BRIT, 35, RAPED AT HER HOME
A BRITISH woman was raped at her Çatalköy home by a man who sneaked in through a window in the early hours of yesterday morning.
The intruder beat the 35year-old woman and then dragged her to a bedroom where he raped her three times between 12.30am and 2am before running away.
The woman then fled the house and called police, who took her for a check-up at hospital. Doctors confirmed she had been raped.
A search was launched for her attacker, and a man was arrested at 8am in a car park in the village.
Yunus Timur, 26, who was in the TRNC for work, appeared at Girne District Court yesterday and told judge Meltem Dündar: “She said, ‘I don’t want it, don’t do,’ but I didn’t think she really meant it.”
He was remanded in custody for three days on charges including rape, assault and trespass.
The incident comes after recent reports of sex abuse and harassment sparked a furore on social media.
Nupelda Karabuğday wrote of having been “cut up”, verbally abused and followed by a man in a car as she walked to a shop near her home in the Edremit area at 8.30am last Tuesday.
In a post to warn others, she said the man had approached her in a Mazda Demio and “very casually” told her to get in, reversing when she kept walking and saying, “stop refusing, just get in the car” before swearing at her and driving off, only to turn up at the shop later.
The man drove away as she called police and officers are said to be still looking for him.
In another incident in Lefkoşa on September 25, a woman was sexually assaulted after walking to her car with three female friends at about 10pm after a debate at the Atatrük Cultural Centre.
Lawyer Laden Asilzade described the “horrible” experience in which a friend was molested by “a white-haired, short, devilish blue-eyed man who smelled of alcohol” as she walked towards Ms Asilzade’s car.
Ms Asilzade told how the friends restrained the man until police arrived, while pleas for help to four passing men fell on deaf ears.
A 50-year-old man has been charged with drunkenness, public nuisance and sex abuse, and bailed pending trial.
People’s Party MP Gülşah Sanver Manavoğlu attracted criticism when she reacted to rising crime by posting an image of her car with a baseball bat in it, saying: “Winter’s here, days are shorter now, so I have taken precautions to be safer at the places where I go.
“I tell the authorities again and again: if you don’t speed up measures to reverse this situation . . . people will apply their own justice.”
She later said she regretted the post.