Legal Violence

Family laws in Lebanon are still under the jurisdiction of religious courts, regardless of the religion in question. In the case of divorce, the mother usually keeps physical custody of her children until the age of seven for boys and nine for girls. These short-sighted and archaic laws cause tremendous suffering and grief for divorced women and their children. Legal Violence is a piece constructed with the following text: “On my son’s seventh birthday he came and took him; he took him and put him in a boarding school.” The words came from an interview conducted by Nada Sehnaoui with a woman who was married and later divorced through the Lebanese Protestant Church.