A criminal court in southern Mansoura has sentenced a parent in absentia to five years in prison for violating a teacher’s privacy, sexually harassing and threatening her online, and persistently intimidating her using a fake social media account.
According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which represented the survivor, the ruling was issued on Dec. 2 in case no. 1765 of 2025. The teacher, who worked at a private school in Talkha, filed a complaint after receiving sexually explicit messages and images that demanded sexual favors in exchange for money—along with threats to expose her at her workplace.
Cybercrime investigators identified Sami Abu Bakr Rizq as the user of the account. He is the father of a student at the same school. The investigation revealed that after his earlier advances were rejected, he resorted to online sexual extortion.
The teacher initially suspected the messages came from a colleague, Samuel Tharwat, EIPR lawyer representing the survivor, told Al Manassa. “She approached the headteacher in good faith,” he said, “but her concerns were dismissed, and she was told to just ignore it.”
Days later, the school’s human resources department summoned her. According to Tharwat, she was subjected to pressure until she broke down and signed her resignation. “They were more concerned about the school's image than the abuse she was enduring,” he explained.
EIPR accused the school administration of collusion and retaliation, saying it “coerced her into resigning without pay or a work certificate, abandoning her instead of protecting her or investigating the complaint.”
Tharwat added that the conviction was not easily won. The public prosecution dismissed her complaint twice, and it was only after EIPR repeatedly appealed that a report by the cybercrime unit conclusively linked the harassing messages to Rizq’s phone number.
“When she saw the name in the report, she recognized him immediately,” Tharwat said. “He had tried to flirt with her at school before, but she never imagined it would escalate to threats and blackmail.”
The teacher suffered severe psychological harm, worsened by the loss of her job and being treated like a suspect rather than a survivor by the school administration.
Although the ruling was issued in absentia, Tharwat described it as a landmark conviction. “The court could have acquitted him in his absence,” he said, “but the evidence was so compelling that it proceeded with sentencing.”
Tharwat also said the school continued to obstruct justice even after the court authorised access to the accused’s information through his child’s student file. The legal team had to seek emergency police intervention and file an official incident report.
The ruling comes amid a surge in digital violence against women and girls in Egypt. In 2023 alone, nearly 8 million women were subjected to violence.
Last month, UN Women in the Arab States launched a campaign to end online gender-based violence, calling on governments to criminalize all forms of digital abuse, strengthen law enforcement capacity, and ensure survivor-centered accountability.
While Egypt's Penal Code includes articles on online abuse, enforcement remains inconsistent. In 2017, a coalition of six feminist organizations drafted a unified bill to combat violence against women. It was submitted to Parliament in 2018, and again in 2022—but both versions vanished without public debate.
In April, the Egyptian Center for Women's Legal Assistance introduced a revised draft with five other rights groups. It includes four sections: general provisions, digital and sexual violence crimes, judicial procedures, and survivor protections.
Notably, the draft law calls for a publicly funded reparations fund to support survivors with financial compensation, and access to psychological and social care.
