DEFENCE lawyers yesterday flexed their muscles and made it abundantly clear they were taking no prisoners, as the cross-examination of a 31-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic who was allegedly forced into prostitution continued.
From 9.30am to just after 1pm, with two breaks, one of three defence lawyers relentlessly questioned the Dominican witness during the Assize Court trial.
Dressed in jeans and a red short sleeved top, the Spanish-speaking witness sat with her arms crossed across her stomach as one excruciatingly graphic question after another was fired across the courtroom. She is the key prosecution witness in a case involving the alleged trafficking for sexual exploitation and prostitution of women.
At one point, the 31-year-old, who at times looked no older than a child with her hair scraped up off her face, looked the defence lawyer straight in the eye and told him to refrain from calling her by her first name.
“Call me by my surname and not my first name because you are not my friend,” she said through her court interpreter.
Her instruction prompted the lawyer to ask if she had a problem with her temper, a question the judge immediately said he would not allow.
On several occasions the judges had to intervene and ask the lawyer to change his line of questioning, as the witness had already given evidence on the topic. Judge Yiasemis Yiasemi reminded the defence lawyer that even if he did not like the 31-year-old’s answer, she had given one and it had been recorded.
Nevertheless there was an incongruous ripple of laughter, the judges included, when the lawyer said the men in the courtroom had felt “embarrassed” and even “somewhat jealous” when during her testimony last week she had referred to having sex with a client for three hours continuously.
This was the introduction to a lengthy and graphic clarification of whether she had sex continuously or whether there were breaks in between, how many condoms had the alleged client used, how many times had he climaxed and so on.
The court listened as the woman described being held virtually prisoner in a bedroom near a Nicosia cabaret where she’d allegedly been duped into working. Although the girls had a key to the room where they slept, they were watched as they came and went to a kiosk across the road, she said.
If they wanted to get some food they were accompanied by one of the defendants, a waiter at the cabaret. Other times they were followed by a man with long hair who had a white car.
Suggestions by the defence that the man might simply have been an admirer of hers provoked a peel of incredulous laughter from the witness, who said she had seen him talking to several of the defendants.
The defence wanted to know why the woman had given into what were apparently empty threats about being sent to a cabaret in Larnaca if she did not have sex with clients, yet had remained adamant about refusing to insert a sponge into her vagina when met with the same threat.
The sponge was a method allegedly forced on the women to ensure they continued to have intercourse with clients while menstruating.
The 31-year-old said she did not know whether the threat of being sent to Larnaca where she would be kept in isolation was an empty one or if she would have been punished in some other way.
“I deem that you place physical pain higher than moral dignity as a woman,” the lawyer replied.
The defence also pulled out 11 sponges and asked the 31-year-old to indicate which one looked like the one they had been told to use. The answer was none.
Repeated efforts by the defence to try and discredit the witness’ reliability by comparing the statement she gave police in May last year with her court testimony appeared to go nowhere, as she clarified in words what had been put in writing.
When the woman said she did not know something, she would shrug her shoulders and it was clear she could not be goaded into saying anything further.
If the defence wanted to know something about the other girls she worked with, she told him to ask them.
Throughout the proceeding the 31-year-old appeared to demonstrate an array of emotions from frustration and anger to scorn and exhaustion. At least once, after the second interval, she appeared close to breaking. Her voice sounded small and was barely more than a whisper as the cross-examination continued.
The trial was finally adjourned till Monday.
The accused are five Greek Cypriot men and a 26-year-old cabaret artiste from the Dominican Republic. The men are a 55-year-old cabaret manager, three cabaret waiters aged 66, 62 and 53, and a 55-year-old cabaret artiste agent. All six are connected to the cabaret where the 31-year-old was employed last year and deny the charges. If convicted they face a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
