Mother ‘marched teen to GP for a virginity test after f inding her with secret boyfriend’
‘You’ve seen what our people do’
An Iranian couple marched their daughter to a GP for a ‘virginity check’ after discovering her secret boyfriend, a court heard yesterday.
Mitra Eidiani and Ali Safaraei are said to have threatened to kill 18-year-old Sophia over the relationship with a teenager she worked with.
Eidiani, 42, found the pair together when she returned home unexpectedly. As rows over the teen romance intensified, the mother bit the teenager and threatened to send her ‘back to Iran to marry a cousin’, the court heard.
She and Mr Safaraei, 56, then confronted boyfriend Bailey Marshall-Telfer at the shop he worked at part time, where she told the 18-year-old they were ‘dangerous’ because they were Muslim, adding: ‘You have seen what our people do on the news.’
Ediani and Safaraei are on trial accused of controlling and coercive behaviour, as well as making death threats and assault.
They were arrested after Sophia walked into Wimbledon police station, in south west London, saying she feared for her safety.
Kingston Crown Court heard how the young lovers were discovered when Eidiani suddenly arrived back at the family’s Wandsworth home in May.
Mr Marshall-Telfer tried to climb out of a bathroom window but Sophia’s mother found a pair of headphones he left behind.
Giving evidence against her weeping mother, the teenager said: ‘We panicked because we didn’t expect it to happen, so I had no choice but to tell him to go on the roof. We were both scared, we didn’t know what to expect and obviously it would be a shock for my mum. She did tell him not to come back and we should not have contact any more. She did break his headphones and Bailey was shocked when he saw them.’
The court heard Eidiani was later heard begging her husband, “Please, don’t hurt her” before he came to her room and said they would see a doctor.
Speaking from behind a screen, Sophia told the jury: ‘I did get threatened – that if I didn’t go, stuff like I can get killed.’
The family went to a surgery but the GP declined to act, saying the teenager was an adult and did not consent before asking her in private if she was safe.
On returning home, Sophia claimed her mother became ‘extremely angry’ and bit her before her father threatened her with a knife. The teenager said: ‘My father then came into my room armed with a big kitchen knife and said you have to get checked. They were saying if I’m a virgin why can’t you prove it? What are you scared of?’
A photo of a large bruise on her forearm, allegedly caused by the bite, was shown to the jury. In the following days, the parents made life ‘extremely unpleasant’ for Sophia and Mr Marshall-Telfer, said prosecutor David Povall.
‘She was called a prostitute, her father threatened to kill both her and Bailey,’ he said. ‘She was told she was disowned, it was suggested she might be sent back to Iran to marry a cousin.’ Speaking via video link, Mr Marshall-Telfer told the jury he was confronted by the parents at the branch of Sports Direct where the young pair worked together.
He said Eidiani told him never to go near her daughter again, adding: ‘She went on to say that she is a Muslim and her husband is a Muslim and “you have seen what our people do on the news and stuff, we’re dangerous people, be careful”.’ Mr Marshall-Telfer said he was told Sophia’s father was ‘going to kill me’ and that there ‘would be a shadow around me’. In a statement read to the court, Dr Helen Lucas said she declined to treat Sophia because she did not want to be examined.
She said the girl’s mother ‘would not accept Sophia had any autonomy to make her own decisions and continued to draw unfavourable comparisons between her own culture and ‘your’ one, i.e. UK’. Referring to a private chat with Sophia before the family left, the GP said: ‘She told me that her parents had taken away her phone, were going to escort and collect her from school and she had stopped her part-time job where she met her boyfriend.’
The jury was told Safaraei is not Muslim and ‘would have been fine’ about his daughter’s boyfriend. The parents, from Clapham, south London, deny the charges against them. The trial continues.