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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7953857/British-teen-gang-raped-Cyprus-tells-story.html

British teen 'gang-raped' in Cyprus tells her full story: She reveals how holiday fling with footballer turned to horror and says 'I don't know how many Israeli boys raped me but I thought "If I don't get out of here, I'll die'"

    After reporting the violent assault in Ayia Napa to police she was branded a liar
    A series of court appearances ensued, in which she was hectored and bullied
    She is now back home after a Cypriot court imposed a suspended sentence

By Frances Hardy and Inderdeep Bains for the Daily Mail

Published: 22:02, 31 January 2020 | Updated: 07:28, 1 February 2020

She sits huddled under a blanket; curled child-like, hugging her knees.  Her hazel eyes stare blankly into the distance and then she begins.  FRANCES HARDY and INDERDEEP BAINS hear the full harrowing account of the British teen raped in Cyprus.  'I can't describe the panic or pain. I was so full of adrenaline that I didn't really feel it until later.'

She is describing how her holiday fling with a handsome Israeli footballer she knew as Sam, in the party resort of Ayia Napa, Cyprus, descended into the terror of gang rape, then into an escalating nightmare from which, six months on, she is only just emerging.  After reporting the violent assault to police, events took a sinister turn.  She was branded a liar, charged with fabricating the rape, coerced into retracting her accusation and — as she awaited trial for the offence of causing public mischief thrown into a squalid jail in Nicosia for five weeks.  A series of court appearances ensued, in which she was hectored and bullied by a judge who did not believe her.  Today, she is back at home with her mum in rural Derbyshire after a Cypriot court imposed a suspended sentence. But a criminal conviction, which she intends to appeal, still hangs over her.  You have to remember that this young girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was just 18 when a pack of up to 12 young men took turns to rape her last summer.  Although her cloaked and pixellated image has been used the world over as a symbol in debates, on everything from Western licentiousness to state-sanctioned corruption and misogyny, in real life she seems so much younger.  This outdoorsy, sociable, animal-loving school-leaver who hoped for a career with the police, working in counter-terrorism, after university today seems cowed, diminished and frightened.  But she's determined to speak out and clear her name.  Starting today, in shattering interviews with the Mail, the girl reveals how she believes her handsome 'holiday fling' had targeted her from the outset and had been planning the rape for days before he and his friends attacked her 'like a pack of animals'.  She also reveals how she was put on antiretroviral drugs as doctors feared she'd been infected with HIV by her rapists, and how police held her in a darkened room for hours, without a lawyer or outside contact, as they bullied her into signing a false confession to making up the rape.  No detail is spared as she describes 'that' night. She wants to be understood. She wants people to believe her.  'We started kissing on his bed,' she says, describing the sex with Sam, which began consensually in his hotel room on his last night in the resort.  Then everything changed. I remember seeing light from under the door and a group of Sam's Israeli friends came in. They were shouting and jeering.  Then Sam was kneeling on my chest and he began to rape me orally, so I could hardly breathe.  He was shouting in Hebrew to his Israeli friends and they were jumping around laughing. I was in distress. I shouted, 'No! Get out! No!' I tried to cross my legs.  My arms were flailing. I was trying desperately to get away. Then Sam got annoyed. He grabbed my left knee and pinned it down so I was accessible.  I couldn't see what was happening. Sam was in the way. Then other lads got hold of my ankles and they took turns to rape me.  You lose track of time. The whole thing probably lasted around half an hour and then Sam got off my chest. He lifted his weight off the upper half of my body and shouted something to his friends.  And then I managed to pull myself out. I scrabbled across the floor, pulled on my shorts and grabbed my bag.

'I was so scared I ran out without my shoes and there was a bunch of boys standing at the door.  I ran past them and down to the stairwell screaming, 'Stay away!'  Then one of them threw my shoes at me and I slipped them on as I was running downstairs. When I got to the bottom there were two or three more Israelis standing there in front of the door.  I was so frightened I wouldn't get past them, that I wouldn't have another opportunity to escape, I absolutely screamed my head off and ran.  I could see in my peripheral vision they were running after me. I sped up and there was a puddle. I ran through it and slipped as if on a banana peel. I landed on my elbow and hit my head, and by then the Israeli boys had caught up with me.  I scrambled to my feet and Sam was there by this time. I can't remember what he was saying. Perhaps, 'Are you OK?' He spoke a bit of English.  I was screaming and crying, then some of my English friends, who'd heard all the commotion, came out to help me and the Israelis ran away like rats.'

The teenager, whose life descended into horror in the early hours of July 18 last year, had arrived in Ayia Napa eight days earlier full of excited anticipation.  She had three university places lined up unconditional offers, one promising her a bursary and had planned to study criminology.  Meanwhile, she hoped to enjoy three or four weeks in the sun; partying, eking out her spending money by doing a bit of bar work and, her mother hoped, learning how to live independently and budget sensibly before her new life away from home as a student.  The trip, booked through the working holiday company Summer Takeover, cost, with flights, around £800. She had teamed up with five other English girls two of whom were to become close, supportive friends but the moment they arrived at the budget Pambos Napa Rocks Hotel, close to the main strip of nightclubs, their expectations plummeted.  'It was rancid. Nothing like the publicity photos. We were put in this disgusting, musty basement,' she says. 'There were three beds in a room meant for two and no space to put our suitcases, so we had to sleep with them on our beds.  The heat was stifling and, at one point, raw sewage was coming into the room, which I mopped up with one of my nice fluffy white towels.'

Young tourists were grouped together in the hotel according to their nationalities, and 'our basement was under the Israelis' block', recalls the girl.  Upstairs, the hotel accommodation was similarly squalid: dimly-lit corridors were strewn with soiled, discarded mattresses and broken bed frames; bedrooms were over-crowded, some with broken doors.  For the teenager, however, the emphasis was on friendships and having fun: she determined to make the best of it and, three days into the holiday, she met Sam.  'I was with four or five girls having some pre-drinks in the hotel when this group of about 20 Israeli lads came over. They were drinking designer vodka, clearly trying to impress us.  They sat at a table next to us and Sam and I struck up a conversation. He stood out. He was imposing, big build, a footballer; a bit full-on.  On the first day of our holiday romance, he was confessing his love for me, telling all his friends how he wanted to marry me and asking me to move to Israel. I wondered if it was Israeli culture to be like that, but it was odd. He seemed possessive, too.  But I was happy to have a holiday fling. Why not?'

But she sensed there was something strange about Sam's friends. They always seemed desperate to burst into the room when she and Sam were together, which she put down to horseplay, but now thinks was something much more sinister.  'Looking back, it's quite obvious I wasn't in control of the situation; that it was spinning off in the wrong direction,' she says.

Four days later, on the day before Sam, 21, was due to return home to Israel, the attack took place. It was, she believes, 'definitely pre-meditated'.  She remembers the run-up; a stiflingly hot day in which the air-conditioning in their basement broke and temperatures reached 45 degrees. It was only comfortable to venture out at night.   By 2.45 am, she and her friends were heading for the nightclubs, when she bumped into Sam.  He beckoned to her it was his last night in Ayia Napa. She agreed to go to his room.  There the horror unfolded and, as she ran, screaming from the scene afterward, her friend Becca, alerted by the noise, rushed to help her. 'I was crying so much and she tried to calm me.  I don't think I told her explicitly what had happened. I just said, 'They've all done it to me'.'

They walked the short distance to a nearby clinic and, from there, were taken to the police station in Paralimni, where they waited until 7 am to make a statement to detectives.  However, it was not until 3 pm 12 hours after the attack that the teenager was seen by a doctor at the local hospital. 'By then I was in such pain. I was bleeding internally; I did for several days.  I had finger-mark bruising all over my legs and a terrible throat infection. My neck and lymph nodes were swollen. My eyes were bruised. The doctor took two internal swabs. It felt invasive. He was manhandling me and pulling roughly at my legs.  He did not examine my upper body I still had my T-shirt on but I'd been bruised on my upper arms during the attack.  'The next day my throat was so swollen it looked grotesque as wide as my head. I got a taxi to the hospital. At first they thought my neck might have been broken in the attack. They X-rayed it.  'Then I was put on antiretroviral drugs because they were worried wrongly as it turned out that I might have HIV.'

By now the full horror had been relayed to her mother back home. A phone call no mother ever wants to receive. She takes up the story: 'I was commuting to work in London for a meeting when my daughter rang from a friend's phone to say something horrible had happened.  She was at a police station; she'd been raped by a group of lads.'

She flew out to Cyprus to find her daughter 'frightened, withdrawn and huddled up in bed'.  'I felt overwhelmed with grief really. No one had died but I couldn't make it right.  She'd been happy, outgoing, self-confident; now my golden girl, my only child, was broken.  And we were contending with the sheer terror that she was showing signs of HIV infection. I wondered what else could go wrong.'

Much else could, it emerged. Police had confiscated the teenager's passport and a haphazard investigation had begun during which 12 young Israeli men were arrested and held in custody.  Then, nine days after the attack, on the night of July 27, detectives called at the hotel where the victim was now staying with her mother, having moved out of the Pambos Napa Rocks hotel.  'A CID officer, a woman called Jorja, who I'd grown to trust, phoned me and said they needed to clarify a few points. She asked to meet me in the lobby. A few seconds later she was there. I went down. Mum wanted to come with me but I insisted I'd be fine, that it was just a formality and I wouldn't be long.  I expected to go to the nearby police station in Ayia Napa but we went off in an unmarked car to Paralimni. Everything there was shut down, dark, except one corridor. I had a panic attack.  They started to question me, rapid-fire questions, and they told me they'd seen a video showing me having consensual group sex, that I'd been lying about the rape.  They kept me for eight hours, in a dark room in a locked wing of a police station.  Nothing was recorded. I didn't have a lawyer. I wanted to message Mum. I felt cornered but I stood my ground.  Then one of the male officers started getting really annoyed. He said, 'It's late and I've got a family to go home to. You're going to be locked up if you don't sign this retraction statement.'  I felt trapped. It was surreal. You can only understand if you've been interrogated relentlessly for hours.  It was traumatising. I was in this dark room without any support, thinking, 'What the hell am I going to do?'  So under duress, I signed a statement that had been concocted; dictated by the police, and the second I did, the officer's demeanour changed.  He'd won. At the same time, I knew I'd done something totally wrong. I thought, 'Why on earth did I sign that confession?'  And at that point, everything started unravelling. They handed me a warrant for my arrest and told me I'd been charged with public mischief falsifying an offence that hadn't happened. I was dumbstruck.'

In the early hours of the next morning, she was driven 'by two bulky, mafia-like men' in a police car to a detention centre just outside Ayia Napa.  In the space of a few hours, her ordeal had escalated: she was now no longer being treated as the victim of an offence but as its perpetrator. Five of the Israeli teenagers in custody had already been released without charge. Now the remaining seven claiming that the group sex had been consensual and that the victim had merely cried rape when it emerged that a video of it had been circulated at the hotel were also freed.  That they arrived home like conquering heroes the scenes of champagne-popping jubilation at Tel Aviv Airport were monstrously inappropriate only added to the teenager's distress.  It is hard to imagine, too, the scale of her mother's concern as her frantic texts to her daughter went unanswered. 'The worry grew. I expected her to be half an hour, but the evening passed and she didn't come back,' she says.

Then she discovered, via one of her daughter's friends, that she had been charged and detained in custody. She says: 'I couldn't believe it. I was shaking, crying. How had it come to this?  I called the British Embassy to ask for their help. I needed to get her a lawyer. I found out that she been taken to a detention centre and would appear in court two days later, on Monday.'

The girl's family swung into action. At home, her father divorced from her mother and remarried helped set up a crowd-funding page which has so far raised £155,000 towards the cost of her continuing legal expenses.  But there have also been flights, hotels, and living costs expected to amount to around £30,000 that have been met entirely by her family and friends.  And at the centre of it all, a blonde, hazel-eyed teenager, once full of hope and excitement on her first trip abroad alone, and now locked in a 'squalid' detention centre cell. 'There was no toilet, just a hole in the floor,' she recalls.

'The wall was stained with blood, faeces, and urine. Soiled tissues left by the previous occupant were strewn over the floor.  I was there in that cell alone, lying on a raised iron bed with a plastic sheet for a mattress. Looking back on it now, it all feels like a waking nightmare.'