While Saudi Arabia celebrates being awarded the Fifa men’s World Cup and meticulously promotes itself on the global stage as reformed, women who have dared to publicly call for more rights and freedoms have faced house arrest, jail and exile." Ladies everytime someone mentions Saudi Arabia doing something like getting to host the Fifa men’s World Cup remind everyone of the Dar al-Reaya
Girls and young women describe facing flogging and abuse in so-called ‘care homes’ after arguing with their fathers or husbands
Tom Levitt and Deepa Parent Wed 28 May 2025
Ayoung woman wearing a black abaya is pictured in a city in north-west Saudi Arabia standing precariously on a second-floor window ledge. A second photograph shows a group of men escorting her down with the help of a crane.
The woman’s identity is unknown, but she was allegedly being held at one of Saudi Arabia’s notoriously secretive “jails” for women banished by their families or husbands for disobedience, extramarital sexual relations or being absent from home.
It was a rare glimpse of the plight of hundreds or more girls and young women believed to be held in such facilities, where they are “rehabilitated” so they can return to their families.
Speaking out in public or sharing footage of these “care homes”, or Dar al-Reaya, has become impossible in a country where voices on women’s rights appear to have been silenced. But over the past six months, the Guardian has gathered testimony about what it is like inside these institutions, described as “hellish”, with weekly floggings, forced religious teachings and no visits or contact with the outside world.
Conditions are reported to be so bad that there have been several cases of suicide or attempted suicide. The women can spend years locked up, unable to leave without the permission of their family or a male guardian.
“Every girl growing up in Saudi knows about Dar al-Reaya and how awful it is. It’s like hell. I tried to end my life when I found out I was going to be taken to one. I knew what happened to women there and thought ‘I can’t survive it’,” says one young Saudi woman who later managed to flee into exile.
Maryam Aldossari, a Saudi activist based in London, says: “A young girl or woman will stay in there for as long as it takes for her to accept the rules.”
A woman stands on window ledge, allegedly trying to escape one of Saudi Arabia ‘care homes’ and is then apparently helped down by a group of men.
While Saudi Arabia celebrates being awarded the Fifa men’s World Cup and meticulously promotes itself on the global stage as reformed, women who have dared to publicly call for more rights and freedoms have faced house arrest, jail and exile. Activists say the country’s care homes are one of the regime’s lesser-known tools for controlling and punishing women, and want them to be abolished.
It is a prison, not a care home, as they like to call it. They call each other by numbers. ‘Number 35, come here’
Sarah Al-Yahia, campaigner
Saudi officials have described the care homes, which were set up across the country in the 1960s, as providing “shelter for girls accused or convicted of various crimes” and say they are used to “rehabilitate the female inmates” with the help of psychiatrists “in order to return them to their family”.
But Sarah Al-Yahia, who started a campaign to abolish the care homes, has spoken to a number of girls who describe an abusive regime, with inmates subjected to strip-searches and
But Sarah Al-Yahia, who started a campaign to abolish the care homes, has spoken to a number of girls who describe an abusive regime, with inmates subjected to strip-searches and virginity tests on arrival and given sedatives to put them to sleep.
“It is a prison, not a care home, as they like to call it. They call each other by numbers. ‘Number 35, come here.’ When one of the girls shared her family name, she got lashes. If she doesn’t pray, she gets lashes. If she is found alone with another woman she gets lashes and is accused of being a lesbian. The guards gather and watch when the girls are being lashed.”
Yahia, who is now 38 and lives in exile, says her parents had threatened to send her to Dar al-Reaya since she was 13. “My father used it as a threat if I didn’t obey his sexual abuse,” she says, adding that girls and women may face the horrifying dilemma of deciding between Dar al-Reaya and staying in an abusive home.
“They make it impossible for others to help women fleeing abuse. I know a woman who was sentenced to six months in jail because she helped a victim of violence. Giving shelter in the case of a woman charged for ‘absenteeism’ is a crime in Saudi Arabia.
“If you are sexually abused or get pregnant by your brother or father you are the one sent to Dar al-Reaya to protect the family’s reputation,” she says.
Amina*, 25, says she sought refuge in a ‘care home’ in Buraydah, a city in central Saudi Arabia, after being beaten by her father. She says the building was “old, crumbling and unsettling” and the staff “cold and unhelpful”. They belittled her experience, says Amina, telling her other girls had it “far worse” and were “chained at home” and told her to “thank God my situation wasn’t that bad”
The next day, staff summoned her father, says Amina, but did little to protect her. “They asked both of us to write down our ‘conditions’. I requested not to be beaten or forced into marriage, and to be allowed to work. My father demanded that I respect everyone, never leave the house without permission, and always be accompanied by a male escort. I signed out of fear – I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
Once she returned home, Amina says the beatings continued and in the end she was forced to flee into exile. “I remember being utterly alone and terrified. I felt like a prisoner in my own home, with no one to protect me, no one to defend me. It felt like my life didn’t matter, like even if something terrible happened to me, no one would care,” she says.
For young girls, learning to fear Dar al-Reaya starts from a young age. Shams* says she was 16 when a woman who had been in one of the care homes was brought to her school. She told the class that she had started a relationship with a boy and was caught by the religious police and made to confess to her father. After she became pregnant her family disowned her and the father refused to allow her to marry, so she was sent to Dar al-Reaya. “She told us, if a woman has sex or a relationship she becomes a ‘cheap woman’. If you are a man you will always be a man, but if a woman makes herself cheap, she will be cheap for life.”
