An 18-year-old-woman who was abducted and raped by a noncommissioned officer (NCO) for 20 days in the southeastern city of Batman has died in a hospital after attempting to take her own life, the Mesopotamia news agency reported.
The ordeal of the victim, İ.E., was discovered in a letter she wrote on July 16 before attempting to commit suicide. The suspect, Musa Orhan, was detained the following day after the rape allegation was confirmed by a report from the Council of Forensic Medicine but was later released under judicial supervision.
In his testimony Orhan initially denied involvement in any kind of sexual relationship with the victim. But when he was shown the forensic report, he then said he was under the influence of alcohol but gave no further details.
The victim’s family sought the support of the Human Rights Association’s Batman office and, through them, officially requested information from the public prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Defense and the Human Rights Committee of the Turkish Parliament.
The court issued a confidentiality order in the case, curtailing any press coverage of the incident.
An investigation was opened on August 4 into İdris Yayla, publisher of the Jiyan Haber newspaper, for “provoking the public to hatred and hostility or denigrating it” over a report on the case.
The Batman Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office indicted Yayla for publishing news reports by the Mesopotamia news agency on the incident. The articles were headlined “It has been revealed that a specialist sergeant abducted and raped a woman for 20 days!”, “Specialist sergeant who raped a minor in Batman detained” and “The young woman who was sexually assaulted in Batman allegedly tried to commit suicide.”
