The report of her conviction at the bottom of this page appeared in the London Times, November 10, 1990, page 2. (On December 20, 1990, the Court Of Appeal reduced her sentence to six months). Said report is slightly misleading though not in a material way, but since posting it originally on the main page I have obtained a copy of the appeal judgment, which I will distill as follows:
Georgina Kyriakou was married, but her husband had returned to her native Cyprus taking their child with him. Her mother lived in London, but apart from her, she was virtually alone.
On April 7, she had sex with Jhias Chamas in a hotel bedroom, her bedroom apparently, although she does not appear to have actually been living there. Mr Chamas isn’t named in the appeal transcript, nor does the phrase Lebanese businessman appear. In fact, the name Jhias Chamas doesn’t appear anywhere on-line that I can find, so it is likely his name has been misspelt. At any rate, rather than a businessman, he appears to have been a hotel receptionist.
On April 8, fearing she might be pregnant, she told her mother about the sex but not about the consent. Her mother accompanied her to the hospital, and when they heard her story, they contacted the police. And it mushroomed from there.
On April 20, Georgina Kyriakou did the decent thing; Mr Chamas was released, but he had spent 12 days in custody, so a prison sentence was inevitable.
Here is the final sentence of the appeal judgment:
In Greek Orthodox families the matriarch is a powerful figure. This one doubtless and understandably perhaps played a dominating role in the early stages of the circumstances which wrongly imprisoned the victim and so had something to do with the plight of her daughter. For all those reasons, and they rest really upon sympathetic bases, we have come to the conclusion that 12 months’ imprisonment is an excessive sentence. So we quash it and substitute for it a sentence of six months’ imprisonment. To that extent this appeal with its exceptional circumstances will be allowed.
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