American accused of raping 22-year-old British tourist in Mykonos hotel bathroom

Man has been arrested and denies accusations

Mykonos’s Platis Gialos Beach (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A wealthy American is accused of following a 22-year-old British tourist into a hotel bathroom on the scenic Greek island of Mykonos and raping her.

The tourist, who has not been identified beyond coming from Preston, in Lancashire, told police she met the man among a group of Americans partying in a nearby pub on Saturday afternoon. He bragged about coming from a rich family from the New York area, she added.

The group went back to the woman’s hotel room, she said, where the man proceeded to “immobilise” her in a bathroom stall and forced her to have sex, the Greek news outlet Proto Tema reports.

"There he forced me to have sex with him while I tried to push him away , explaining to him in vain that I was not in the mood for sexual intercourse. But he persisted and with his strength managed to squeeze me and immobilize me,” she told officials, according to Proto Tema.

The 22-year-old underwent a forensic exmaination with the Mykonos police department.

The man, who has not been named according to Greek law, was arrested and denies the accusation.

The accused rapist is set to appear before the Syros First Instance Prosecutor.

The same night of the alleged assault, another person, a 22-year-old Danish woman, was also allegedly raped.

Police are now looking for a man in black trousers and a red t-shirt, after the woman alleged the individual took her to her hotel room and forced her to have sex.

In 2021, Greece experienced what some have considered its own version of the #MeToo movement, after Olympic sailing champion Sofia Bekatorou said she was assaulted in 1998 by a sports official.

The admission prompted many Greeks from a variety of different sectors to share their own experiences with sexual violence.

The former prominent head of the National Theatre, Dimitris Lignadis, is in the final stages of a trial for raping minors, which he has denied.

In 2019, the country faced a storm of controversy for a proposed law defining the definition of rape based on how much physical resistance a victim put up, rather than on consent, before leaders changed course and sought a consent-based standard.