment in the streets, resulting from an exacerbated hypermasculinity. However, statements by several Iraqi women journalists confirm that this phenomenon did not spare women in press and media outlets, forcing a considerable number of them to quit journalism for good.

Forty-One Percent of Women Journalists Have Been Victims of Harassment:

According to a survey conducted by a research team commissioned by the Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq, 41% of working women journalists have been subjected to different kinds of harassment, and 15% of them were forced to leave their jobs and move to other organizations, whereas 5% quit their profession for good.

The same survey reveals that desk editors are the most vulnerable to harassment, followed by broadcast show hosts. It ascribes this lower proportion of victims among women hosts to “the status of a radio/TV presenter within the media company and her connections with authority officials, that instill fear in the harasser.”

Moreover, the survey results highlight linkages between media specializations and vulnerability to harassment. In other terms, an editor is 20.3% more vulnerable to harassment than other women journalists while show hosts are 11.4% more vulnerable, followed by women professionals in print media (7.3%).

A Director who Masters Harassment:

B.A. works today for a local newspaper in a central Iraqi province. Shedding more tears, she relates her story in words that convey mixed feelings of anger, anguish, and sorrow as she remembers the blackmail message from her boss that ended her journalistic career. “He, insolently and without any hesitation whatsoever, asked me to be his mistress so that I could have ‘Aladdin’s lamp,’” recalls B.A.

For minutes, it made her blood run cold. The “shock” almost caused physical distress to the journalist, who felt dizzy and weary.

“The message was a request to have a secret relationship with me, carrying a combination of threats and carrots and including inappropriate words. There was some hint of obscenity in it, coupled with a romantic song segment,” she adds.

Stunned, it took her some time to respond politely to the message and reject the offer.

She tried to wrap her head around what had happened. How would she tell her husband about it? What would he do to the influential newspaper owner? Would the boss use his influence and connections with security authorities to throw her husband in jail? So many questions stormed into her head.

She even started to question her own behavior at the newspaper, wondering… Was it something she inadvertently did and made him see her as a “whore”? Were her outfits too revealing?

She rushed to her closet, checked her clothes… There was nothing wrong with them.

In an attempt to deceive reality and persuade herself to disbelieve the obvious, she came to the conviction that the man, who was nearly 60 years old, was testing her to protect his newspaper and keep his staff out of trouble. Then she recalled that he never skipped a prayer in the office.

After the incident, the mere fact of stepping into the newspaper’s building became a real torture, as she constantly tried to avoid her boss’s unsettling looks. She had to feign illness and stay away from the office for long periods of time. “I thought my long absence would make him forget, but my rejection only made him more impudent.”

Upon her return to work, she made sure to put on loose outfits all the time. Yet, the behavior of “the wrinkly” man became even more brazen. He installed a camera right over her office to put her under pressure after denying her all leaves, including emergency ones.

We decided to go into the newspaper’s headquarters. We sneaked into the former office of the victim. We found, neither inside nor outside the company, any cameras that could help us prove that the harassment occurred, although the director had previously shown on several occasions fabricated videos of terrorist organizations that allegedly stormed into his institution and tried to blackmail him.

“The boss is a master of harassment. He draws strength from high-ranking officials belonging to parties in power with armed factions. When speaking over the phone with a militia leader or an official, he would deliberately be loud so that everyone around would hear his conversation and it would be known to the staff that he is on good terms with the militias as well as the authorities, in order to intimidate them,” said B.A.

The victim realized that the “cretin” thought he could scare her into accepting his offer. She had no choice but to quit her job.

However, she kept screenshots of his text messages. She hopes that one day she will be able to expose him with evidence for the sake of all harassment victims.

B.A. lost her professional future. That is not on the patriarchal society; it is rather caused by the influence of the newspaper’s director and the connections that – he believes – make him immune to the consequences of his immoral and unlawful conduct.

Withdrawal… The Fate of All Lawsuits Against Harassers:

All harassers of women professionals in local media outlets seem to have similar modus operandi, starting with typical late-night conversations over mobile apps.

N.A., a woman journalist who resigned four years ago from the same newspaper, described the director as “a harasser who takes journalism as a profession for the sole purpose of blackmailing women journalists.” She said that she suffered distressing harassment by the newspaper’s director multiple times, which made her resort to legal means to “discipline” the harasser and hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit against him.

“As soon as he learned about my efforts to gather evidence in support of my case and then bring an action before an Iraqi court, he started hurling threats,” she added. He even threatened to publish her dismissal letter under the title “Dismissed for Bad Reputation and Misbehavior at the Newspaper,” and to send it to her husband – another criminal act punishable under Iraqi law by three months to two years in prison for an offense against honor.

N.A. could do nothing more than quit her job. “I hope that one day he will be held accountable for the sake of the honest journalism that I believe in and to which he is a mere intruder,” she said.

This investigation tried to sound out fellow journalists who worked for the same newspaper as N.A. They corroborated her statements: “The harassing director has aggressed other women journalists, without leaving any criminal evidence of his acts, except for those conversations that probably cannot be used as evidence – and he is aware of that.”

Criminalizing the Victim:

A.J., another woman journalist, describes the extortion and blackmail of women by media outlet heads as a “phenomenon” that has driven many successful women professionals in the media sector to quit their profession definitively and seek government positions or administrative and technical jobs in the private sector, away from journalism.

A.J. reveals that she was subjected to extortion and blackmail by the newsroom director at an Iraqi satellite channel. When she refused to engage in an affair with him, he showed her the door, accusing her of omission and negligence in a report he submitted to the head of the company. As a result, she was sacked from her job without being paid her outstanding wages.

The Iraqi Media Network on the Front Line Against Harassment:

Dr. Israa Al-Attar, Director of the Women’s Empowerment Department in the Iraqi Media Network, outlines multiple mechanisms put in place by the Department to fight harassment and blackmail against women journalists inside as well as outside media outlets. These mechanisms consist primarily of raising the legal, social, and psychological awareness of women members of the Network through training workshops; and ultimately seek to enable them to overcome the societal stigma that afflicts harassment victims and leverage legal means to defend their rights.

“Every department in the Network includes a legal division that provides support services to all harassment victims,” explains Dr. Al-Attar, describing the number of complaints these divisions have recently received from working women in the Network as unusually high.

On the other hand, Attorney Leila Moujahed indicates that “most harassment cases go unpunished as victims refrain from bringing a judicial action against their attackers,” asserting that “the law always provides the necessary protection to those who use it properly without fear.”

Inefficient Laws:

Attorney Safaa Al-Lamy calls for a new law to protect working women in all sectors in order to “rein in the system that protects harassers.”

“The law imposes sanctions on harassers in several articles, but this is not enough,” says Al-Lamy, referring to the case of Kurdistan, where the enforcement of draconian laws against harassers has largely contributed to curbing harassment.

Under Articles 402 and 369 of the Iraqi Penal Code No. 111 of 1969, any harasser shall be sentenced to no more than three months imprisonment and a fine of at least 50,000 dinars and not exceeding 200,000 dinars.

Fear Haunts Victims:

So often, harassment victims are forced to waive their rights due to social factors, customs, and traditions in Iraq. “Female harassment victims do solicit legal advice. Yet, they stop short of initiating judicial proceedings because they have lost faith in a rigid law that is poorly enforced,” says Al-Lamy. He attributes this behavior to “social norms and an apprehension of family reactions and a possible escalation of the issue into a tribal dispute.”

According to Brigadier General Ghalib Atiya, head of the Community Police Information Department, “The Ministry of Interior has been receiving, through a secret complaint hotline, numerous calls about harassment cases, particularly verbal and physical harassment, most of which occur through chat apps and social media platforms.”

“Numerous abuses against women journalists were reported to Community Police,” adds Brigadier General Atiya, pointing out that “complainants would content themselves with a signed pledge by their harasser to refrain from repeating the act of harassment, without filing a lawsuit against the latter.”

Sociologist Sarah Jassem underscores “the need to bring judicial action against the harasser to establish some kind of social dissuasion and prevent an exacerbation of this phenomenon.” She adds, “Most harassment victims among women journalists refuse to bring their case before the courts for fear of social exclusion, outrage, or slander, particularly since the Iraqi social environment tends to lay the blame solely on working women while justifying the criminal acts of the harasser.”

Modest Attempts to Combat Harassment:

In November 2022, social media platforms overflowed with feminist posts as part of the “16 Days of Activism against Domestic Violence in Iraq” campaign. A number of these posts touched upon the concept of harassment and its impact on shrinking the space and role of women in many fields of work.

Nevertheless, these campaigns remain limited to the virtual realm. As such, they neither dissuade harassers nor have a significant impact on fighting workplace harassment. Also, they have no role in protecting women journalists who are victims of harassment, extortion, and blackmail, especially those who were forced to quit journalism for good.

This investigation was carried out by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights as part of the project to investigate impunity for crimes committed against journalists in the Middle East and North Africa region. Article translated to English by Lamis Alwan on behalf of GCHR.