A British woman, 19, was escorted to Famagusta district court by police on Tuesday, where she was remanded until August 7 for alleging she was gang-raped by 12 Israeli tourists almost two weeks ago. She arrived at the courthouse with her head covered at approximately 9 am, escorted by police.  She had been detained overnight following a court hearing on Monday that was ultimately postponed for 24 hours due to the absence of her lawyer.

The woman, who alleged almost two weeks ago that she was gang-raped by 12 Israelis, is facing charges of public mischief after she reportedly confessed under questioning that her encounter with the teenagers was consensual. Their ages range from 15 to 18. According to information, the 19-year-old reportedly admitted that she had consensual sex with some of the Israeli teens but when she realised that others were recording on their cell phones, it angered her and she allegedly decided to get back at them by saying she was raped.

COMMENT

It is now becoming clear that this was a ridiculous allegation made by a very irresponsible and spiteful girl. What has surprised me is the number of people who have been making wild conspiracy allegations, based on information via the media. I hope that she will be prosecuted, to the full extent of the law for this, because her actions might just discourage a genuine victim to file a complaint, or discredit the law, placing women at risk.

It is hard enough to get a conviction for rape as it is and in a Europe where rape has increased dramatically, this makes the actions of this girl, all the more offensive. It appears that this case has also raised a lot of questions that we as a society must address, or risk falling further in to a moral abyss.

We know from the the constant stream of sinister events that the act of taking videos of other people’s suffering to whatever degree has got out of hand, What began years ago with ‘Happy Slapping’ has in recent years taken a vile and sinister turn on the slippery slope to where we are today.

Where young ladies are concerned, we must question if the social pressure for women to feel that it is acceptable for them to behave without any moral conscience, but at the same time, possibly as a result of the way many young women behave, along with free access to pornography when they are young and impressionable, too many young men have stopped treating women with the respect that they deserve and that is not something that a civilised society should overlook.

They took video of the girl in an intimate situation and posted it online, yet they were not charged with anything!

There is no doubt that filming this young lady was a gross act of disrespect, but everything moves incrementally, how many of us watch clips of people taken in embarrassing situations? although this may have been taken to a completely different level, it still begs the question that all of us should ask ourselves, and that is if we directly or indirectly condone the mindset of being entertained by the suffering or humiliation of others? If we accept the notion that we do, then we must also accept that this was a sinister evolution of something that we all passively allow.

In the meantime, it was not right for the boys to have filmed her, it is unclear why that they were not charged with that, but that does not mean that they should be charged with rape. There has been a shocking increase in youngsters taking videos of obscene actions, even stabbings in London, that is disgraceful of course, but there there is a lot of immorality that is not illegal.

As I have said before, rape convictions are ridiculously low as it is, I fear that somewhere, somehow, a genuine victim will not get justice because of this, either for fear of being ridiculed or because so many people have come to their own conclusion that these young men were guilty and somehow they were freed because of a back door deal, which also sends out a message that it is possible to get away with rape. Perhaps there should be less information released to the public until the full facts are gathered, but that in itself opens the door to further corruption behind the scenes, so it remains a very challenging fine line.

People have been taken to court and fined for appearing in people’s photographs that they have posted on Facebook, which is not actually the law, but an abuse of the law. As it stands, throughout Europe, the filming of anything or anyone in public is legal, including anything visible from a public place, unless you pursue people to photograph them, then that is harassment.

However, anything taken on private property must have the permission of the owner, hence the reason that photography is not allowed in the Cyprus Mall.

In this case, according to the law, they were on private property, but it depends on the way the law interprets consent for filming. I would have thought that at the very least, there would have been grounds for a case against the young men who posted the video, either under privacy laws or under the ‘revenge porn’ laws.

As it stands, the Cypriot authorities have made a statement that it is not an offence to do this and that is not acceptable.