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KABUL, Afghanistan — A mullah who raped a 10-year-old girl in his mosque was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a dramatic trial here in Kabul on Saturday during which his accuser, weeping and shaking, summoned the courage to confront him.

Women’s activists attending the packed proceedings hailed the sentence as a victory because the mullah was successfully prosecuted under a 2009 law meant to fight violence against women in a country where rape had long been treated as adultery, implicitly placing partial blame on the victim. The judge in this case dismissed the mullah’s Shariah law defense.

In addition, intervention by Women for Afghan Women, a group that had earlier sheltered the girl, persuaded the victim’s family members to support her. The group paid her family’s travel expenses from their home in the remote province of Kunduz, where the crime occurred, so they could attend the trial.

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