Unjustified dropping of rape charges
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Gender Law Newsletter FRI 2025#3, 01.09.2025 - Newsletter abonnieren
EUROPE: HUMAN RIGHTS (RAPE AND SECUNDARY VICTIMISATION)
European Court of Human Rights, judgment of 3 July 2025, N.T. v. Cyprus (Application no. 28150/22)
The European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter ‘the Court’) found that the abandonment of the prosecution concerning a rape violated the right to respect of private life and also constituted a discrimination on the grounds of sex because of stereotypes and victim blaming in this decision.
Summary of the facts from the press release of the Court clerk: “The case concerns the authorities’ investigation into her allegations of rape. In 2021 she reported to the police that she had been raped ten years earlier (when she had been 18 years old) by a schoolfriend, A.T. The police immediately opened an investigation and indicted her alleged aggressor, but the Deputy Attorney General ultimately decided to discontinue the criminal proceedings essentially based on alleged inconsistencies in the applicant’s statements and her admitting that she had “liked” A.T. and had perhaps sent him the “wrong signals” (summary of the press release of the Court).
The Court concludes for the following grounds that there has been a violation of Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and of Art. 14 combined with Art. 8 ECHR:
1.) Principles
The Court recalls that “states have a positive obligation inherent in Articles 3 and 8 [ECHR] to enact criminal laws that effectively punish rape, and to apply them in practice through effective investigation and prosecution” (§ 69). The authorities “must take reasonable measures available to them to obtain evidence relating to the offence in question. They must always make a serious attempt to find out what happened and should not rely on hasty or ill-founded conclusions to close their investigation” (§ 70).
Furthermore, in conducting criminal proceedings, it is important to protect the rights of the victims: especially, “the authorities must ensure that the image, dignity and privacy of alleged victims of sexual violence are protected” and “avoid reproducing sexist stereotypes in court decisions, minimising gender-based violence and exposing women to secondary victimisation by using guilt inducing and moralising language that discourages victims’ confidence in the justice system” (§ 73).
2.) Application
a.) The Court states that there has been a violation of the right to respect for private life of the applicant (art. 8 ECHR), especially for the following reasons:
i.) The Court notes that “the decision to discontinue A.T.’s prosecution was not based on lack of corroborating evidence. Rather it was based on the alleged inconsistencies in the applicant’s statements” (§ 77).
ii.) It points out that the Deputy Attorney General “did not examine the applicant’s expressions of guilt or sympathy for A.T. alongside evidence suggesting a lack of consent. This includes her plea for A.T. to “please stop” [...], which was not meaningfully countered, the bruises witnessed by [her friend], the credibility of which remained unchallenged, and her psychological distress that night, which led her to seek help from psychologists and confide in others [...]” (§ 78; emphasised by the redaction).
iii.) The Court observes that the authorities “failed to establish the facts by engaging in a context-sensitive assessment and with due regard to the special psychological factors inherent in cases concerning sexual abuse, especially by a person close to the victim” (§ 80; emphasised by the redaction).
iv.) The Court considers that the authorities have failed to respect the rights of the applicant as a victim and to treat her with dignity, especially for the following reasons: the victim had to repeat her statements before the prosecutors partly because of an incomplete recording of her statements by the police; this interview took place in the absence of a lawyer, a psychologist or the social welfare services; there was no available record of this interview that led to the termination of the proceedings; and the victim had been informed of this termination only two days after the prosecutor announced the termination to the court (§ 81). Furthermore, she had been refused access to the case file without having been given any reasons (§ 82).
b.) The Court also considers that there has been a discrimination on the grounds of sex (art. 14 combined with art. 8 ECHR) because “the Deputy Attorney General’s conclusion appears selective, with a victim-blaming attitude. It exposed the applicant to secondary victimisation through guilt-inducing, moralising and sexist stereotypes, placing disproportionate emphasis on her expression of sentiment towards A.T., while failing to consider key elements that may have pointed to the absence of consent.” (§ 78: emphasised by the redaction). The Court considers therefore that “the grounds of the decision of the Deputy Attorney General (as the final determination in the case) were imbued with discrimination on grounds of sex” (§ 83). The Court also refers to the report of the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) of 23 November 2023 on Cyprus stating that there are, inter alia, “‘certain prosecutors who appeared to ‘have an inadequate understanding of the paradigmatic shift in proving rape’”.
c.) Because of the distress and frustration experienced by the applicant, the Court awards her EUR 20'000.- as a compensation for non-pecuniary damage (§ 91).
Direct access to the judgement (https://hudoc.echr.coe.int)