THE SUPREME Court rejected a rape sentence appeal saying the penalty “could have been stricter” given the “humiliation” the victim had to endure.
Aleksej Meterin was jailed for seven years for raping a 27-year-old Scottish tourist in 2005.
The Scottish woman was on holiday in April 2005 with her two sisters, mother and her four-year-old son.
She was “repeatedly raped” by Meterin and two others in the early hours of April 10 after a night out.
She was “humiliated in front of more than one person with no possibility of escape or doing anything that could help her stop what was happening,” the Court said.
Two of her rapists were part of a group of five men loitering in bars in Paphos with whom the 27-year-old and one of her sisters played pool.
The men followed the girls around various bars and eventually one of them offered hashish to the 27-year-old, who was led to Meterin’s apartment.
There, she was ‘repeatedly raped’ by three different men: the man she had followed; Meterin; and a third man, part of the original group of men she had met earlier.
The 27-year-old described in great detail what happened to her which the court described as “humiliating”.
Although the police had Meterin’s passport, he managed to go abroad where he got a passport with a different name.
A European arrest warrant against him was issued on March 2010.
Meterin’s lawyers appealed against the sentence claiming the witness was unreliable and that she had agreed to have sex with him.
The court said however that “despite an intense cross-examination [the witness’] testimony remained unshakable in regards to the essential facts”.
The court rejected the defence’s claim that the woman’s bruises did not point to violence because the state pathologist disagreed.
The complainant – “with full honesty” – admitted that she had some bruises from before demonstrating that she “had no intention to alter the facts either to her own benefit or to worsen [Meterin’s] position,” the court said.
Meterin appealed against his imprisonment for seven years saying that it was “patently excessive” given his clean record, personal circumstances and the large amount of time that had passed since the incident and the trial.
The court rejected all claims, adding that given the woman’s treatment, the penalty “could have been stricter”.
