Shepherd gets ten years for raping college student

A man has been sentenced to ten years in prison for rape, after a college student said she was out in the fields with her mother south of Nicosia when she was sexually assaulted under knife threat.

Local media said a 35-year-old Egyptian has been found guilty and convicted to 10 years in prison on rape and sexual coercion charges, in connection with a case of a college student in Nicosia who told police back in March 2021 that the man sexually assaulted her.

Reports said the 20-year-old student from Vietnam, who was attending university in Nicosia, was helping her mother gather wild asparagus in an open field in Dali when the incident took place.

According to the initial complaint, the young woman at some point got separated from her mother, who works as a housemaid in Cyprus. Then the defendant, a shepherd who was minding a flock of sheep nearby, approached the young woman and proceeded to sexually assault her until she was able to push him off and run away.

Police declined to provide further details about the complaint but based on details heard in the Nicosia criminal court, according to local media, prosecutors said the man approached the woman from behind, held a knife to her neck, and asked her to remove her clothes, with the court determining that the defendant had raped the victim under knife threat.

“The acts perpetrated by the defendant who chose to satisfy his sexual urges in this way are abhorrent,” the presiding judge said, adding that the sentence had to be severe to serve as a deterrent amid a rise in similar incidents.

Local media said the woman had been examined by a medical doctor while the shepherd had purportedly admitted the sexual offenses.

The Nicosia criminal court sentenced the man to ten years on charges of rape and sexual coercion into intercourse or other acts of a sexual nature.