Two dozen women in the public gallery believed her. The judge did not

As the teenage defendant filed into the courtroom, she glanced back to acknowledge the women lined up in the last row of the public gallery. Each woman had a gag over her mouth, with an image of stitchedup lips, in a show of support.

“We believe you. We are with you,” they shouted before the judge ordered silence. The woman threw them a quick thumbs-up before turning round to hear her fate.

Six months earlier, she had filed a complaint to police that she had been gang-raped in her hotel room during a summer break in Cyprus. Now she was on trial for fabricating the incident, charged with “causing public mischief ”, defined by the Cypriot criminal code as knowingly providing police with “a false statement concerning an imaginary offence”.

In the end, it did not matter that the two dozen supporters in the packed Paralimni courtroom near Ayia Napa were with her. The judge was not. The teenager shook her head in disbelief as Judge Michalis Papathanasiou read out the guilty verdict.

A number of the protesters, who spoke Greek, gasped. Her parents sat looking bewildered until a member of the gallery told them of the decision. They looked blankly down at the floor.

Dressed in black, with her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, the woman showed little emotion when she was told through a translator that her testimony had not been believed.

“This isn’t right,” she screamed at Ritsa Pekri, her defence counsel, when Judge Papathanasiou left the room.

The teenager, who has spent the past six months in Cyprus after having her passport confiscated, was furious when told she would have to wait until

Jan 7 to hear her sentence. Ms Pekri asked the judge for leniency, citing her age and “maturity” handling the pressure she had been under.

“She’s been in prison for one month and in Cyprus, effectively as a prisoner, for five,” Ms Pekri said. “She’s lost her friends, her place at university, her social life. She now has psychological problems as a result of the incident. She should be allowed home to be treated.”

The judge told the court that the teenager had lied as some sort of revenge on the men she accused. “She was never clear on what happened,” he said. “She was not stating the truth and I reject the version she gave.”

The teenager, who donned her own gag and covered her face, was escorted out of the courtroom and through the jostling crowd by her parents.

Outside the courtroom, Maria Mappouridou, of the group Network Against Violence Against Women said: “Police in Cyprus always find a reason not to believe women who claimed they have been raped. Many of us here today have experienced it.

“This woman was not only raped by those 12 men, but raped by the state, by society and by the media here.”

She explained the meaning behind the gags they had worn in court: “It is meant to show that women are always

‘Police in Cyprus always find a reason not to believe women who claimed they have been raped’

silenced when it comes to abuse, and also that this case is a stitch-up.”

The court hearing began in October, but Cypriot media had already begun insinuating that the teenager may not be telling the truth. Gossiping taxi drivers suggested she had done it for the “fame and money”. They pointed to a Gofundme page that had received £50,000 in donations towards her legal fees as proof.

“They want to dishonour Cyprus,” said one. “We we all know what British girls get up to on holiday. It’s wild.”

Another suggested that the teenager and other British holidaymakers take out “rape insurance” before they come to the island. Then they have sex with men and cash in the payout.

The case has raised concerns for the safety of female tourists on the island, which attracts around 1.3million British tourists a year, and of Cypriot authorities’ attitude towards victims of alleged sexual assault.

A reporter covering the case said local police were suspicious of female British tourists and very cautious in their investigations of alleged sexual offences. She claimed that several British women had filed false insurance claims alleging that they had been robbed while in the country.

It remains to be seen how the case will affect Cyprus’s tourism, which relies on holidaymakers from the UK and Western Europe in particular.

Some British tourists in Ayia Napa yesterday said they were “disgusted” by the verdict and would not be returning. “It doesn’t give you much faith that if it happened to another girl, that there would be justice,” said Nicole Moore, 24, from Lincolnshire.

Another, who did not wish to be named, said: “I was waiting for something like this to happen. The mad stuff that goes on here, you have to wonder how this hasn’t happened before.”

There was already a growing backlash online, with many women and rights groups posting on Twitter about the verdict with the hashtags #Ibelieveher and #Boycottcyprus.

“The problem is the Metoo movement hasn’t really reached Cyprus,” Ms Mappouridou said. “It’s like Cyprus is 100 years behind on this. It’s hard to believe we’re fighting this in 2019 in the European Union.”