August 22, 2025
by dr. Stefanos Xenofontos
On 3 July 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’ or ‘the Court’) delivered its judgment in the case of N.T. v. Cyprus, unanimously finding violations of Articles 3, 8, and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’) arising from the Cypriot authorities’ failure to effectively investigate and prosecute a rape allegation. The judgment is a stark indictment of how patriarchal bias, institutional inertia, and prosecutorial discretion can converge to systematically erode access to justice for victims of gender-based violence.
Coming just a few months after the judgment in X v. Cyprus, the case confirms an alarming trend: Cyprus is failing to meet its positive obligations to investigate, prosecute, and prevent sexual violence in a manner consistent with the ECHR standards. The repetition of strikingly similar violations in these two cases raises urgent questions about the underlying structural nature of the deficiencies in Cyprus’ legal system. Read together, these cases compel us to look beyond individual prosecutorial errors and consider whether Cyprus’ justice system — particularly its treatment of sexual violence — suffers from entrenched institutional and cultural dysfunctions that render it incapable of delivering justice to women.
Moreover, while the Court’s findings are in line with its growing body of jurisprudence on gender-sensitive obligations under the Convention, N.T. v. Cyprus raises deeper questions about the limits of procedural scrutiny in the face of structural gender injustice. In this post, I argue that N.T. v. Cyprus should be read not only as a vindication of individual rights but as a warning about state complicity in the ongoing failure to treat sexual violence as a matter of legal and moral urgency.
The applicant, N.T., reported to the police in 2021 that she had been raped in 2011 by a male acquaintance. Despite the significant time lapse, she provided detailed testimony, corroborative witness statements and supportive psychological evidence as well as a digital trail of communications. The police initiated a criminal investigation, charges were filed, and the matter was set to proceed to trial. However, months later, the Deputy Attorney General of Cyprus unilaterally decided to discontinue the prosecution, citing inconsistencies in the applicant’s statements, her expressions of affection toward the alleged perpetrator and post-assault communication that allegedly undermined her credibility.
The decision was justified in part by the view that ‘the applicant’s admission that she liked A.T. [i.e. the accused] was of particular importance as regards the issue of credibility,’ (para 36 of the judgment) and that such feelings might have ‘impacted her behaviour by sending him the wrong signal that consent on her behalf was self-evident’ (ibid). The Court strongly criticised this line of reasoning, finding that it ‘exposed the applicant to secondary victimisation through guilt-inducing, moralising and sexist stereotypes’ (para 78 of the judgment) and amounted to a failure to assess the central legal issue: the absence of consent.
This prosecutorial approach stands in direct contradiction to the standard first articulated by the ECtHR over two decades ago in M.C. v. Bulgaria, where it held that the absence of physical resistance cannot be interpreted as consent. The Court in M.C. declared that the authorities have a duty to explore all the factual circumstances of the case and to assess the complainant’s lack of consent regardless of whether force or threats were used (M.C., paras 177-182). The M.C. judgment marked a significant departure from outdated conceptions of rape based on physical coercion, signalling a shift towards a consent-based model of sexual autonomy.
Yet in N.T., the prosecutorial analysis effectively reinstated the very stereotypes and assumptions that M.C. aimed to dismantle. Rather than focusing on whether the applicant freely agreed to the sexual act, the Deputy Attorney General speculated about her feelings, intentions, and ‘mixed signals’.
This reasoning is not merely outdated—it is legally untenable in light of the Court’s established jurisprudence. The ECtHR has repeatedly held that assessments of sexual violence must centre the presence or absence of consent, understood in the context of power dynamics, trauma responses, and the complexities of human behaviour. The applicant’s explicit plea—’Please stop, why are you tormenting me?’—was noted by the Court (para 31), yet it was sidelined in the domestic prosecutor’s assessment. In doing so, the authorities applied a morally-inflected standard of ‘typical’ victim behaviour, rather than a legal standard grounded in human rights.
The Court recalled that States have a positive obligation under Articles 3 and 8 ECHR to investigate allegations of serious sexual violence in a manner that is effective, victim-sensitive, and free from prejudicial assumptions. The investigation must be ‘sufficiently thorough’ and ‘must always make a serious attempt to find out what happened and should not rely on hasty or ill-founded conclusions to close their investigation’ (para 70, citing X and Others v. Bulgaria).
In this case, while the initial investigative steps were taken, the authorities failed to pursue ‘obvious lines of inquiry,’ such as contacting other schoolmates, obtaining expert psychological evaluations, or following up on corroborating witnesses (para 75). Yet, more fundamentally, the Court found that the prosecutorial reasoning ‘heavily relied on the applicant’s expression of sympathy towards A.T.,’ her sense of guilt, and her behaviour after the event—rather than focusing on the question of whether she had given consent at the material time (para 77).
Authorities failed to engage in a context-sensitive assessment, while evidence suggesting a lack of consent was not meaningfully countered and, ultimately, was largely ignored in the authorities’ final reasoning. Instead, the Deputy Attorney General selectively interpreted the applicant’s emotional ties as undermining her credibility, thereby resulting in what the Court described as a ‘victim-blaming attitude’ while also exposing women affected by sexual violence to secondary victimisation. Not only does such an approach silence women, as victims of gender-based violence, by eroding their confidence in public (investigatory, prosecutorial, judicial) authorities and discouraging them from seeking justice, but, most significantly, it perpetuates prejudices and sexist stereotypes as well as patriarchal and misogynist attitudes towards said victims.
The recent judgment in X v. Cyprus (delivered on 27 February 2025) had already foreshadowed these failures. In that case, the applicant reported having been raped and subjected to degrading treatment by a group of men. The police response was marked by procedural negligence: officers failed to properly record her complaint, did not take timely action to obtain medical or forensic evidence, and ultimately allowed the case to stagnate before it was dropped altogether. The Court found violations of Articles 3 and 8 due to the authorities’ failure to protect the applicant from inhuman and degrading treatment and to conduct an effective investigation. The reasoning closely mirrors that in N.T.: the authorities failed to assess the applicant’s complaint in a manner free of prejudice, and without making assumptions as to the credibility of her account based on her conduct.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of N.T. v. Cyprus lies in its finding of a violation of Article 14 ECHR, in conjunction with Articles 3 and 8—a recognition that gender-based violence, when met with institutional indifference, constitutes discrimination deeply embedded in the structures of the State.
The Court was unequivocal in noting that the applicant’s gender was a determining factor in the authorities’ decision to dismiss her case. This is not merely a finding of biased language or an unfortunate lapse in prosecutorial tone. It is a declaration that the State failed to treat the applicant equally before the law, effectively disqualifying her from accessing justice, because she was a woman— what could be described as a systemic and structural failure.
The above problem was already identified in X v. Cyprus, where the Court similarly found that institutional responses to a rape allegation were tainted by gendered disbelief and victim-blaming: ‘The present case reveals certain biases concerning women in Cyprus which impeded the effective protection of the applicant’s rights as a victim of gender-based violence and which, if not reversed, run the risk of creating a background of impunity, discouraging victims’ trust in the criminal justice system, despite the existence of a satisfactory legislative framework’, (X., para 125). Notably, however, in X the Court stopped short of finding a violation of Article 14 ECHR, whereas in N.T., dealing with strikingly similar facts and legal questions, it went further, expressly recognising the discriminatory nature of the authorities’ conduct and the structural dimension of the violation. X’s finding above, thus, takes on even greater significance when read alongside the reasoning in N.T.. In both cases, the State invoked formal procedural justifications—credibility assessments, lack of evidentiary certainty, inconsistencies in testimony—to rationalise decisions that were, in substance, shaped by patriarchal assumptions about how a ‘real’ victim should behave. Essentially, in both X. and N.T., national authorities relied on character assessments of the victims, drawing on outdated rape myths and gendered narratives to justify ending the cases.
Such reasoning is not exceptional. It is structural. It operates through routine mechanisms of discretion: decisions on whether to prosecute, how to assess credibility, which evidence to prioritise, and how much victim participation to permit. Even though the ECtHR has not (yet) classified the identified violations as systemic in nature, it has offered increasingly clear signals that these are the consequence of an embedded structural deficiency. The effect is the preservation of a legal culture in which disbelief is the default response to sexual violence, and where prosecutorial decisions are effectively insulated from scrutiny, oversight, or correction.
Critically, the Court’s analysis was grounded in the broader context of Cypriot institutional practice. It cited GREVIO’s damning evaluation, which identified ‘rampant prejudices and patriarchal attitudes among the police,’ chronic under-prosecution of sexual offences, and a lack of gender-sensitive procedures across the justice chain (N.T., para 53). The Court also acknowledged that the existence of a seemingly satisfactory legislative framework, including Cyprus’ ratification of the Istanbul Convention and the transposition of the Victims’ Rights Directive (2012/29/EU) into national law, had not translated into meaningful protection for victims in practice.
Connecting the dots, N.T. and X. lay bare a systemic deficiency in Cyprus’ compliance with its obligations under the Convention. The repetition of similar fact patterns, legal justifications, and institutional attitudes should serve as a warning that we are no longer dealing with discrete cases. The repeated reliance on gendered stereotypes, the consistent disregard for trauma-informed approaches, and the absence of accountability for such failures amount to more than isolated malfunctions—they reflect a justice system structurally predisposed to disbelieve and marginalise women who report sexual violence.
The Court has previously warned of the ‘chilling effect’, in Opuz v. Turkey and J.L. v. Italy, that impunity in cases of gender-based violence fosters a climate of mistrust and deters victims from seeking protection. In N.T., it goes further by identifying the institutional architecture that enables such impunity, and by making explicit that the problem is not just a failure to act, but a failure shaped by discriminatory norms, embedded in the exercise of state power.
This is the legal and normative power of Article 14 in such contexts: to unmask the illusion of objectivity in systems that, in practice, reproduce inequality. What is now required is a turn from recognition to transformation—from acknowledging structural discrimination to dismantling it.
What makes N.T. v. Cyprus particularly troubling is the role played by prosecutorial discretion in undermining justice. While the initial decision to prosecute was based on available evidence, that decision was later reversed based on a private meeting between the applicant and prosecutors—conducted without formal safeguards, legal representation, or transparency. The applicant was later denied access to the case file and was never provided with a full explanation of the reasons behind the decision to suspend proceedings (paras 42–43).
The Court did not shy away from criticising this process, noting that the refusal to provide the applicant with the case file, combined with the lack of reasoning for the discontinuation of the proceedings, undermined her effective participation in the process and contributed to her secondary victimisation.
This unchecked discretionary power is not an incidental flaw—it is a structural feature of the Cypriot legal system, exposing a critical accountability gap, which, at the same time, urgently calls for reform. Under Cypriot law, the Attorney General possesses near-absolute authority to initiate or discontinue criminal prosecutions, without being subject to judicial scrutiny, institutional oversight, or legally mandated reasoning. In practice, this power is exercised in ways that are opaque, unchallengeable, and, as N.T. illustrates, potentially discriminatory.
In systems where prosecutorial discretion is unfettered, its exercise becomes highly susceptible to implicit bias, institutionalised sexism, and external pressures. The problem is magnified in cases of sexual violence, where entrenched cultural narratives around victim credibility, ‘appropriate’ behaviour, and emotional conduct often infiltrate decision-making. As demonstrated in N.T., such decisions are not immune to the influence of gendered assumptions. Rather, they are shaped and sustained by them. Without external review or procedural transparency, prosecutorial discretion ceases to be a neutral legal tool and becomes an instrument through which systemic injustice is reproduced under the guise of legality.
Beyond the Court’s legal findings, the judgment raises pressing questions about what meaningful compliance with its rulings would require. Cyprus has, on paper, a comprehensive legal framework to protect victims of gender-based violence: it is a party to the Istanbul Convention, and its domestic criminal law reflects EU standards on sexual violence. Yet, as the Court noted, ‘what is important however, is to discern how the domestic authorities applied those provisions in practice’ (para 74).
Both cases demonstrate that reforms cannot rely on legal transplants alone. Prosecutors, police and judges must be subject to mandatory, ongoing training in gender-sensitive investigation and trauma-informed interviewing that would guide the assessment of such cases. Decision-making in rape cases must be insulated from gendered moral judgments. Prosecutorial decisions to discontinue sexual offence cases should be subject to independent review mechanisms. Most importantly, victim support, including legal representation and participatory rights for victims, must be institutionalised, not discretionary or dependent on individual goodwill. Without transformation in prosecutorial culture, institutional accountability, and public attitudes, these laws serve as window dressing for a system that continues to betray victims.
The Court’s judgment in N.T. v. Cyprus is a powerful reminder that gender-based violence is not merely a private harm—it is a public failure. It affirms that when institutions treat survivors with suspicion, disbelief, or contempt, they become complicit in the violence they are meant to redress.
The judgment also exposes the limits of individual redress in the face of structural injustice. The Court can condemn, but it cannot compel transformation. That burden falls on States, and on legal communities, to interrogate not just how law is applied but how it fails—and whom it fails.
Cyprus is now under an obligation to remedy the violations found. Whether it will do so meaningfully remains to be seen. But N.T. has left its mark: it has named the harm, traced its legal and cultural roots, and illuminated the cost of silence. What happens next is a test not only of legal compliance, but of political and moral will.
Strasbourg Observers is an academic blog that discusses recent developments at the European Court of Human Rights. The editorial team of Strasbourg Observers is based at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and the Centre for Government and Law of Hasselt University.
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