A British teenager was at the centre of a diplomatic row last night after being convicted of inventing a gang-rape attack in a Cyprus party resort.
The UK Government threatened to intervene over ‘serious concerns’ about the 19-year-old woman’s treatment during a five-month-long court case.
Officials said they would raise the case with their Cypriot counterparts, with a Foreign Office spokesman adding: ‘The UK is seriously concerned about the fair trial guarantees in this deeply distressing case.’
A British teenager is at the centre of a diplomatic row after being convicted of inventing a gang-rape attack in a Cyprus party resort
The teenager’s distraught mother said last night her daughter was living a ‘nightmare’, but had vowed to fight yesterday’s ruling all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in order to clear her name.
During a summer trip before starting university, the then 18-year-old student told Cypriot police in July that she was raped by up to 12 Israeli youths in the island’s party town of Ayia Napa, having been held down by others as she had consensual sex with one.
But she later retracted her statement, saying she did so under pressure from detectives after ten hours of questioning which was not recorded or carried out in front of a lawyer.
Rather than being allowed home, the woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – found herself in police custody and stranded on the Mediterranean island for five months, charged with ‘public mischief’.
Her lawyers say yesterday’s guilty verdict was ‘set before the trial’, claiming there were ‘many violations’ of her right to a fair trial.
The judge did not hear from any of the woman’s alleged attackers and was adamant he would not rule on whether she was raped or not, despite three men admitting they had sex with her.
As the verdict was delivered, women’s rights campaigners protested outside Famagusta District Court in Paralimni
Judge Michalis Papathanasiou, who often reduced the woman to tears, dismissed evidence put forward by UK experts that supported her claim of being attacked and ruled she ‘did not make a good impression, she did not tell the truth, and tried to mislead the court’.
The teenager’s mother said she was ‘very disappointed’ by the ‘absolutely astonishing verdict’ and said the ‘nightmare’ has left her daughter suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), afraid when she hears loud, male, foreign voices, and suffering from insomnia, and even hallucinations.
She added: ‘Really sadly, I was expecting for an EU nation that they’d have sort of a judicial process that would follow very similar to what we’d see in the UK, but that is really not what I’ve seen out here. Not at all.’
The mother said her daughter was ‘resolute to see justice’ for the ‘violation’ of her human rights. The teenager will be sentenced next Tuesday and faces up to a year in jail and a fine of £1,500.
‘It would be an absolute injustice if they decide to imprison her for any more days than the four and a half weeks she’s already spent in prison [on remand],’ her mother said.
The teenager said in court she was ‘forced’ by police to change her story, telling the judge she was ‘scared for my life’. She added: ‘I didn’t think I would leave that police station without signing that statement.’
But Judge Papathanasiou ruled the teenager lied as revenge, which she denies, for being filmed having sex without her knowledge and the subsequent embarrassment.
Protesters said the young British woman had been ‘raped again by the justice system’
The judge told the court: ‘The defendant gave police a false rape claim, while having full knowledge that this was a lie.
‘The guilt of the accused is proven. She confessed her guilt.’
As the verdict was delivered, women’s rights campaigners protested outside Famagusta District Court in Paralimni.
They said the young girl had been ‘raped again by the justice system’. The handling of the case by the Cypriot police and judicial system has led to widespread calls for an independent investigation amid fears the Midlands teenager is the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice.
Lawyer Mike Polak, of Justice Abroad, a campaign group assisting the young woman, said it felt like the verdict was set ‘before the trial started’, adding: ‘We will be appealing the decision to the Cypriot Supreme Court and to the European Court of Human Rights if we cannot get justice within Cyprus.
‘I don’t think that anyone who attended would say that this was a fair trial.’
Defence lawyer Nicoletta Charambidou said she felt there was enough evidence to prove the woman was raped, adding: ‘We believe there have been many violations of the procedure and the rights of a fair trial of our client.’
As she left court yesterday, the devastated student gave a thumbs-up to supporters while she and her mother wore gags over their mouths, depicting lips sewn together.
The masks had been given to them by the protesters who chanted, ‘We are with you. We know you. We believe you.’
Mr Polak added: ‘Although the defence team is very disappointed, we are not surprised by the result given the frequent refusal during the trial of the judge to consider evidence which supported the fact that the teenager had been raped.
‘Shutting down questioning from our Cypriot advocates and the production of evidence into the trial on a handful of occasions, the judge stridently stated ‘this is not a rape case – I will not consider whether she was raped or not’.
‘We have found it incredibly difficult to follow this logic given that an essential element of the offence is for there to be a false statement concerning an imaginary offence and therefore, clearly, if the teenager was raped, she cannot be guilty.’
Zelia Gregoriou, an activist who stood outside the court yesterday, said: ‘This victim was never protected, from the first instance. From the first instance, she was raped again and again by the Press, by society and the legal system.’
The holiday fling that turned into a nightmare: Middle class, horse-riding woman, 19, says she is haunted by flashbacks to the ‘sex attack’ in Ayia Napa that she has now been found guilty of inventing
The 18-year-old British girl went to Ayia Napa for a summer of fun before university
All she wanted was some summer fun. With her A-levels finished and a place at university secured, the 18-year-old British girl was looking forward to two weeks doing some ‘growing up’.
She wanted to get a tan, make new friends and dance till the sun came up. And if there was a holiday romance thrown in… well, why not?
But within days of arriving in the party resort of Ayia Napa in Cyprus, her dream became a never-ending nightmare.
Her reputation has been shot to pieces, her place at university is gone, and she is so traumatised she is relying on prescription medication for anxiety and PTSD.
She has been trapped on the island since July, and only the financial and emotional support of her mother, and a steady stream of family friends, have kept her together.
The flashbacks, she says, still haunt her.
So how did this middle-class girl, a keen horse-rider from a good family, end up in such a terrible situation?
She had travelled to the popular resort, notorious for teenage debauchery, on July 10 after booking a working holiday package with Summer Takeover.
Billed as ‘Europe’s No 1 working holiday company’, it promises to deliver ‘the summer of a lifetime’ in Ayia Napa, with a package including accommodation for two weeks, and guaranteed interviews for bar work, or leafleting, in return for cut-price foam parties, cheap fishbowl cocktails and all-night clubbing.
The accommodation – a shared room in the budget Pambos Napa Rocks hotel, close to the resort’s main strip – didn’t live up to the pristine pictures in the promotional blurb online, but initially, things looked promising.
She booked a shared room in the budget Pambos Napa Rocks hotel and she arranged to meet her Israeli summer fling in his room (pictured) on July 16
She quickly made friends with her British roommates and within days had met a handsome 21-year-old Israeli man – a promising footballer – who was staying in the hotel. They started a holiday fling.
They enjoyed nights out and posed for photographs together – one showed her smiling happily as she sat on his lap on a moped.
But days later, the young woman says she was betrayed in the worst possible way.
The unedifying story is one from which no one escapes unsullied, and it makes unsettling reading for any parent whose children are planning similar trips next summer.
On the night of July 16, the couple had arranged to meet in his room at the hotel, where guests were housed in blocks according to their nationality.
Little did the girl know, her lover’s friends – who were staying at the hotel ahead of returning to Israel to start their national service – allegedly had other plans for her. They were, she told the court, plotting to ‘do orgies with her’.
A statement was read to the court from a witness describing how they’d seen the young men standing outside the hotel and heard them describing how they were ‘staying in’, because ‘the English girl was coming and that they were going to f*** her – all of them’.
The woman recounted being pinned down by her lover while his friends took it in turns to assault and violate her in his room (pictured)
They were ‘boasting and laughing’, the statement read. They were planning the sex in a ‘bad and aggressive way’.
As is often the case nowadays, the sordid events were recorded on mobile phones. Footage played to the court showed topless youths trying to enter the room where the teenager is having consensual sex with her holiday fling in the early hours of July 17. The video has gone viral and even appeared on porn websites.
Soon after the recording ends, the woman claims she was attacked when 11 other men burst into room. During harrowing testimony, she recounted being pinned down by her lover while his friends took it in turns to assault and violate her.
As he sat on her chest and she is unable to breathe, she says she cannot even see how many of them raped her.
She said she eventually managed to escape the room and her friends took her to a medical centre where staff called the police.
The young men – aged between 15 and 21 – were arrested and remanded in custody. Three of them insisted – when confronted with DNA evidence – that whatever sex had taken place was consensual.
The rape claim was a potential PR disaster for Cyprus, which relies heavily on tourism and attracts 1.3 million British tourists and 230,000 Israelis each year. It was also a diplomatic nightmare for the island, with its close ties to the Israeli government and its bid to prospect for natural gas on the island.
The charges against the Israelis were dropped and they flew home to a heroes’ welcome, drinking champagne at Tel Aviv airport and chanting ‘the Brit is a whore’
Ten days later – on the night of July 27 – the woman was hauled back into a police station for questioning. She told her mother – who had flown out to support her – that she’d be back in an hour. It was just a routine chat, she thought.
Instead, she was questioned for ten hours, without a lawyer. It ended with her signing a retraction statement at 2am saying she had made up the rape because she was ‘insulted’ that she had been filmed without her knowledge.
Within hours, the charges against the Israelis were dropped and they flew home to a heroes’ welcome, drinking champagne at Tel Aviv airport and chanting ‘the Brit is a whore’. Overnight the young woman went from being a victim to being treated like a criminal. Her passport was confiscated and she was arrested and taken to a prison.
In court, she claimed Detective Sergeant Marios Christou threatened to arrest her friends if she didn’t sign the retraction and said she even feared the ‘corrupt officer would kill her’.
Her trial, for what is said to be a minor charge in Cyprus, has been dragged out over five shambolic months. It has been subject to countless delays and adjournments, with Judge Michalis Papathanasiou bizarrely halting proceedings to rule on petty crime cases.
Yesterday, he handed down his guilty verdict with a damning summary branding her a liar and saying: ‘She did not make a good impression on court.’
But her ordeal is not over yet – the judge has delayed sentencing until January 7 when she could be jailed for up to a year and fined up to £1,500.
She has already lost the place she earned at university. Her family have had to fork out thousands of pounds in savings to remain on the island, and they have crowdfunded more than £50,000 to pay for legal fees.
Despite the trauma, she remains adamant that she will take her battle for justice to the highest courts.
She wants to clear her name. It’s the only thing she wants.