Man jailed for raping exchange student

A young man has been sentenced to six years in prison for the rape of an Erasmus student at a party in Larnaca almost two years ago.

During a closed session on Tuesday, a three-judge panel at the Larnaca criminal court handed down a six year sentence to a Cameroonian national, after he was found guilty in the rape of a female foreign student on 1 October 2018.

According to details in the case, the 23-year-old student was in Cyprus on an Erasmus exchange programme from Denmark where she met the Cameroonian man, also aged 23, at a school party in Oroklini, Larnaca district.

The two chatted for a while, and then the man asked the woman for some cash to get a drink. He then asked her to join him in the back, behind a pavilion, in order to talk to her in private.

After the two were alone, reports said the man pushed the young woman to the ground and proceeded to rape her, while she was intoxicated from alcohol consumption.

According to testimony in court, the young woman was crying and telling him no repeatedly but he did not stop, neither did she attempt to resist or push him away as she was concerned about her overall safety.

After the rape, according to details in the case, the man started crying, asking for forgiveness and begging her not to tell anyone.

When the woman told a female friend about some of the things that happened to her, the two friends went to search for the man in order to confront him but couldn’t find him.

A few days later she told her friend that she was raped and then went to the Oroklini police station where she filed a rape complaint. She was then examined by a doctor while DNA belonging to the man was found on her clothes, according to details in the case.

The man, who was arrested in June 2019, initially denied the rape charges. But reports said when the student flew back to Cyprus from Denmark and identified the suspect as her alleged rapist, he admitted the rape.

“I don’t want to live. I want to die, please shoot me,” he reportedly told his arresting officer.

Local media said the rape took place a day before the Cameroonian man filed for asylum in the Republic of Cyprus. Additional reports did not make clear how long prior to October 2018 he had been on the island.