While not wanting start the New Year on a low note, I’ve been following this case for sometime and think it’s worth highlighting. This morning the victim’s Mum gave an excellent, articulate and detailed interview on the BBC Today programme which really brought home to me how just vulnerable and alone she is. If it was my daughter I’d be distraught. She obviously needs full Foreign Office support ASAP, and not á la Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
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So are you implying she didn’t " get justice "? Yes-I agree the Home Office should be supporting her but it’s not their place to interfere with another country’s justice system is it?
I think there is more to all this than anybody will ever know totally
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Based on what I’ve read and heard Sue I definitely don’t think she got justice. I don’t like the sound of the thing at all but even on a due process bases it’s flawed. I wonder how, I at nineteen years of age I would have stood up to seven hours interrogation in a foreign country by CID officers who’s first language was not English, who’s laws I didn’t understand and having been denied legal representation. She went in as the victim and left as the accused.
It’s more like Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8 than Ayia Napa IMO.
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It’s encouraging, however, that a number of locals have protested about her treatment and the apparent failings of the judicial system - not least the judge who was said to have bullied the girl. One knee- jerk response I don’t agree with, is her mother’s request that tourists boycott the island. Certainly more to this incident than currently disclosed.
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Since she’s scrabbling for any leverage she can John I think the boycott is a good idea. Ayia Napa seems to be another Shagaluuf and if so the only real sanctions they’ll understand are those which hit their all night bars.
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I confess to not knowing much about this girl (and or Cyprus) and I am loathe to jump to any conclusions… good or bad.
However, I do have personal experience of difficulties encountered when one is caught up in police matters in a country where one does not speak the language.
I really hope that this girl’s case is thoroughly revisited in order to be sure that things are properly understood on all sides.
Indeed Stella, in the meantime my natural inclination is to support the underdog, especially when my acute antennae sense misogyny.
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I feel very sorry for her of course. But it was a sordid situation to get into in the first place. But I suppose the whole point of going to Shagaluf-type places is to behave badly. But going to bed with a local boy you’ve only just met is one thing, however when it’s someone from a completely different culture isn’t it a bit naive to assume that he’ll have the same values as the boy next door and all that matters is if he’s attractive? Don’t kids these days have any inbuilt self protection instincts? That’s the trouble with these places, people go there looking for excitement and push the boundaries and try new experiences and escape all the safe boring old conventions, then when things go wrong they immediately want to be back inside the safe conventional bubble again.
The trial does seems to have fallen very short of delivering transparent justice but then the whole thing has a bad taste.
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Not wishing to come across as Colonel Blimp but I’d horse whip the little bastards, even for just bursting into room. Neither I nor my friends I ever treated women that way. I think it’s a matter of respect not only for women but for oneself. I don’t hold with any of this American shock jock “she was asking for it” stuff that President Tump seems to endorse. That’s why scum like Weinstein got away with it for so long.
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Totally 100% agree.
Not wishing to pry into your private life John, but I assume that as a teenager you weren’t in the habit of going to bed with foreign girls you’d just met, in the hotel room you shared with your mates (and who apparently may have already been in the room when the pair of you got into bed, for all we know). If I assume correctly, then you’re not the type of bloke that girls are looking for when they go to Ayia Napa. I imagine they go there precisely because they want a break from being treated with respect by polite English boys, otherwise why go?
If you play with fire, sometimes you get burned.
I don’t see this case as comparable to Weinstein. He systematically abused a position of power to coerce women into sex. It sounds like this was an arrogant insensitive young male who met a pretty girl of his own age who he seems to have regarded as an “easy lay”, presumably he boasted about it to his mates and they decided it would be fun to share her, and the line was crossed when it stopped being consensual, she said no and they didn’t listen. Maybe drugs were involved, who knows. Or maybe it didn’t happen like that at all. But I don’t see the grooming and the big-bucks-at-stake and the abuse of power that makes my skin crawl with people like Weinstein and Trump.
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For god’s sake Anna!!
I had always had you down as someone sensible !
“Why go”? Because they want to get pissed and go on holiday, Doesn’t mean they want to get raped.
Unconscious (or stupid) does not equate to consent.
It doesn’t matter whether drugs were involved or not.
“Playing with fire” - I am seriously speechless. You are so out of touch it isn’t funny.
I’m sorry if this comes across as ranty but as the mother of two girls and a boy, I am SOOOOO glad they see things differently and know their rights and know how to have consensual sex.
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I think that young people (gawd that makes me sound old) go off to these resorts for the drink the sun and probably the sex I have known several young girls who would not dream of behaving at home as they did on holiday but…consensual and on their terms
Part of the issue to me is that young men from countries/ cultures where their own women are more repressed interpret this as British girls are ‘up for it ‘ and consent becomes an irrelevance to them. In their minds they have not committed rape when to every right minded person they have,add in a patriarchal legal system and the odds are weighted against the victim
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I disagree with your assessment of Anna’s position on this matter Cat.
Young people who go to resorts with a well-advertised reputation for the hedonistic flouting of conventional attitudes and strictures on sexual behaviour and drinking to excess must do so in full awareness that they take risks in doing so, and are either complicit in doing so, or reckless in assuming that they are not at risk themselves from others.
They are making a conscious choice to immerse themselves in a situation of huge potential risk, with a list of dangers as long as one’s arm, and a time window of 7-14 days in an alien culture populated by total strangers.
Pre-conditioning with common sense principles can never be guaranteed to stand up to the disinhibitory influences built into such an inflammatory situation.
I have sympathy with those for whom the risks are breached and who suffer harm, but that’s why the risks are there for all to weigh when they decide to open their arms to them, deliberately and invitingly.
As for the police reaction, it is well advertised that police officers ‘abroad’ have a very low tolerance for foreign risk-takers, and an even lower tolerance for anything that looks like criticism of the way they operate. I’ve learned the hard way. Once bitten twice shy! If challenged by a foreign policeman always accept from the outset that you are on the wrong side of the law, and work hard to show that you admit it. It usually gets easier from that point on.
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Noooo!!! That’s the point! They are young and stupid and thus have no idea f of ‘full awareness’ - the very fact that you are using that type of language shows that you are equally out of touch. Sorry ! But the reality is that I am 50 and out of touch - you are heaps older and thus way more out of it.
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The simple truth is no male or female should be at risk of sexual assault anywhere,if the perpetrator cannot control themselves then it’s not the victims fault. I don’t deny a degree of common sense is good ,but we are becoming in danger of victim blaming here
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Yep, exactly.
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I think this characterisation, that young men and women from other cultures are less principled than ‘our own’ is unsound, and based on a narrow view of ‘others’.
What evidence is there that young Israeli men, such as those accused, are less principled, moral or considerate of women than their English counterparts? None at all.
But all are prone to throw caution and inhibitions to the wind in situations such as described. They take risks, having paid for holidays that advertise risk-taking with sex, drink and drugs as the main selling point.
Regrets after the event are just that, the sequel to deliberately risky behaviour.
It not a matter of being less principled or less caring of women. Have you ever been a girl/ woman going off on holiday to any of these resorts and seeing how males behave towards British women? No I have ,even in the 70s British females were targeted
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