The Cyprus Rape Case – A Sad Example of Victim Blaming

You might have seen the unfolding of the ‘Cyprus gang rape case‘ over recent months.

This seems to be a good example of how the courts in Cyprus engage in ‘victim blaming’ when it comes to rape, and seems to illustrate many of the ideas of radical feminism – about how patriarchal institutions punish women for the violence men do against them. It’s of obvious relevance to Feminist theory applied to Crime and Deviance.

The Cyprus Rape Case…

On 17th July 2019 a British woman filed a report in a police station in Ayia Napa claiming she had been gang raped by 12 Israeli men. The men were detained, and various examinations carried out, linking 7 of them to the alleged victim through DNA evidence and or shared scratches/ bruises. The incident was also filmed.

On 27th July the victim visited the police station again, to give a statement, but after 8 hours of questioning without a lawyer retracted her original report saying she had consented to having sex with all 12 men.

The alleged rapists were then released and allowed to go home to Israel while the British woman was charged by the Cypriot authorities with making a false statement – and had to spend the next 6 months on bail why she waited for her trial to take place.

On the fourth of January, the woman was found guilty of misleading the police, but the judge refused to take into account certain crucial pieces of evidence – he didn’t even look at the video footage which was taken, for example.

As punishment she received a four month sentence, and was allowed to return home to the UK, and she is now going to appeal her conviction.

If you want to find out more, from a Feminist perspective, then this Huffington Post article is a useful source.

IMO this is a grim case which clearly shows the lengths the police and the courts will go to in Cyprus to protect men by blaming women who get gang raped.