Police said on Monday they were investigating four complaints by women who said they had been assaulted between November and December last year by an unknown man at a popular park in Nicosia, following criticism that the force was dragging its feet over the matter.
The story emerged after several posts on social media about several assaults against women at the popular park along the Pedieos riverbed.
After being accused of not doing anything, police on Monday issued a statement confirming the reports, saying it was carrying out specific actions to locate the perpetrator or perpetrators.
The force said it had received complaints from four women in November and during the Christmas season, which were being investigated.
Police said a number of officers were working on the case but refrained from providing further details pending any arrests.
Earlier Monday, police deputy spokesman Stelios Stylianou said the area spanned the jurisdiction of five police stations, that were trying to gather as much information as possible to get all the details.
Daily Politis reported that in one of the incidents a foreign woman had been attacked on the night of December 21 and had to fight with the assailant for some time before managing to get away.
She stopped a car with a couple who took her to her home and then to a police station. The woman then visited her doctor who found bruises and broken ribs, Politis said.
After days of silence, a neighbour contacted the police because the woman does not speak Greek, and asked whether there had been any developments. She was asked to call back on a Saturday and she did but was told that the investigating officer wasn’t there.
Police called the complainant on January 12 in the morning, asking her to go to the police station at 8pm to have a look at a suspect.
Politis said the woman had been told that she would be seeing the suspect face to face, a prospect she could not handle.
In the end the woman, with a female friend, were put in a small room used as a kitchen and shown the photo on the identity card of a suspect. She was then asked to peek through a half-closed door to see if she could identify her assailant. Politis said a second woman who had been attacked five days later was also at the station.
The women did not identify the suspect. Two days later, she was visited by two officers who showed her another picture, unofficially, but again she could not identify the suspect.
