So, it turns out that she didn’t lie, huh? There were piles of victim-shaming (including an Israeli reporter who explained that “British women go with the flow”), the involvement of government officials and the pulling of strings (including by a father who is a senior official in the Jerusalem Municipality, who asserted in an interview: “The girl consented and cooperated”), the royal reception for the suspects who suddenly were no longer suspects, the promises that they would sue the plaintiff, all the rejoicing about the “false complaint” and the chants of the “British slut” and “Am Yisrael Hai” (“the Jewish people live”).
There was, in fact, no false complaint, the British woman is not a slut and the Jewish people, well, they had better shut up a bit and examine what kind of rotten education their children have received.
It’s been two and a half years since the 19-year-old victim of the horror that took place in Cyprus retracted the rape complaint that she filed in July 2019. Two years since a Cypriot court ruled that she had lied, and after half a year of house arrest, sentenced her to a four-month suspended sentence. Will anyone give that time back to her? Her good name? And what about the terrible pain she endured?
After all, the pain wasn’t only caused by the gang of attackers – those who participated, those who took pictures, those who only opened the door to peek once in a while. “Teenagers,” they were called here. They were “the teenagers” and she was “the young woman,” although some were her age or just a year younger than she.
It’s not just the pain of their sexual assault. What about the pain inflicted on her by the police and the Cypriot legal system, who abused her enough to make her admit to something that never happened. What about the gloating and the shouts of joy and the disdain and the vilification? And the pain that was perhaps the worst of all, the pain of denial? What about that? One very young woman, only 19 years old, suffered a tragedy, and since then, for two and a half years, her tragedy has been denied, trampled, silenced, erased. I’m certain it hurts deep in her bones. Will someone take this pain away from her now?
Can anyone even imagine the experience of experiencing sexual abuse in a world where this abuse is denied? How can one begin to recover when they’ve turned you into a liar, when you’ve been investigated as a criminal for so long and absorbed so many threats that you’ll sign some document saying you’re a liar?
Imagine two and a half years during which light is darkness and night is day and the world is upside down, and all your powers are enlisted to continue to hold onto the truth, to continue to remember, even just between you and yourself, that no matter what they say, despite all the “British slut” talk in the world, you know that it’s true, that you didn’t invent it or make it up, and the thing you said happened really did happen . Can anyone turn the clock back? Be kind, rewind?
Her lawyers said that the next stage is reopening the investigation. If the Cypriot legal system does not initiate such a step, they said, they’ll do it themselves. Now the real question is not only whether the State of Israel will apply pressure in order to silence the issue, but what the Israeli public will do. In other words, us. What will we do?
Because if, as it turns out today, the complaint was not false, it is our duty to find out what exactly happened. After all, those involved – those “teenagers,” some of whom are already no longer teenagers – are walking around among us. At the time, their families threatened those who provided information about them on the social media. One of them, they said at the time, is an outstanding soccer player. Some of them are probably soldiers now. At least one is already old enough to have been discharged.
The legal system that trampled over the victim sent them crowned with wreaths back to the arms of their families and friends and chants of the “British slut.” But now, when the British woman is not a slut, what does that say about them? And what does it say about this Jewish people, the one that lives?
Nobody will take back her pain and tragedy, and the anger at the disgraceful injustice done to her. That’s the thing about time; it doesn’t go backwards. The least she deserves is to bring those who harmed her to justice, after they have been walking around for the past two and a half years as though nothing happened. Because, as the Cypriot court ruled yesterday, something definitely did happen.
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The Cyprus gang rape case must be reopened, even though nothing will erase the injustice - Haaretz
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