JEREMY K. SCHRAG.DOC 6/21/2008 11:40 AM The Tenth Circuit’s Misconstruction of Statutory Rape in International Law Under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 [Cisneros v. Aragon, 485 F.3d 1226 (10th Cir. 2007)] Jeremy K. Schrag* I. INTRODUCTION Alexandre Robert, a fifteen-year-old French student, spent July 12007 in Dubai. On Bastille Day, Robert left a beach club to meet his 2father for dinner. Unable to find a cab, he ran into an acquaintance 3who offered him a ride. He was unaware that two Emirati convicts 4were also in the acquaintance’s car. Instead of taking him to meet his father, they took him outside the city to an isolated plot of desert where they sodomized him one-by-one at knifepoint before dropping him off 5in front of a luxury hotel. Robert attempted to sue but received little cooperation from the 6authorities. Instead, they discouraged him from pressing charges, ac-cused him of homosexual conduct, and did not inform him that one of 7the perpetrators was HIV positive, thus seriously risking his health. Only after Robert’s family launched a public campaign drawing signifi-cant attention to the situation did the Dubai government finally punish 8the perpetrators. * B.A. 2004, Bethel College of Kansas; J.D. Candidate 2009, Washburn University School of Law. Thank you to Professors Aïda Alaka and William Merkel and the Washburn Law Journal Edi-torial Board for its assistance. 1. Vivienne Walt, Outrage over Dubai Rape Case, ...
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