A 22-year-old student has been arrested for flashing and harassing a young woman in southern Athens. The man was identified after the victim posted on social media footage from security camera that shows him trying to open the entrance door of the apartment building where the victim lives and his genitals exposed.
The incident occurred about half an hour after Wednesday midnight in Nea Smyrni, suburb of southern Athens.
The terrified young woman described on a post on Facebook that she got off the tram and walked to her home 300 meters away. She felt that she was followed, intensified her steps, took her keys from the bag and quickly got into the building. She also rang the bell to the family’s apartment to let them know shat she was arriving.
She posted the video from the building’s security camera and also pictures of the flasher and possible predator, asking for help for his identification. She immediately filed against him at the local police station.
Thursday noon, local police had apprehended the man and transferred to the Headquarters where the victim could recognize him.
Furthermore, police compared his fingerprints with those at the door and found in his home also clothes similar to those on the footage.
“Thank you for touching the door” the victim posted as forensic teams could detect the flasher’s fingerprints.
A case file against him has been filed, he is charged with flashing or “insult of sexual dignity” which is a misdemeanor.
However, due to the publicity of the footage, more victims of the man have turned to police, one had already filed on a similar case of harassment.
According to media, police has invited another young woman to identify the man, as she had filed to police about a similar case.
The 22-year-old is reportedly student at the University of Piraeus and has a job as waiter in a cafe at the famous square of Nea Smyrni, the suburb where he also lives with his family.
According to latest reports, three more woman have identified him for similar harassment cases: one more in Nea Smyrni, one in Acropolis area and one in Palaio Faliro, also in south Athens.
All he reportedly told the police is that he has “a kink. When Ι see a beautiful woman I want to touch her.”
He is to appear to prosecutor on Friday.
Reactions
Social media users quickly discovered his identity and slammed him on his FB account. It was mostly women who wrote:
- Because of men like you we’re afraid to be out at night
- How did your parents raise you?
- Shame on you.
- No respect for your sister or your mother?
However, at the same time in middle-ages Greece, mostly young men posted in support of the man blaming – who else?- the victim. “What can a man do when those wh*res go around half naked?” not one but several young men wrote, while others suggested that she had provoked him and left him in the cold before she decided to go home.
Blaming the victim is the common mantra by several men and even women on social media in Greece in 2021 – or it is Greece in 1500 and 1950?
Who are these young people who tolerate and support transgressive and criminal behavior? Who raised them? Is it the video games generation?
Sexual harassment and rape culture is often also presented on reality shows or trash magazines on Greek TV as something normal. And nobody does something to prohibit this. Outrageous.
This is ugly garbage from the patriarc period that should have been gone long ago! A womans body belongs to the woman, no one else! A man that cant control himself is not a man, just an animal and should be locked up and undergo psyciatric treatment. In no case, what so ever, is it the womans fault.
“Is it the video games generation?”
Actually, no. Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents’ aggressive behaviour.
The guy is just a crazy predator. Nothing to do with video games…
And a serious article from The Royal Society : https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474
🙂
The comment “who raised him?” or “How was he ?” is soooo annoying! I don’t know ANY parents that go out and say, “hey, go and flash yourself. Go and force yourself on somebody else”. Those of us who are parents, do we really know what our children do when we are not with them? Do we really know what our husbands/wives do when we are not with them? We all have two faces (if not more) and hope that we never meet somebody who has seen both of them!
When I was teaching at 1 school, I had a student with over 50 absences. His mother told me she dropped him off at the front door every day! …. and he walked out the BACK door! How would she know? The phone calls that the school made every day he told her meant that he WAS in school. When I finally connected with this poor woman, she was shocked, embarrassed and angry. Yet, I’m sure she didn’t tell her son to skip school and sell drugs!
Victim blaming is true in ALL parts of the world.