by Compiled from Wire Services
Jan 30, 2015 12:00 am
Prosecutors in the eastern province of Erzurum have launched a new investigation into rape allegations from a 15-year-old girl who claimed that she was sexually assaulted by 83 people, eight years after several suspects were cleared by a court and charges against others were dismissed.
S.Ö., who was 15 at the time and lived in a children's home in the province's Aziziye district, had filed a complaint with police in October 2007, claiming she was sexually assaulted by several men. Police detained eight people on charges of rape but they were released after two months in custody due to a lack of evidence. The girl was questioned by a police-appointed psychiatric expert and in her new testimony after the initial arrests, she claimed she has been subject to multiple rapes since the age of 10 and her rapists threatened her to not speak to police. She gave the names of 75 people as her rapists. Psychiatrists diagnosed her with slight mental retardation, obviously due to the past rapes.
The incident has rocked Erzurum after reports surfaced that several public officials were among the suspects. All defendants were released due to a lack of evidence while psychiatrists interviewed the plaintiff and the director of the children's home. The victim was reassigned to a different dwelling with S.Ö. being transferred to a women's shelter in the southeastern city of Şanlıurfa.
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