{"id":603620,"date":"2023-06-03T12:01:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-03T09:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/?p=603620"},"modified":"2023-06-03T12:01:26","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T09:01:26","slug":"more-women-in-cyprus-have-been-abused-by-clerics-but-dont-report-it-says-theologian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/world\/603620.html","title":{"rendered":"More women in Cyprus have been abused by clerics but don\u2019t report it, says theologian"},"content":{"rendered":"

More women have been sexually abused by clerics but chose not to report it, theologian Theodoros Kyriacou said on Friday, a day after the former Kiti bishop was sentenced for assaulting a minor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The case of the former Kiti bishop Chrysostomos is not the first nor the last sexual assault case within the church, the theologian told AlphaNews.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of information coming from women who have been assaulted and I try to convince them to go to court.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we are talking about a continuous situation. We are not talking about two exceptional cases,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 85-year-old former bishop received a 12-month prison sentence suspended for three years on Thursday after he was found guilty of assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 1981. In a different case, he was also faced with a rape charge, but was acquitted because the plaintiff\u2019s testimony was deemed unreliable since she couldn\u2019t remember the length of his underwear from 2011.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf they were able to have the calls that were being made from the office at that time, a lot would have come out,\u201d Kyriakou said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He added that the court\u2019s lenient decision might also lead the Holy Synod to do the same and choose not to defrock Chrysostomos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the woman who was assaulted by the former Kiti bishop Chrysostomos as a teenager said she is \u201cpartially satisfied\u201d with the court sentence and is expecting the Holy Synod to announce whether they will defrock the cleric.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She told Politis radio that the ultimate punishment for the former bishop will be to have his ministerial credential removed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The woman, now aged 58, said she contacted the archbishopric asking to speak with the Archbishop, but didn\u2019t receive a response. She only spoke on the phone with the current Kiti Bishop Nektarios whom seemed \u201cnice and polite\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is understood that Chrysostomos is still enjoying all the perks of a bishop four years after he resigned, including staying at the Metropolis, where the current Kiti Bishop should have been living in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The woman also detailed her journey before she reported the assault to the police in 2021.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time, she said she was advised to go to go back to the bishop\u2019s office and have a photographer on the roof to catch him on the act. She was told without evidence she could not persecute him because he is \u201chalf the state\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After she got married, she started speaking up about her assault story to her closed circle. She even told what happened to some priests and revealed that one told her: \u201cThink of the positive, you are half blessed\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once the case went to court, people kept telling her to not expect much since \u201cthis is Cyprus\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The woman also blamed the state over the lack of support saying \u201cin essence you are on your own\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Commenting on the court sentence, human rights lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou said she was not surprised because this \u201cunfortunately falls within the lines of sentencing jurisprudence\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI am not criticising the judge but the line of jurisprudence that does not recognise aggravating circumstances in offenses that affect gender,\u201d she wrote on Facebook.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She reminded of the extremely lenient sentences for sexual abuse of children, especially girls, while in cases of trafficking and sexual exploitation the victims were found to be unreliable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have a long way to go. But the conviction was a start,\u201d she noted.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More women have been sexually abused by clerics but chose not to report it, theologian Theodoros Kyriacou said on Friday, a day after the former Kiti bishop was sentenced for assaulting a minor. The case of the former Kiti bishop Chrysostomos is not the first nor the last sexual assault case within the church, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":603622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alnasnews.com.jo\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}