Ayia Napa: British teen tells court she was forced into retracting rape claim by police
The teen said she was forced by police to make a retraction statement over fears she would be kidnapped or killed.
Wednesday 16 October 2019 16:23, UK
A British teenager accused of falsely claiming she was gang raped has told a court in Cyprus that her retraction statement was written in "Greek English".
The 19-year-old, who cannot be named, denies causing public mischief by allegedly making a false claim that she was attacked by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the holiday resort of Ayia Napa on 17 July.
On Wednesday, the teenager broke down in tears as she was cross-examined for more than three hours during her trial.
She said she was forced by police to make a retraction statement 10 days later over fears she would be kidnapped or killed.
Prosecutors say she willingly wrote and signed the document, but her lawyers claim she was told what to write by Cypriot police, led by Detective Sergeant Marios Christou.
"Marios wanted me to write that it was made up but it's not in proper English," she told Famagusta district court in Paralimni.
Insinuating she did not write the statement herself, she continued: "This is not in proper English. This is in Greek English.
"I'm very well educated. I'm going to university, I got an unconditional offer so there is no way I would write a paragraph like this.
"It doesn't make grammatical sense.
"All the way through there isn't one sentence an English person would write."
Police arrested 12 Israeli teenage boys who were on holiday, and they were all freed when she withdrew the accusation.
A friend of the teenager told the court that police had also added details to her own statement, which she deleted when an officer left the room.
"He wrote something in the statement that I didn't actually say," the psychology graduate said.
"It was in reference to how much we had been drinking."
The woman on trial also told the court she had arrived in Cyprus when she was 18, a week before the alleged rape, and went on the trip in an "attempt to grow up" before beginning university.
She said: "I'm academically educated, (but) I'm 18 years old I have no life experience. I don't know how life works".
She admitted lying to her mother in a text sent from the police station which read: "Trust me, I'm OK".
"I think any child will lie to their parents to tell them they are OK because parents don't stop worrying about their child.
"If your child had just been raped by 12 Israelis and wouldn't get out of bed and had a throat so swollen she couldn't breathe and was taken to the police station for what she thought was an hour but then went on to be nearly eight hours."
The teenager spent over a month in prison before she was granted bail at the end of August, but cannot leave the island.
If she is found guilty of making up the rape claim, she could face up to a year in jail and a €1,700 (about £1,500) fine.
Michael Polak, director of the group Justice Abroad, which is assisting the teenager, said after the hearing: "She gave evidence for over three hours and answered every question convincingly.
"She didn't try to avoid any questions during the long ordeal today."
The trial continues on Thursday.