There is one clear truth in the Ayia Napa rape case – a young woman’s life has been destroyed
Need we ask again why so many women don't report their assaults at all?
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If you breathed a sigh of relief upon reading the news that the British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus and convicted of “causing public mischief” has now walked free after being handed a four-month suspended sentence, please don’t. This is not a win. This is not what justice looks like.
The 19-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, alleged that she was raped by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the party resort of Ayia Napa on 17 July 2019. Shortly afterwards, she revoked her complaint in a written statement – a statement she claims Cypriot police dictated to her and coerced her to sign, following 10 hours without legal representation.
The teenager maintains she was gang-raped by the men, following consensual sex with one member of the group.
The young woman was detained on 28 July and forced to remain on the island. Her alleged attackers were released without charge, and were reportedly filmed singing “the Brit is a whore” as they were reunited with their families in Israel.
Meanwhile, a video that purports to show several men having sex with the woman went viral, and the woman was trolled online. She has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Throughout this case, the hashtag #IBelieveHer has trended on Twitter. The debate over who does believe the woman and who does not rages on. Yet whatever you believe, one thing is unmistakably clear about the case: a young woman’s life has been irreparably destroyed by her encounter with the Cypriot justice system.
A woman convicted following an entire case that relied upon a confession taken after hours of questioning, without the assistance of a solicitor, and then having her identity compromised – it’s enough to make your blood boil. And yet this harrowing story isn’t unheard of.
It brings to mind the similar experience that Marie Adler endured in America when she reported her rape, and was then treated as suspect by police, who subjected her to hours of questioning without a lawyer. The case also recalls that of the Stanford sex attacker, sentenced to just six months in prison for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Or what about the Parole Board for England and Wales, who recently deemed black cab rapist John Worboys – convicted of 19 sex offences against 12 victims – “fit for release” after serving just 10 years of his indefinite sentence, and following a hearing that the High Court later ruled didn’t “to any extent” probe the “credibility and reliability of his account”?
If you think the Cyprus story is horrific, don’t think a similar miscarriage of justice couldn’t happen here in the UK. It can, and probably has. For as a country in the European Union (at least at the time of writing), the UK is subject to the same Human Rights Convention Cyprus seems to me to have ignored throughout this case.
In this country, alleged rape victims routinely report being made to feel like perpetrators by the police. It is not coincidental that rape convictions in England and Wales are in steady decline; nor that many women don’t report their assaults at all.
If this woman’s allegations are true, she has been assaulted – not just by 12 men, but by the police, revenge porn, internet trolls, and a conviction for a crime she did not commit.
Real false allegations – extremely rare as they are, accounting for an estimated 0.62 per cent of all rape cases – ruin people’s lives. Just look at the case of Carl Beech, who was recently jailed for 18 years after being convicted of false accusations of child sex abuse and murder against several high profile public figures.
Yet if this teenager’s allegation was genuinely considered false by the Cypriot courts, a mere one-month suspended sentence (for a crime that in Cyprus usually carries a year’s custodial sentence) would be considered not only lenient, but absurd. Is this an admission by the Cypriots that they lost sight of justice? That they want it all to pass quietly?
The woman’s mother is now backing calls for tourists to boycott Cyprus in protest, saying she believes the country is unsafe for women. This case has proven her right. But then again: where are we safe? And who is looking out for us?