A MAN OF 53 appeared in court yesterday charged with systematically abusing, beating and raping his Bulgarian wife.
The defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is also charged with raping his previous wife in another case.
He denies the accusations in both cases.
Yesterday, the Bulgarian woman told the court how her husband would beat her and systematically rape about three times a day.
He has been charged with multiple counts of rape and assault.
She also spoke of the way in which he had threatened her into marrying him, even after she ended their brief affair during her stay in Cyprus.
“After I had gone back to Bulgaria, he would continuously call me and beg me to come back. I eventually caved in when he told me that if I didn’t come back to Cyprus to marry him, he would send the mafia to go and kill my family,” the woman told the court through an interpreter.
“My marriage to the defendant,” she continued, “was utter hell. Because we had no money, we were forced to live in his son’s apartment and there he would lock me in while he went out. He would beat and rape me around three times a day and would not allow me to phone anyone or have a life. I was treated like an animal,” she said.
According to her testimony, her husband would later force her to wait outside his work in central Nicosia, sometimes for more than eight hours.
State Prosecutor Panayiota Kythreotou will next call the Bulgarian’s woman’s best friend to the stand –said to be only witness to the defendant’s abusive behaviour.
The other case pending against the man involves an incident alleged to have happened at around 8pm on November 11, 2004 after the suspect and his former wife had dinner with their children at his son’s flat.
After their children left the flat, the suspect asked the 60-year-old woman to have sex with him, but she refused. The court heard he then allegedly kept her there using force and threatened to throw her out of the second floor window if she did not comply with his wishes.
The woman’s screams went in vain and the court was told that the man forced her on to their son’s bed and raped her.
The defendant claims she was a willing participant.
