A man who raped a dance teacher and got her pregnant, then called her “a killer” when she got an abortion, has been jailed for four years over a series of crimes stemming from their “rollercoaster” relationship.

The now-43-year-old Portuguese national was found guilty by a court on Friday.

A court heard how he set his sights on a young Turkish woman he spotted at a Paceville bar after she arrived in Malta in July 2016 as an English language student. The two spoke and danced. 

Following that occasion, she and her female friend received a friend request from the man on Facebook. They both accepted. 

At the time, the woman had a boyfriend back in Turkey but the relationship was not going very well. 

She met the accused again at another bar, where he invited her and her friend to join him at a VIP table. 

Although they accepted the invitation, she refused to let him kiss her as the evening progressed and also turned down subsequent offers to go out, telling him that she would only do so when her boyfriend came to Malta on holiday. 

Then one evening, she accepted his offer to meet and went barhopping with him. 

When she woke up, she found herself lying beside him at his apartment, her skinny jeans undone and a physical sensation telling her that she had had sex. 

He confirmed they had done so. 

Feeling ashamed of herself, the woman got up and walked out of his flat. 

Some months later, she discovered she was pregnant.

She confronted the accused angrily about that time together. He told her he had also been drunk that night.  But he was happy about the pregnancy, claiming it was “destiny.”

The woman returned to Turkey a few days later, and after consulting a gynecologist underwent an abortion on Christmas Eve. 

While in Turkey, she broke up with her boyfriend and told the accused about it over Skype. 

Relationship begins

When she returned to Malta in January 2017, she started a relationship with the accused and he moved in with her after renting out his own apartment, so as to save money to buy a car.

But soon his jealousy started to show and the relationship became a “rollercoaster” experience, as she recounted to police. 

If she went out alone, he would pack her belongings and dump them outside the apartment. If she refused his sexual advances, “he’d create a whole drama.”

The man threatened to tell her ex about her cheating and the abortion, and threatened to post intimate content of the couple on social media.

At other times, he would threaten to commit suicide.

He began to call her “a killer,” knowing very well that the abortion issue was a very sensitive topic and that by bringing it up he would “break her down.”

The victim spoke of the “love-hate relationship” that was “slowly killing her inside.” 

She finally moved in with a Turkish friend, and travelled back to her home country with her in December 2017. 

Harassment and threats

When she returned to Malta, she contacted the accused because she had left her credit card PIN at his flat. 

He met her at the airport, took her out for a meal, apologized for his previous behaviour and treated her “nicely.”

Soon the harassment and stalking started again. 

One March morning at 7:00am she had to call the local police station, because the accused was banging violently on her door. After a neighbour told him to go away, he started throwing stones at her balcony. 

The complicated relationship continued, despite the two no longer being a couple. 

The two slept together and she also agreed to teach Zumba classes with him, at his sister’s suggestion.  But the accused’s jealousy reared its head again when he saw the victim dancing with other men at a Paceville festival. 

He grabbed her by the neck, assaulted her, tried to take her mobile phone and later would not let her leave his apartment. 

She finally had to admit that she could not trust him “not even as a friend.”

When she distanced herself, the harassment took a different form. 

He emailed her on her work email when she blocked him on social platforms and even contacted her ex in Turkey, telling him about her cheating as he had threatened to do. 

She told the police that he told her she would be “stupid” to report him. 

“I’m European, you cannot imagine yourself in front of a Catholic Maltese judge against abortion. You’re not the victim here. I am, and I play cool,” she recalled him telling her. 

One of her work colleagues testified that she had told him how the accused had smashed her two mobiles and laptop. 

The witness also told the court that he had once noticed a mark on her collar and bruising under her makeup.

Other friends testified about different occasions where they witnessed fights between the victim and the accused.

Accused: She was the one hitting me

The accused also testified, describing his shock when told about the abortion. He claimed that she was the jealous one.

She was a trained kickboxer who would hit him, scratch his face and even threw a glass of whisky in his eyes after accusing him of cheating, he said. 

She once even threw acidic drain unblocker on his legs when he returned home late from a work party.

He produced photos and a medical certificate to support those claims. 

Yet in spite of such alleged aggressiveness, he remained in the relationship, explaining that “it was all about love.”

Other acquaintances of the parties also appeared to support the accused’s version.

On the basis of extensive testimonies provided the court, presided over by Magistrate Ian Farrugia, concluded that there was no “reasonable and legitimate reason” not to believe the victim’s version. 

The accused had pursued a “persistent and unequivocal course of conduct” amounting to stalking, harassment, unbearable monitoring and spying on the woman who had to endure such acts “intended solely to isolate her” subjecting her to acts of physical intimacy.

He humiliated her, interfered in her property, caused her distress and fear of violence.

Moreover, on the night when the two had first had sex, although the accused claimed that sex was consensual, the victim said that she was so drunk that she could not give her consent. 

She did not even remember what had happened and only got to know when she asked the accused.

“Then she understood exactly and fully what had happened that night, when later on she found out that she was pregnant,” observed the court, condemning the accused to a four year effective jail term and a fine of €5000. 

Neither the accused nor his victim can be named by court order.