Cyprus failed to effectively probe British teen’s rape claims, Europe’s top human rights court says

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus’ law enforcement authorities failed to live up to their obligation to thoroughly and effectively investigate a British teenager’s claims that she had been gang-raped by a group of Israelis while on a 2019 vacation in a popular resort town, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday.

In its ruling released Thursday, the court placed particular weight on the failure of the authorities to determine whether the woman — who was 18 at the time of the alleged rape — had ever consented to having sex with some of the suspects.

According to the ruling, the woman had told authorities she rejected the suggestion of having sex with multiple partners. However, the suspects persisted in entering the hotel room where the alleged rape took place, disregarding her pleas for them to leave.

Even though the woman was having sex with an Israeli friend of the suspects in that hotel room at the time, the court said investigators didn’t establish whether the suspects had secured her consent. According to testimony, some of them only assumed they would because of her previous behavior.

Flaws in the investigation

The court said investigators appeared not to take into account the woman’s capacity to consent in light of testimony that she had consumed alcohol prior to the alleged rape and that traces of cocaine were found in her urine.

Moreover, police and investigators took the suspects’ statements that no rape had taken place “at face value” despite testimony that her Israeli partner “said he would arrange for his friends to have sex” with her.

This compounded what the court described as a series of flaws investigators in the initial state of the investigation, from a limited search of physical evidence such as fingerprints in the hotel room to failure to track down potential suspects or witnesses.

“The Court observes that the present case reveals certain biases concerning women in Cyprus which impeded the effective protection of the applicant’s rights as a victim of gender-based violence and which, if not reversed, run the risk of creating a background of impunity, discouraging victims’ trust in the criminal justice system, despite the existence of a satisfactory legislative framework,” the ruling said.

No legal representation and prejudiced proceedings

The July, 2019 case made headlines in Cyprus, Britain and Israel when all 12 suspects were released without charge after the woman retracted her rape claims. The Cyprus attorney-general opted not to pursue legal proceedings against the suspects, while the woman was subsequently found guilty on a charge of public mischief and sentenced to a four-month suspended jail term.

In the lower court ruling, the judge said the woman didn’t tell the truth and tried to deceive the court with “evasive” statements. He said the woman had admitted to investigators that she made up the claims because she was “ashamed” after finding out that some of the Israelis had videoed her having consensual sex with her Israeli boyfriend on their cellphones.

In 2022, the Cyprus Supreme Court overturned the woman’s conviction, citing among other reasons that she didn’t have a lawyer present when police repeatedly questioned her and that the lower court misconstrued evidence, prejudicing proceedings against her.

The ECHR ruling said given the conditions of the woman’s questioning by police, “there is force in her argument” that the “long and repeated interviews” prompted her to retract her rape allegations. The court awarded the woman 20,000 euros ($20,850) in damages and another 5,000 euros ($5,210) for legal costs.

Justice Abroad Director Michael Polak, who represented the woman both in Cyprus and at the ECHR, called the ruling a “landmark decision for victims of sexual violence.”

“This ruling reinforces the fundamental principle that allegations of sexual violence must be investigated thoroughly and fairly, without institutional obstruction,” he said.