The female prosecutor even said, “Look, I am a woman too and I am sitting right here. How is it that you get raped and I don’t get raped?” She even went on to accuse the victim saying, “In the security videos you seem to be walking in his arms.”
The trial of a veterinarian doctor against her attacker for sexual assault, Professor Dr. Hasan Bilgili, continued yesterday in the Hall of Justice in Ankara. The judge refused to arrest the suspect and the two other accused accomplices who helped destroy the evidence.
The suspect, a retired professor, Hasan Bilgili, is facing 5 to 27 years of prison sentence if convicted.
The alleged attack occurred in the animal hospital owned and operated by the suspect. When the victim, working for the suspect, had filed the charges, Dr. Bilgili had been arrested briefly until the judge had ordered him released at his recognizance to attend the trial. The release demand had come from the prosecutor.
The trial on December 11th, was attended by a large contingent of women’s organization, labor unions and trade organizations as well as the victim’s family and friends. The suspects appeared before the court in their formal attire with jackets, white shirts and ties. It is customary in Turkey’s justice system that if a man, especially in trials of assaulting a woman, appears formally dressed the court reduces the sentence for “good behavior.”
In the testimony of the victim, the events were detailed when the suspect allegedly drugged the veterinarian woman late one night and raped her in the office.
After the event, when she woke up from the drugs and still groggy, he threatened the victim by posting her naked pictures which he took during his attack on the pornography sites. The other suspect, charged for tampering with evidence, came into the room and both threatened the woman and her family’s life. The assault suspect said he had a wife and a family, so if the suspect called for an ambulance or went to the authorities the victim’s life would be over.
The court and the prosecutor kept asking inappropriate questions to the victim during the trial like, “Why didn’t you resist him? Did you scream? Why couldn’t you hit him to stop him?” They were trying to cast a doubt to her story.
The victim relayed how scared she became at the office once she woke up and how she feared for her life.
The victim was taken to a hospital by the two suspects, and a doctor, the third suspect charged with destroying evidence, treated her against her will because she wanted the evidence to be preserved. At the clinic, the rape suspect again threatened the victim saying, “I am well known here, now that there is no evidence left behind, I can destroy you if you press charges against me.”
The victim still went to the police but she stated that the police were openly hostile against her and sided with the attacker even in questioning. She complained that the police didn’t even properly listen to her charges. According to her testimony, the female prosecutor even said, “Look, I am a woman too and I am sitting right here. How is it that you get raped and I don’t get raped?” She even went on to accuse the victim saying, “In the security videos you seem to be walking in his arms.” The only cameras in the facility were those in the hallways and would have captured the victim still shaky from the drugs administered to her through her veins by the suspect being walked through the hallways on the way to the health clinic by the alleged rapist.
The victim’s attorney testified that after many demands finally they had the prosecutor changed for this case. The same woman prosecutor had also accused another rape victim in the past, a Spanish national, saying, “What were you doing outside at that time of the night?”
The court asked the suspect how the scratches on the victim came to be, or how his spit ended up on the victim. The professor replied, “The dogs and cats at the veterinary hospital could have done the scratches. My spit could have flied and landed on the victim when I was speaking to her.”
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