21 The Ayia Napa rape case 2019 Eva Ihezue

This research was completed as part of the Churcher’s to Campus (C2C) courses

Eva Ihezue Upper Sixth

Harriet Hall

On 17th July 2019, a British nineteen year-old, who was on a working holiday in Cyprus, gave a statement to the police claiming that she had been attacked and raped by twelve young Israelis in the Pambos Napa Rocks Hotel where she was staying . The men were arrested the same day but after eight days of detention, five of the men were released from prison as no DNA evidence was found to link them to the alleged crime. The rest of the men were released only a few days later.

The reason for their release was due to the fact that the nineteen-year-old retracted her statement on 27th July after further questioning by the police. She was then charged with the Cypriot offence of Public Mischief. Public mischief is defined by the Cypriot Criminal Code as knowingly providing police with “a false statement concerning an imaginary offence,” and carries a maximum jail sentence of a year and a 1,700-euro fine. The teenager then spent more than a month in prison in the capital, Nicosia before she was granted bail at the end of August. During this time she rejected her retraction statement and said that she had been forced to produce it by the police. Regardless of this, the case was brought to trial and on 30th December, after nearly two months in trial, the Paralimni court ruled that she was guilty of causing public mischief by falsely accusing the men of raping her. On 7th January Judge Michalis Papathanasiou gave the teenager a fourmonth sentence suspended for three years (this means that if she abides by the law for three years, she will not serve the four months in prison). The day the verdict was given she returned home. It is said that an appeal will be made against the conviction and sentence3, due to a number of events, both before and during her trail, that the lawyers defending her believe show that this was a ‘miscarriage of justice’ and greatly influenced the verdict.

considered a suspect in a case rather than a witness. Such interviews are conducted ‘under caution’ and are recorded to be used as evidence. As nothing is recorded in police stations in Cyprus, this presented a further problem, in that there was no evidence of exactly what the teenager or the police had said in either one of her interviews. This made it difficult to prove or disprove whether she was in fact encouraged to write a retraction statement. Michael Polak stated: “After providing a further written statement, the police officer told her that he believed that she was lying Michael Polak, the teenager’s lawyer about the allegations and that he wanted to for the trial and the director of Justice help her. He told her to write a confession Abroad, says that their appeal is based and that if she did not do so he would arrest on the fact that the retraction statement her friends in Cyprus for conspiracy.” was given in what the teenager thought was a witness interview made ten days It might be said that the average person after her own allegation against the boys, would be unlikely to withdraw a statement when no lawyer or translator was present. that was actually true. However, Doctor This, he says, is a breach of The European Kristine Tizzard, a psychologist working Convention on Human Rights and also with the teenager, said that she was Cypriot constitutional law, which is based suffering from post-traumatic stress on the former. Polak is referring to article disorder (PTSD). The doctor explained that 6 of the Convention on Human Rights, people suffering from PTSD have been which states that everyone has the right to known to make retraction statements to get a fair trial and is allowed a lawyer present out of the stressful situation. in the interview and an interpreter if the questioner cannot be understood. Neither This might explain the discrepancies in the of these was present. teenager’s comments, but this evidence was Having a lawyer present at a police not taken into consideration by the judge in questioning is the trial. extremely important so that she or he A further criticism of can identify any the trial procedure was irregularities that the judge refused in questions or to consider evidence procedures. The that a rape had been solicitors also advise committed, claiming the witness of any that the case was for consequences the public nuisance only answers might and that the trial was have in a court. not about whether a This is especially rape had been comitted. important in this The teenager’s defence case as the teenager team argued that this had said that she was: “coerced into prevented them from putting forward the signing a confession revoking the criminal evidence to show that her account was complaint” and did not realise that in doing correct. The definition of public nuisance so she was admitting to having given false is that the statement must concern an evidence that could lead to a charge against imaginary offence. her. During the trial, the teenager said that she had agreed to have sex with one of the men, but that the other eleven men had burst into

“Public mischief is defined by the Cypriot Criminal Code as knowingly providing police with “a false statement concerning an imaginary offence”.

the hotel room and attacked her. She could Independent which brought up other not see all of their faces because one of the accounts of victims who have experienced men was kneeling on her shoulders. She mistreatment under the law. This included explained that once she had left the room the American Marie Adler who felt she her friends took her to a medical clinic and had been treated as suspect when she the police were called. She put forward was questioned for hours about her rape evidence from a forensic pathologist doctor, without the presence of a lawyer.8 In her Marius Matsakis, who examined her and case, Marie had told the police that she found thirty-five bruises on the teenager’s had been raped at knifepoint by a burglar eyes, bottom, knees and upper legs. He said but could not remember details of his that the injuries were “consistent with rape. appearance. Similar to the teenager in Ayia Anyone who had any medical experience Napa, she had retracted her statement can see that they are not jelly fish stings.” and was then charged with false reporting This was in response to the prosecution under section 1038 of the U.S. code. It was which had having identified the marks as later proven using forensic evidence that jellyfish stings in the trial. The defence Marie Adler had been attacked by Marc was also not allowed to highlight problems Patrick O’Leary, who was found to be a with police procedure. For example, Marios serial rapist. Matsakis claimed that the rape kit was incomplete and that the teenager’s clothing Many rape victims feel as though they are was not examined. The defence team noted being treated as liars rather than victims, that the police did even though the not take any pictures of her upper body, which would have [I]n Cyprus the rate of reporting Ministry of Justice in 2012 estimated that only around three been important in the evidence as the girl had said that she had incidents of sexual violence to the percent of 1149 rape cases they analysed could be perceived been pinned down by police is the highest to be ‘malicious’ her shoulders. in the EU. and even then none of them could be There was a lot of proven to be false. media attention surrounding the case, In response to the case, many human much of which supported the teenager. rights and feminist organisations urged One of the teenager’s lawyers, John Hobbs, Cyprus’s attorney-general to dismiss the helped set up a GoFundMe page for the case. They included Susanna Pavlou of the nineteen-year old’s legal representation Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies. titled ‘help teen victim get justice in In addition to providing support outside Cyprus’. It raised over £150,000. of the court, approximately twenty-five protesters from the Network Against The case also highlighted the treatment Violence Against Women sat in the court that many victims of rape across the during her trial. They wore gags over their world say they experience. Harriet Hall, mouths showing an image of stitched-up a journalist, published an article in The lips. The British media have now expressed their concerns over the safety of female tourists visiting Cyprus due to this case and others that have occurred before it. Amnesty International reported in 2018 that in Cyprus the rate of reporting incidents of sexual violence to the police is the highest in the EU. It stands at twenty-seven percent compared to the EU average of fourteen percent. However the conviction rate, as in many countries, is falling.

On the face of it, this case seemed to be a simple legal matter where a witness had admitted that she had made false allegations and faced the legal consequences of her actions. However, it has highlighted the importance of a fair police procedure and trial process. In addition, it has brought to public attention the difficulties that people who alleged that they have been raped face within the legal system.

There have been theories suggesting that the Cypriot court did not want to take a rape case against the men to trial over fears of bad publicity affecting the amount of tourism the country receives. If that was the case, the approach was arguably unsuccessful given the amount of publicity the teenagers trial has received. Certainly, the holiday company Summer Takeover released a statement early in 2020 writing that: “Summer takeover takes the safety of our guests extremely seriously. We will no longer be operating in Ayia Napa in any capacity. Any affiliation to Pambos Napa of rocks has been removed from our website and no dates are available to book.”

Michael Polak