Sounds like there is a RAT amongst you, the story below is living proof of this. Can we be sure there aren't many more RATS that are just waiting to be exposed?
THE criminal court in Larnaca yesterday imposed the island’s highest-ever punishment for paedophilia on a man convicted of repeatedly raping his two underage daughters over a period of nine years.
The court sentenced the 47-year-old father from a Larnaca village to 20 years in prison after he was found guilty on a record number of charges, including rape, incest, indecent assault and sexual exploitation.
Last year, the Chairman of the House Legal Affairs Committee, DISY’s Ionas Nicolaou, had told the Cyprus Mail that to his knowledge, the highest ever penalty imposed on a convicted paedophile was 10 years; and that was also a severe case involving incest and brutal sexual assault.
The MP pushed for an amendment of the penal code and eventually succeeded in it being discussed at a Committee level last May. If the new amendments are passed, paedophiles’ sentences could be tripled, Nicolaou said.
The shocking details of the current case, which first came to light in June 2009 and was tried behind closed doors, are said to have left judges and police in shock.
In its ruling, the Court underlined the charges in relation to the convicted paedophile’s oldest daughter, who was the main witness in the case.
The young girl was brutally raped and sodomised by her father five times over a period of eight years, starting from when she was just 11.
But the actual sexual abuse began a year earlier, when she suffered a number of indecent assaults.
The 47-year-old was only charged with indecently assaulting his youngest daughter, who refused to stand in the witness box.
However, the court took into consideration that the abuse had started when the girl was just 10 years old, in addition to the fact that she was the convict’s own daughter.
It was also heard in court that his oldest daughter, when aged 17 years old, was seriously sexually assaulted by her father when she asked to go out with her boyfriend.
The atrocities were deemed by the court as “extremely humiliating” for the victims, and would have a serious effect on their future personalities. The court said what they had heard during the trial was some of the “worst of its kind”. It found absolutely no mitigating circumstances, it said.
The court condemned the father for turning himself into “his own children’s worst nightmare” instead of being a pillar of support and role model.
The two teenage daughters, it was said in court, were showing symptoms of complete emotional and psychological breakdown, and are living in isolation and fear of never leading a normal life.
Even though the court couldn’t substantiate more serious charges for the youngest daughter, it decided to proceed with the severe sentence, it said.
