Summer of fun in Cypriot sun snared teenager in a nightmare
FRESH out of school and with a clutch of good A-levels under her belt, the 18-year-old British girl was looking forward to taking up a place at university in the autumn.
First, though, there was the summer to look forward to and the promise of a holiday job in the hedonistic resort town of Ayia Napa, on the sundrenched south coast of Cyprus.
Arriving in early July, she found a room in a two-star hotel in the town, where bars, pubs and nightclubs offering cheap shots and all-night dancing lure young people from across Europe.
Within a week, those hopes turned into a nightmarish ordeal.
She has said that after hooking up with a young Israeli man and going back to his room, she was then gangraped by his friends. Sobbing and in shock, she reported the alleged attack to the Cypriot police, who arrested 12 Israelis. But 10 days later, the victim beraped,” came the suspect. During a gruelling eight-hour questioning without the aid of a lawyer, a friend or family, she was accused of making up the whole story.
Distraught, disorientated and frightened, she relented, signing a retraction statement. The Israelis were released from custody while she was arrested and taken to a police station in Nicosia, where she spent the next month in a cell with other women, before being granted bail.
“I was crying and I didn’t understand what was going on. An officer kept asking me to say that there wasn’t a rape. They became very aggressive. I said I did not make it up, I have been she later said.
“I said, ‘I know my rights and I know I have a right to a lawyer.’ The police officer said, ‘Maybe that’s what happens in the UK, but not in Cyprus.’”
Charged with causing a public nuisance, she was sent to trial, with the first hearing in October.
After months of stop-start hearings, during which she was not allowed to leave Cyprus, she was found guilty yesterday.
She will learn of her fate on Jan 7, when the judge in the case – there was no jury – will deliver his sentence. She faces up to a year in prison.
The teenager and her lawyers insist she has been telling the truth all along.
Among the witnesses they called was a British psychologist who said the young woman, now 19, is suffering from PTSD as a result of the rape.
The defence then called a forensic linguist who backed up the teenager’s claim that the retraction statement she signed was written in such poor, ungrammatical English that it could not have come from her.
Defence lawyers pointed out that the police had failed to secure the crime scene properly and had not downloaded messages that the Israelis sent each other on their mobile phones.
They cited a witness, another Israeli tourist, who said that on the night he heard the young men loudly boasting that they were going to have “orgies” with the English teenager.
They bragged that they were all going to “f---” her in “a loud and aggressive way”. But Cypriot police insisted she had simply made up the gang rape account and could have landed 12 innocent men in prison.
“She felt embarrassed and exposed because she had been recorded on video,” Det Sgt Marios Christou, who questioned her, told the court.
But defence lawyers and campaigners said the teenager was placed under such intense duress that her retraction statement should never have been ruled as admissible.
They are calling for a review of how police in Cyprus treat victims of rape and sexual assault and say the case has chilling implications for female tourists who find themselves in similar circumstances in future.
“The whole process is fraught with problems, not just this case,” Eleni
Karaoli, from the Cyprus Women’s Lobby, an advocacy group, told The Daily Telegraph. “Everything needs to be reviewed, from the first moment a victim approaches the police to how they take statements and how they treat the medical evidence. If that means changing the law, then we need to do that.”
Equality Now, an international women’s rights organisation that campaigns on failings in laws relating to sexual violence, also said there needed to be an investigation into how the teenager was treated.
“There are various complex reasons why a victim of sexual violence may retract their allegation,” said Alexandra Patsalides, a human rights lawyer with the organisation.
“They might be traumatised and vulnerable and have a lack of confidence in or fear of the justice process, especially if they have been subjected to prejudicial attitudes and negative gen
‘An officer kept asking me to say that there wasn’t a rape. They became very aggressive. I said I did not make it up, I have been raped’
der stereotypes by the investigating authorities.”
The manner in which the British woman was treated by police “appears to have fallen considerably below international standards”, she said.
The teenager’s lawyers will appeal the verdict and take the case to the Supreme Court of Cyprus.
If that fails, they have their sights set on the European Court of Human Rights, in an appeals process that could take four years.
The case should prompt Cyprus to make the recording of police station interviews obligatory, lawyers said.
“We are very disappointed with the decision,” said Michael Polak, her British lawyer. “But it doesn’t finish here.”
Diplomatic relations between Cyprus and Israel have grown particularly close in recent years, as Israel’s relations with Turkey cooled.
Each year, around 230,000 Israeli tourists visit Cyprus.
‘Everything needs to be reviewed, from the first moment a victim approaches the police to how they take statements and how they treat the medical evidence’