A Kuwaiti man beat his wife for attending a gathering without permission

Over the past weekend, Kuwaiti authorities took action against a man, who barged into a women's gathering his wife was attending and severely beat her along with her friends, Al Rai Newspaper reported. 

According to an anonymous security source who spoke to the local newspaper, the man had forbidden his wife from visiting the group of friends, who were their neighbors "because he didn't like them." 

This is why she often attended their gatherings in secret. 

However, this weekend, the unidentified man arrived home earlier than expected and didn't find his wife home. 

"He called her several times, but she didn't answer. That's when he forced their domestic worker to tell him where she was," the source said. 

Angered by the fact that his wife was seeing her girlfriends, the man hastily headed towards their home, barged in and beat his wife and all her friends. 

One of them then called the police in Kuwait's Hawally Governorate. 

They immediately arrived at the scene and arrested the man. 

None of the women, including the man's wife, dropped charges against him and he now faces legal consequences. 

Speaking to StepFeed, Rawan, a women's rights activist in Kuwait said as bizarre as the most recent domestic abuse case sounds, it's not the only one of its kind. 

"The problem is that things like this happen all the time and go unnoticed because many women often don't press charges out of fear, or because of societal/familial pressure," Rawan said. 

"What's positive in this specific case is that the wife refused to drop charges against her husband, sending a message to all Kuwaiti men and women that this type of control and abuse is not acceptable and will never, ever be," she added. 

"Even though people are pointing fingers at the woman, saying that what she did was wrong, the fact that so many are putting all the blame on her, actually reflects the real problem here. Within a misogynistic, patriarchal society women will always be rendered helpless in situations like this one," the activist explained. 

"The truth is, no matter what she did, nothing justifies this abuse, not only against her but also against her female friends," she added. 

Rawan said that in recent years, Kuwaiti human rights activists have continuously spoken out against all forms of domestic violence against women.

"We continue to work on several draft laws, urging our government to pass legislation that would secure better rights for women, calling on them to abolish several laws that put their lives at risk," she explained. 

"This kind of abuse exists all over the Arab world and isn't just confined to one country or the other. Because I work in Kuwait, I can say that from what I've seen here, there have been a few positive changes in recent years, and we're optimistic that better days are yet to come," she noted.