The Cypriot justice system's issues with rape complainants are a disgrace – but the UK isn't any better

The latest revelations about a young British woman’s ordeal in Cyprus are fuelling a scandal that will rage for some time. It is not to prejudge her forthcoming appeal, nor any future trial of the young men who she says raped her, to ask serious questions about how seriously British and Cypriot authorities take rape complaints.

You remember the horrific story. A gap-year student says that she was gang-raped in a hotel room in Ayia Napa. She goes to the police station only eventually to “retract” her complaint in poorly-written English after eight hours of police questioning without audio or video recording, legal advice or support.

The 12 angry men are released and fly home to the mixed reception of a heroes’ champagne welcome by some and grave concern by others in their home country and internationally. The woman is not just disbelieved by the Cypriot police but arrested and prosecuted. She is ultimately convicted and given a four months suspended sentence, for her alleged false witness and “public mischief” before the extremely dubious retraction that some experts say could not have been genuinely and freely forthcoming from a British voice. We now know that during her one-month imprisonment on remand pending trial, the teenager suffered chronic anxiety and depression, was heavily drugged and lost two and a half stone in weight.

This is what we know. But what about all the unanswered questions from two governments that for now at least, remain signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights?

It is worth remembering that unlike traditional English common law and that of other more antiquated systems, Human Rights Law affords positive protections to complainants and victims as well as defendants and prisoners. And few crimes are regarded as seriously as rape. Without the ECHR, some countries would not have enacted comprehensive legal protection for vulnerable rape victims. England would still allow rape with impunity within marriage, as well as the cross-examination of complainants by their assailants for days on end at the Old Bailey.

Did the Cypriot police contact the British High Commission before the young woman was questioned or pressured about her complaint for eight hours? Was she offered any consular support? If the answer is no to either of these questions, why not? How much advice and support are Britons in serious trouble abroad able to expect from our government under Boris Johnson?

And before we fill-up too fast with righteous indignation of a nationalistic kind, how confident are we all feeling about the plight of rape complainants closer to home?

In the UK, we are used to reading about disgraceful prosecution and conviction rates that many describe as effective “decriminalisation”. This is something we shout more about when it happens elsewhere in the world. We have heard about the “digital strip-searching” of complainants in the police station with no identifiable legal basis – their phones taken from them so that their communications information might be trawled while their alleged assailants rightly enjoy legal protections from unjust or disproportionate “fishing expeditions” by police and prosecutors.

But does anyone remember that BuzzFeed investigation from 2018 revealing that 200 UK women had been prosecuted for lying about being raped in the previous decade? As the young British woman will testify, it is one thing to be disbelieved by the authorities and an insult to injury when they turn and come after you.

The Centre for Womens’ Justice expresses concern that of the rape complainants who are prosecuted for “perverting the course of justice”, a worrying number suffer from mental health problems. And then there are our lop-sided defamation laws that allow rich and powerful men to sue their accusers for slander or libel with no legal aid afforded to the women who have already been disbelieved once.

We should all maintain our interest in this horrible case from Cyprus, even after the media circus leaves town. The many heroes of our free press might also stand to broaden their interest in the human rights of victims at home and abroad. Or should we leave them to the tender mercies of Johnson and Dominic Raab?​

Shami Chakrabarti is the shadow attorney general, a human rights lawyer and campaigner

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