Prosecutor Maria-Eleni Nikolou and the patriarchal class courts.

On 12/03/2024, prosecutor Maria-Eleni Nikolou recommended the acquittal of defendant Ilias Michos for the crimes of rape and procuring of the 12-year-old in the Kolonos trafficking case, with an outrageous proposal that provoked outrage and revulsion, both from the wider society and from the scientific community.

This is not the first time Maria-Eleni Nikolou, who served for many years in the Athens Juvenile Prosecutor's Office, has attracted public attention. In one such instance, in June 2021, a report was filed with the Supreme Court (Areios Pagos) against her, concerning her actions in a custody case in which there was an allegation of child abuse.

Specifically, the 11-year-old child in this case had testified at the Athens Police Headquarters (GADA) that they did not want any contact with their father, who used to hit them. Immediately after this testimony, by prosecutorial order of Maria-Eleni Nikolou, the child was admitted for a new assessment to the child psychiatric department of the Children's Hospital, where they remained for days, without being allowed to see their mother.

As we read in the relevant publication, "The purpose of the new child psychiatric examination was, according to the order of prosecutor Nikolou, 'for the child to receive the necessary psychological support for a smoother adjustment to living at the father's home'". The mother's report-complaint against the prosecutor spoke of the child being blackmailed "into accepting a situation contrary to their expressed will, and having that will forcibly imposed upon them through child psychiatrists, 'by force,' that is, to make them agree to follow their father".

This unacceptable handling, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the 11-year-old child's rights, is a strategy of the dangerous pseudo-theory of parental alienation. According to this pseudo-theory, which completely disregards the will of children, a child's refusal to have contact with an abusive parent is the result of malicious manipulation by the other parent (most often the mother). In the USA, so-called reunification camps operate, into which children who refuse contact with one parent are forcibly admitted, with the aim of changing their attitude toward the parent they have reported as abusive. These centers operate privately, and the cost is borne by the parent accused of alienation, while the children stay inside and are not allowed to leave or see the parent they consider safe.

The spirit of Maria-Eleni Nikolou's recommendation in the trafficking case of the 12-year-old, despite the outraged reactions it provoked, does not fall on deaf ears, nor is it an exception. The police, investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial authorities, even when no rings or mafias are involved, systematically doubt and re-traumatize, in multiple ways, minor victims who find the courage to report their abuse—physical, psychological, sexual—instead of protecting them, as they should.

Gender stereotypes and misogyny that run horizontally through the state and its institutions traumatize ALL vulnerable bodies, including, of course, children. Victims of gender-based violence, both adult and minor, rarely find justice. Either they are said to be lying, or their cunning mother is said to have brainwashed them (parental alienation), or they "wanted it" (as a well-known expert consultant, a witness in a court case, very recently implied regarding an 8-year-old child—namely, that the child itself consented to touching their father's penis, and therefore there should be no talk of sexual abuse of a minor).

When, moreover, the perpetrator has money and connections, everything that already tends to happen in child abuse cases—namely, blaming the victim, disbelief and multiple testimonies, lengthy delays in legal proceedings, the disconnection of the civil and criminal aspects of the case, the disregard of domestic violence and gender-based violence—multiplies exponentially. The perpetrator's socioeconomic power means he can file lawsuit after lawsuit against the victims themselves and all witnesses; it means he can pay for multiple lawyers and expert consultants; it means he can characteristically delay his own criminal prosecution while the case file sits in a drawer (see the Corfu Prosecutor's Office case); it means the victim and everyone who tries to protect them is destroyed.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, when a mother reports the sexual abuse of her child, she is punished by the authorities. This is precisely the outcome targeted by the legal ploy used to defend abusers known as "parental alienation". And this is precisely what the mandatory joint custody lobby and men's rights groups want to achieve, as they strive to have the pseudo-theory of "parental alienation" incorporated into the criminal code. The punishment of the victim who dared to challenge the authority of the father-master. Who dared to speak.

The imprisonment of the 12-year-old's mother is one such glaring case, where the goal is to silence the 12-year-old and, by extension, all minor victims.

It is no coincidence that the men's rights lobby and the parental alienation pseudo-theory lobby welcomed the prosecutor's recommendation with joy. It suits their narrative. And for that narrative to hold up, the spotlight must be moved away from what the child is reporting and turned onto the mother. Only if another "guilty party" is found will the spotlight move away from the real culprit. To divert the spotlight from the rapist father, a scheming mother must be constructed, one who forces the child to turn against the father with lies. And then it stops mattering what the child says.
Can a mother do such a thing?
Why couldn't she? Here in Kolonos, the other woman convinced him to prostitute himself.
Yes, even the prosecutor said so.