SNUB CYPRUS SAYS RAPE CASE MOTHER
She insists the island is unsafe ++ Says her daughter has PTSD, sleeps 20 hours a day and suffers from hallucinations ++ Thanks public for support and £109,000 raised for legal fight
THE anguished mother of the Cyprus gang-rape teenager told yesterday how her daughter’s life has been ruined.
The traumatised youngster faces up to eight years to clear her name, her mother said, warning other British parents: ‘This is not an isolated incident – the place is absolutely not safe.’
As the Foreign Office ramped up British alarm over the feared miscarriage of justice, the devastated mother backed online calls for a boycott on holidays to the Mediterranean island.
Her 19- year- old daughter now faces a year in a Cyprus jail after police secured a confession that she lied about 12 Israeli youths gang- raping her during a post-exams holiday. As the ordeal continued yesterday:
An online fundraising drive to help the teenager get justice reached £109,000;
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab showed a ‘ personal interest’ as the Foreign Office said it had spoken to Cyprus officials;
The teenager’s mother described the family’s feelings of hopelessness;
The Cypriot government said it had sympathy for the mother but claimed the adverse reaction had been ‘exaggerated’.
The teenager, from the Midlands, is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sleeping 20 hours a day to cope with her five-month ordeal trapped in Cyprus, during which time she lost her university place.
Her mother said: ‘She should be celebrating the New Year with her new university friends. She had been accepted to each of the three universities she had applied to.
‘She had been offered a bursary at one of them. So no question she would have gone to university but it was in a career that she wouldn’t be able to do with this public mischief verdict. So again life changing for her.’
Instead, her daughter now faces a fight to overturn the verdict of a trial in which the district judge in Cyprus repeatedly aimed furious jibes at the woman as she tried to describe being raped – aggressively ordering her to show him ‘respect’.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had a holiday romance with an Israeli youth during her summer break to the Cyprus party resort of Ayia Napa.
But one night, his friends filmed themselves bare-chested outside the couple’s budget hotel room, before allegedly bursting in. They deny any wrongdoing.
The mother told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme she backed a boycott of Cyprus holidays, saying: ‘It’s not just my daughter’s case. Just looking at Trip-Advisor from the hotel that she was staying at, there are other reports of people breaking into rooms and attempted rapes.
‘That’s just one hotel over one summer season – and there’s hundreds of hotels in Ayia Napa. This is not an isolated incident, the place isn’t safe, it is absolutely not safe.
‘And if you go and report something that has happened to you, you are either laughed at, as far as I can tell, or in the worst case, something like what’s happened to my daughter may happen.’
Initially the 12 Israeli youths were arrested on suspicion of gang rape. But then they were freed, after the British woman says she was hauled in for eight hours of questioning without a lawyer – during which she claims she was forced to sign a confession saying she had made it all up.
The Foreign Office says it is ‘seriously concerned’ about whether she had a fair trial.
Despite her breaking down in tears numerous times during the chaotic court hearing, district judge Michalis Papathanasiou kept losing his temper with the vulnerable tourist and shouting at her in Greek.
He ruled it was ‘not a rape trial’ and summarily dismissed all the woman’s evidence that she was attacked, while deciding all the prosecution’s evidence was ‘credible’. To an international outcry, he convicted her of ‘ public mischief’ and she will be sentenced on Tuesday to up to a year in jail and a £1,500 fine.
Yesterday the teenager’s mother, who has spent thousands of pounds in legal bills as well as the cost of being forced to remain in Cyprus, revealed: ‘She is suffering from PTSD, she spends a lot of time with hypersomnia at the moment – that means she’s sleeping an awful lot of the day. She sleeps probably 18, 20 hours a day.
‘ She is also quite withdrawn, which is very sad for me to see, and she also experiences hallucinations and she needs to get back to the UK to get that treated. That is my absolute primary focus.
‘ She can’t be treated here because hearing foreign men speaking loudly will trigger an episode. Obviously 50 per cent of the people who are going to be talking a foreign language are men so it’s really really difficult for her. She is doing very well to sort of contain that and control it at the moment but it needs resolving otherwise she is going to carry on having this for the rest of her life.’
The young woman has vowed to appeal but the process could take up to eight years. Her mother said:
‘This is not an isolated incident’
‘We will be appealing the decision, without question. The next step is that it needs to go to the Supreme Court in Cyprus.
‘Unfortunately there is quite a long waiting list, so our lawyers are looking at what can be done to expedite that and that’s something maybe the Foreign Office could help us with, to get that done as soon as we can. And if that doesn’t provide justice then we would go to the European Court of Human Rights, but again, that’s four to eight years we will have to wait. While that, I believe, will definitely serve justice, it is fundamentally life- changing to deal with this between four to eight years. The impact on life is quite phenomenal.’
Cyprus government spokesman Kyriakos Kousios said he had sympathy for the mother but claimed the public reaction to her daughter’s plight was ‘exaggerated’. ‘I can understand the mother... I would expect any mother to do anything possible to help her daughter or son,’ he told reporters.
‘But we are not happy with the extent of publicity and the reaction, which has been exaggerated. We would have wished that these [boycott] calls hadn’t happened. As a government we cannot, under any circumstances, intervene in a pending case before the court,’ he added.
The Foreign Office said the matter had been officially raised with the Cyprus government on Tuesday – with sources saying the Foreign Secretary has become personally involved.
One insider said: ‘ Dominic is a human rights lawyer and this has piqued interest.’
The source described the decision earlier this week to publicise the UK government’s ‘serious concerns about the fair trial guarantees in this deeply distressing case’ as a ‘step change’ in the approach by ministers, adding: ‘ We are exploring any way in which we can help and are watching closely how this develops’.
The source said the UK was keen to keep the relationship ‘amicable’ with the Cypriots, and was not yet at the stage of ‘issuing threats’.
‘We conveyed our concerns to the Cypriots. We have concerns about the due process and are still exploring avenues we can support.
‘We are focused on assisting the case rather than making threats. After the sentencing we will make a judgement,’ said the source. The Cypriot government has told Britain to stop meddling, saying it has
‘Astounding levels of support’
full confidence in its justice system.
Yesterday the teenager’s mother, a project manager, hailed the British public’s support, saying she had been overwhelmed by messages and donations to an online crowd-funding page on the website GoFundMe.
‘I’m absolutely astounded by the levels of support we have seen,’ she said. ‘I can’t even describe to you the hopelessness I felt when all of this initially happened.
‘It’s absolutely unreal, it’s not just the financial support, it’s the comments – they are absolutely motivating and inspiring to keep us going day in and day out.’
Women’s rights campaigners in Cyprus have joined the campaign for justice, while campaign group Justice Abroad has described a ‘ worrying breach of a British national’s rights’. Many were seen wearing masks with lips sewn shut – a symbol to highlight their criticism of people being silenced.
An FCO source said it was a ‘deeply distressing case’, adding: ‘Our staff have visited her a number of times in detention, attended court hearings, and are in regular contact with her legal representatives and the local authorities.’