A prosecutor has asked an Athens court to clear three police officers of raping a 19-year-old woman inside a central police station in 2022, telling the bench that a sexual encounter had taken place but that the evidence did not prove it was without consent.
Two of the officers face charges of gang rape and a third is charged with complicity. The alleged assault happened at the Omonia police station, in the heart of Athens, in October 2022. One of the two men accused of rape is also charged with filming what happened on a camera.
None of this is settled yet. The recommendation is the prosecutor’s opinion, not a ruling. Serious felonies in Greece go before a Mixed Jury Court, a panel of professional judges sitting alongside lay jurors, and the trial prosecutor lays out a reasoned view before the court decides. The judges and jurors are free to disagree with it. Closing arguments from the defense are still to come.
Turning to the judges and jurors, the prosecutor said he could not support the charges. He asked that the two officers be acquitted of gang rape and the third acquitted of complicity, citing doubt. He did press for one conviction: he said the second defendant should be found guilty of a privacy breach for filming events in the station’s changing rooms.
His reasoning rested on the complainant’s testimony, which he described as full of serious gaps and contradictions. Because of that, he argued, he could not conclude that she had refused consent to sexual contact with the two officers. A woman changing her mind after the fact, he said, is not the same as withholding consent at the time.
“The complainant’s behavior is not consistent with that of a frightened person who has suffered violence,” he told the court. She never said no and showed no sign of refusal, he said. She did not leave the room even when she was alone, though the door sat half open and unlocked, and she never called out for help, despite a domestic violence office being right next door.
The recommendation stirred audible reactions in the courtroom. The prosecutor pushed back. “We are not here to judge the morals and conduct of the defendants. We are not a court of morals,” he said. “To convict, we need full proof. The commission of the sexual act was proven, but it was not proven that there was no consent.”
Yet even as he argued for acquittal, he condemned the conduct of the officers and said they would answer for it regardless of the criminal case. “They behaved disgracefully. What they did is reprehensible,” he said. “They exposed and demeaned the force. Even if the encounters were consensual, they should have protected the young woman and safeguarded the standing of the force.”
The officers had committed grave disciplinary offenses, the prosecutor said, and their conduct had already been weighed at the disciplinary level. Criminal liability, in his account, was a different and murkier matter. “Despite the moral disapproval, at the level of criminal responsibility things are not clear,” he said.
Source: TA NEA
