Kathimerini Greece Newsroom
The man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, then pimping her out to prospective “clients” online, and one of the 213 men who responded to the pimp’s advertisement were jailed Wednesday.
Ilias Michos, a 52-year-old shopkeeper living in the Athens neighborhood of Kolonos, and Ioannis Sofianidis, 42, were ordered jailed after confessing that they had had sexual relations with the child. Michos exercised his right to remain silent on charges of pimping and raping, while Sofianidis is said to have accepted paying the child, and not Michos, and denying that what he did was rape.
Police also arrested the girl’s 37-year-old mother later Wednesday. She will face an examining magistrate Thursday, to answer the same charge of pimping out the girl.
Michos is accused of raping the girl several times between April and August, photographing and videotaping her and uploading the material to several porn sites under fake identities. Apparently, 213 men responded asking for an appointment, and Sofianidis was one of them.
Some person or persons alerted the police during the last month; some individuals’ phones were tapped and it was also discovered that Michos had made several payments of small sums to the mother’s account.
Police took the unusual step of revealing the two men’s identities and releasing their photos Tuesday, after a prosecutor granted permission, and posting two hotline numbers (210.647.6370 and 210.641.1111) asking for information on the accused as well as anyone that might be involved.
Michos was a socially active person and his wife is a municipal councilor, elected in 2019 on the slate of Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis, who belongs to the ruling New Democracy party. Bakoyannis, a former regional governor and the nephew of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has expelled Michos’ wife from his municipal faction.
Michos’ shop in Kolonos has been defaced with slogans against child rapists.
With two other cases of minors being raped having surfaced since last Saturday, authorities point out that very few cases of child abuse ever see the light. The most recent survey done on the subject, a decade ago, had found that, among interviewed minors, 17% had reported instances of harassment by adults, with 7.5% reporting some form of bodily contact.
