At her trial, the woman said that she was in a romantic relationship with one of the accused men, according to Justice Abroad.
She testified that she had consensual sex with the man in his hotel room on July 17, but that he “turned more aggressive than usual.” Other young men then entered the room, she said, adding that she had told them to leave.
She said that one of the men had immobilized her by shoving his knees on her shoulders, and that because she lost consciousness during the episode, she did not know how many of the men had assaulted her, according to Justice Abroad.
She said that she eventually managed to escape, and then went to a nearby clinic. The doctor who examined her that day called the police.
The woman later told the court that the police had pressured her to retract the accusations on July 27 after she was held for four hours at a police station where she had been taken to give a voluntary statement.
“They asked me to say that it wasn’t a rape,” she said in court.
Andrea Nini, a forensic linguist, testified during the proceedings that it was likely that a paragraph in the statement had been dictated to the woman by someone who spoke English as a second language.
The woman’s legal team argued that she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The woman also said that while she was in the police station, she was not allowed to call her mother, who was in Cyprus at the time. “I said, ‘Mum has a law degree, and I know my rights and I want a lawyer,’” she testified, adding that Mr. Christou told her that “maybe that’s allowed in the U.K., but not in Cyprus.”
Source : Nytimes
