Larisa court finds 23 people guilty of prostituting minor
A court in Larisa on Thursday found 23 people guilty of prostituting a girl who is now 17 years old and was being sexually abused from the age of 5.
The court, which began hearing the case in September, heard the written testimony of the 17-year-old girl, who is currently receiving psychological treatment at a support center for teenagers.
According to her testimony, the girl had been sexually abused by her uncle from the age of 5 and prostituted for a decade by him and the other 22 defendants.
In 2009, at the age of 15, the girl — whose name was not made public — appeared at a local police station where she recounted the details of how her uncle and his cohorts had repeatedly forced her to have sex with men in their and surrounding villages in Karditsa in northern Greece. She said that they had threatened to expose her to her father and post videos and photographs of her sexual encounters on the Internet if she told anyone about their activities.
The girl gave investigating officers the names of the people she was forced to have sex with as well as those of her uncle’s accomplices, providing them with details of her encounters.
The Larisa court sentenced the uncle to 38 years in prison, of which he will serve the maximum of 25 years, as well as handing down lesser sentences and cash fines of up to 60,000 euros to the other defendants for varying degrees of complicity.
