In January, former Olympic sailing champion Sofia Bekatorou revealed that an official at the Hellenic Sailing Federation — Greece’s national governing body for the sport – sexually abused her, 23 years ago. Although the statute-of-limitations from Bekatorou’s case had passed, her coming forward inspired other women in Greece to speak about their own experience of sexual assault, heralding the long-awaited arrival of the #MeToo movement in the country.
In the months that followed, numerous survivors from across culture, media, sport and academia have accused high-profile men of abuse, leading to the resignation of powerful figures and the arrest of Dimitris Lignadis, the former director of Greece’s national theatre.
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In response, the country’s conservative Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, proposed a series of legal changes and amendments to the country’s labour laws that would make it easier for survivors to get justice and prevent sexual abuse cases in the future.
The proposals included stricter sentences for perpetrators, a suspension of the statute-of-limitations for minors until they reach adulthood, and prioritisation of sexual abuse cases in court. A new registry for adults working with children and teenagers and an online platform where victims can stay informed and report abuse through a live chat function were also suggested.
Up until now, the culture that has surrounded the issue of sexual violence in Greece has been one of shame and silence. But this year’s #MeToo movement has generated a dialogue on sexual abuse and given victims the space and platform to share their stories.
“What’s happening now is tremendously important in that there’s a kind of opening in the public sphere for what appears to be making visible of something that’s constructed as normatively invisible or unspoken,” Anna Carastathis, co-director of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research (FAC Research), tells VICE World News.
Georgia Petraki, a sociology professor and director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Panteion University, agrees. “On the issue of violence, there is a wider culture of guilt,” she says. “This is a worldwide issue that #MeToo helped us see because it set it in the public sphere.”
She adds: “About six months ago, when I participated in an event, they asked me, ‘Why hasn’t #MeToo come to Greece?’ and here it now is because it couldn’t have not happened.”
Many victims and survivors in Greece now feel empowered to speak about their experiences as the impunity previously enjoyed by perpetrators appears to be falling away. “The guilt has shifted camps,” says Dr. Petraki. “We are not the guilty ones anymore”.
SexHarassMap is run by a team of three women who map cases of sexual and gender-based violence around Greece. “Sexual violence is quite common in Greece,” a spokesperson for the group says. “The map has recorded hundreds of sexual assault cases and we don’t even include in this statistic sexual harassment cases in workplaces, on social media or in the street.
“After the brutal rape and murder of 21-year-old Eleni Topaloudi on the island of Rhodes, we have witnessed more and more women coming forward and reporting the crime,” they continue. “However, in doing so, they have to face the misogyny and sexism that is so deeply rooted in Greek society and its structures.”
You don’t have to look much further than the comment section of the articles on women who have come forward to understand how deep-rooted sexism and misogyny are in Greek society. But many survivors feel empowered by the stories of these women, despite the additional abuse they face for speaking out.
After Bekatoruo made her abuse public, Kostantina decided to open up about her own experiences, taking to Facebook to detail how a former boss had assaulted her.
“The reason I spoke about this [now] is because of what happened with Bekatorou and with all the women who have experienced any kind of sexual harassment,” she says. “The past two years I have experienced such intense sexism and everything came all at once and I wanted the voice of women to be heard”.
Nefeli has also spoken about her experience of sexual assault this year. She was 14 years old when she was raped while on a school trip to a Greek island. “I felt like I was dead,” she says. “I was staring at the ceiling, I never looked at him, and, in that moment, my brain – my entire being – had frozen.”
On the ferry going back to Athens, Nefeli was sexually assaulted again, this time by one of her rapist’s friends. Although many years have passed since she suffered these attacks, she has shared her experience with very few people. To this day, she has not spoken with her parents about what happened to her on that trip.
Pamella was also a student when she was groped by a male PE teacher who was allegedly trying to reach the mobile phone in her back pocket in order to confiscate it. Despite how uncomfortable and humiliated she felt, having been inappropriately touched by a grown man in front of her friends, she did not report him to the school’s administration. “I did not have any incriminating evidence to prove that he had done this,” she says. When asked if she would report her perpetrator if this incident had occurred in the current climate, she says that she would have.
In a recent address to parliament, Greece’s Prime Minister proposed a sex education program to be implemented in all schools, starting from September 2021. This is a necessary step towards creating a safe learning environment, where students know that they can report inappropriate behaviours, and can identify these behaviours in the first place.
There are significant strides being made towards the protection of victims and survivors of sexual violence in Greece, and the government has been responsive to these issues raised by Bekatorou. But this is only the beginning of a movement that has arrived four years later than many hoped.
