A photo of the teen taken at court on July 30, 2019. Photo: MATTHIEU CLAVEL/AFP via Getty Images A 19-year-old British woman faces up to a year in prison after she was found guilty in a Cypriot court on Monday of lying about being gang-raped by a dozen young Israeli men in the hotel where she was vacationing. She was first arrested on July 17, after she retracted her initial accusation.
The U.K. government has also expressed concern about the situation, and in a statement, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it would be raising the issue with Cypriot authorities. The initial accusation In July, the teenager, who has not been publicly identified, was staying at the Pambos Napa Rocks Hotel in the resort town of Ayia Napa, on Cyprus’ southeastern coast on a working holiday.
The woman also said in her trial that during her questioning, police would not allow her to call her mother, who was also in Cyprus, and that the police questioning her forced her to change her statement. “They asked me to say that it wasn’t a rape,” she said in court. Police have denied this accusation.
Months later, on Monday, December 30, Famagusta District Court Judge Michalis Papathanasiou found the woman guilty of “public mischief,” a charge which carries with it a maximum fine of €1,700, and up to a year in jail. Papathanasiou cited the woman’s statement recanting her claim, and said he thought she had made up the accusations because she was “ashamed” of the footage of her having sex, which some of the men had filmed. “She did not tell the truth, and tried to mislead the court,” he said.
The backlash During and after the trial, observers and human rights experts criticized how the case was handled. In her op-ed for the Guardian, Joan Smith noted that, “the Cypriot investigation was over in just 12 days. How can a thorough investigation into an alleged rape with multiple perpetrators be carried out in such a short space of time?”
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