Back in the summer we wrote about the British girl who had apparently lied about being gang raped by a group of Israeli teens in Ayia Napa, having ‘admitted’ to Cypriot authorities that she made the whole thing up.
Featured Image VIA
Well it turns out there’s a lot more to this story and it’s increasingly looking like the girl didn’t make the incident up at all, but rather was coerced into signing a statement saying she made it up by corrupt Cypriot officials who were trying to avoid a big scandal that could potentially hurt tourism in the country.
One key piece of evidence in her favour is the pathologist’s report which shows 35 bruises on the young lady’s legs, arms and buttocks, as well as marks around her eyes and knees. He put together this diagram for the court:
Incredibly, any additional marks or bruising to her upper body is missing from the evidence because the useless police didn’t bother taking pictures of her without her top on.
Pathologist Marios Matsakis, an expert witness for the woman’s defence, criticised the omission and told The Mail on Sunday:
I have no doubts that violence was exercised on the body.
He added that the data from the diagram ‘is related to rape’.
However, the judge dismissed the pathologist’s evidence and instead convicted the teen, who cannot be named for legal reasons, for public mischief.
If you remember, the allegation was that the incident took place at the Pambos Napa hotel, after which the 12 Israeli boys were arrested and the girl was also taken in and questioned for 8 hours without a lawyer. Eventually, she signed the statement retracting her story.
The girl’s lawyers claim she signed the retraction, which was written in broken English, under duress, adding that she felt frightened and intimidated after police threatened to arrest her friends.
Meanwhile, social media showed the 12 Israelis landing at Tel Aviv airport where they popped bottles of champagne and chanted “The British woman is a whore”. Yikes.
The Foreign Office have expressed ‘serious concerns’ about the case, while international outrage and condemnation has rained down on Judge Michalis Papathanasiou for the way he’s handled the case.
The girl spent over a month in a grimy Cypriot prison before being granted bail, but has not been allowed to leave Cyprus.
She is due to be sentenced on Tuesday, January 7, where she faces a year in jail and a £1,500 fine if found guilty of making the incident up. Her lawyers have asked for a suspended sentence which would allow her to fly back home to England.
I remember reading about this story back in July before all this new information came to light and I just accepted that the girl had made the whole thing up and had it backfire in her face. Now, after seeing the pathologist’s report plus all the extra info on the corrupt Cypriot police and the girl’s mum talking on ‘This Morning’, it’s clear the most tragic outcome here would be this teenager being found guilty tomorrow and having to spend another year locked up in Cyprus. Imagine ruining a young girl’s life like that just to avoid a bad tourism story for Ayia Napa.
Hopefully all the international attention this story is getting puts the pressure on the Cypriot authorities to do the right thing tomorrow – we’ll have to wait and see.
That’s not to say fake rape claims don’t happen, of course – even Farrah Abraham once admitted to making one up.
UPDATE: Metro reports that in all likelihood the girl will receive a Presidential pardon and be allowed to fly back into the UK as soon as tomorrow. Let’s hope so.
