WOMEN’S information and support centre APANEMI said yesterday it had filed a complaint with the Attorney-general over what it called the mishandling of an Eastern European woman’s rape claim.
“From the word go, the authorities doubted the woman’s claims,” APANEMI general co-ordinator Julia Kalimeri said. “The burden of proof lies with the rapist, not the victim, but that’s not how this case was handled.”
Among those the organisation said it was disappointed with were the police, the hospital, the social welfare service and the family violence association.
Furthermore, due to the lack of co-ordination between the state and non-governmental services, the victim was never made fully aware of her rights, including her access to state aid and a lawyer, said Kalimeri.
“In the end, the woman fled Cyprus, dropping all the charges. The last words she told a friend of hers on the way to the airport were ‘I’m leaving because I’m afraid for my life. I’m not the first to have experienced what I have’… Frankly under the circumstances she is indeed safer in her own country than in Cyprus,” she said.
Kalimeri told the Cyprus Mail that APANEMI had asked the Attorney-general to examine the case and the way it had been handled, and to look at the gaps in the state services’ mechanisms, which had failed to protect the victim.
She was referring to a 42-year-old Romanian woman who said she had been systematically harassed and raped on two occasions by her employer’s 65-year-old father between July 1 and August 13 this year. The man, a farmer from Gouri village, was released after the alleged victim withdrew her complaints of rape, assault and illegal entry against him four days after making them. She told officers she just wanted the £200 owed to her by her boss and had made up the story.
“Whether she was raped or not is irrelevant. It should have been left up to the courts to decide. Instead this woman, a migrant worker and therefore a member of a vulnerable social group, was treated by police like a woman ‘asking for it’.”
Kalimeri said officers had on several occasions asked the victim if she was sure she wanted to make a rape claim, pointing out it was a crime that carried a sentence of life imprisonment.
She said: “A victim should only have to make the claim once. It’s then up to the state to help and support the victim and it’s up to the court to prove it wasn’t rape… One of the officers asked me if I thought she had been raped. I told him it wasn’t up to me to decide whether or not she had been raped and nor was it up to him. Police are supposed to investigate all the evidence from all sides and bring the case to light, that’s their job, not to express opinions.”
The APANEMI co-ordinator said the woman had only been taken to hospital for tests on their insistence and that even then no photographer had been present to document the bruising on her thigh and upper arm.
“They said there were no markings to show she’d been raped, but how could there have been when the rape happened 10 days before she reported it,” Kalimeri said.
The case came to light on August 22 after diners at the Fikardou village restaurant where the woman worked contacted APANEMI, who immediately notified police. Apparently the diners found out, when, using the little English the woman knew, in conjunction with gesticulations, she told them what had happened to her.
“From the minute she was at the police station she was treated with suspicion. We can’t say it was rape and we can’t say it wasn’t, but the victim should still have been protected.
This is not the first time this approach has been taken by police. We have received countless reports about women who are raped by their husbands and yet are sent home by officers like it’s nothing more than a domestic spat.”
She also criticised the police for its portrayal of the alleged victim as a liar in the way it had presented the case to the media, and that the alleged rapist had been painted as the victim.
She said it was no wonder the woman had finally succumbed to pressure and accepted money to drop the charges and that now no one would ever know what had really happened because the woman had left the island.
“In the meantime a rape suspect is allowed to go about freely without giving justice the opportunity to judge his innocence or guilt, something which may put other women’s safety and physical integrity at risk,” she said.
