Landmark court win for British woman who claimed she was raped by bartender in Greece

The alleged rape happened in the seaside town of Parga on the west coast of Greece

The Greek, right, and the European flags wave under the ancient Acropolis hill in Athens (Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

A British woman who claimed she was raped by a bartender while on holiday has won a complaint against the Greek authorities at the European Court of Human Rights.

According to court documents, the woman, who is referred to as Ms X, was aged 18 at the time of the alleged incident in 2019.

The bartender, who she met in the seaside town of Parga on the west coast of Greece, claimed the woman consented to having sex.

Judges in Strasbourg highlighted “significant shortcomings” as they found Greek authorities breached articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because there had not been an effective investigation into the allegations and the “criminal proceedings had fallen short of the required standards”.

The woman’s lawyer, Michael Polak, said she was “delighted” with the judgment, which he described as “monumental”, adding that she hopes her “ordeal and her fighting this case will stop other women from having to go through what she did”.

Mr Polak, director of Justice Abroad, which offers legal representation and advice for British people navigating foreign justice systems, told the PA news agency the woman was brought face to face with the alleged perpetrator in the police station, “subjected to medical procedures which were not properly explained to her” and “kept totally in the dark” about progress in the investigation – which police later dropped.

Branding it a “systemic failure” rather than an isolated case, Mr Polak said: “We hope that this decision will spur the Greek authorities to change how they treat victims of sexual offences because Greece is obviously a place where lots of young women travel to and we hope they don’t suffer the same treatment.”

The judgment said: “The court, without expressing an opinion on the guilt of the accused, finds that the failure of the investigative and judicial authorities to adequately respond to the allegations of rape shows that they did not submit the case to the careful scrutiny required for them to properly discharge their positive obligations under the convention…

“The court thus concludes that the failure of the investigative and judicial authorities to adequately respond to the allegations of rape in the present case amount to a violation of the positive obligations of the state under articles 3 and 8 of the convention.”

The “intimate nature” of the complaint, the woman’s young age and the “fact that she claimed to have been raped while on holiday in a foreign country” were all factors which “called for a correspondingly sensitive approach on the part of the authorities”, according to the court.

“Following the submission of the applicant’s complaint, the investigating authorities did not take measures to prevent her further traumatisation and did not take sufficient account of her needs. They did not take any measures to inform her of her rights as a victim, such as the right to legal assistance or counselling and psychological support, the right to receive information and the right to object to the interpretation.

“Furthermore, the investigating authorities did not take adequate measures to mitigate what was clearly a distressing experience for the applicant, such as the interview, the direct confrontation with the accused, the identification procedure and the medical examination, which should have been subject to more careful assessment…

“In addition, neither the prosecution nor the court analysed the circumstances of the case from the perspective of gender-based violence. They failed to explore the available possibilities for establishing all the surrounding circumstances… and to take account of the particular psychological factors involved in rape cases such as the present one, and to make a context-sensitive assessment of the credibility of the various statements.

“There was no serious attempt to clarify the discrepancies or to assess the applicant’s state of mind and personal circumstances.

“Those elements, in addition to the manner in which they assessed the forensic report, which did not actually contradict the applicant’s version of events, were not isolated errors but significant shortcomings,” the judgment added.

The claimant was not awarded compensation or legal costs because her claim was lodged too late, the court said.

The Greek government and police have been contacted for comment.