October 05, 2018
An Iranian couple living in London has been put on trial for marching their 18-year-old daughter to a doctor for a “virginity check” after they caught her with a non-Muslim boyfriend—whom they threatened, saying they were “dangerous” because they were Muslim.
The details were laid out as the parents went on trial for “coercive behavior and making threats to kill.
Iranian parents Mitra Eidiani, 42, and Ali Safaraei, 56, who live in south London, are also alleged to have threatened to kill their daughter, Sophia Safaraei, and her boyfriend, Bailey Marshall-Telfer, 18, with the teen’s mother saying: “You have seen what our people do on the news.”
But in a surprise outcome, the jury of four men and eight women took only an hour to clear the parents on all the charges.
In a statement read to Kingston Crown Court on the first day of the trial, Doctor Helen Lewis said that the mother brought the daughter into her office and insisted on a virginity check. The doctor explained that the daughter was an adult under British law and would have to give her consent to such a check, which the daughter refused to do.
The doctor said the mother had responded to her refusal to carry out the check by telling the doctor she did not understand the family’s culture.
The mother then summoned the father from the waiting room. Doctor Lewis said the mother then drew unfavorable comparisons between her family’s culture and “your” culture (referring to the UK) as the father threatened to go to the police while the daughter appeared tearful.
The mother allegedly later bit her daughter in the arm, for which she was charged, and cleared, of assault. The father was accused of threatening the daughter with a kitchen knife after returning from the doctor. He was also cleared of that charge.
The daughter was also told she would be sent “back to Iran to marry a cousin,” jurors were told.
The parents found out their college student daughter was dating a workmate when the mother returned home early to find the pair in the home.
The daughter’s boyfriend told the court he was confronted by the parents at the shop where he worked the day after the two were found together.
He said the mother told him: “’Don’t come near my daughter again. I don’t want you communicating with her or anything like that’…. She went on to say that she is a Muslim and her husband is a Muslim and ‘you have seen what our people do on the news and stuff, we’re dangerous people, be careful’.”