A young German woman has said she was made to feel “like a doll” by two Afghan migrants currently standing trial on rape charges pertaining to an alleged attack more than three years ago.
Sina, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, spoke to the Bild newspaper about her experience amid the ongoing case being heard at the district court in the western German city of Wiesbaden.
“The nightmare repeats itself when I see their faces. It feels like it all happened yesterday,” the now 21-year-old said as she recalled a trauma that continues to affect her today.
She explained how she met the defendants, Sayed Sajad H., 23, and Rames H., 22, in the summer of 2021 at Kollmann-Weiher in Frankfurt’s Sossenheim district after matching with Rames on a dating app.
“I had just turned 18. I wanted a stable relationship, something solid. Since that day, nothing has been the same,” she said.
During the evening, the three of them drank alcohol, and the girl and Sayed shared a kiss. It was then that the prosecution claims the Afghan national became aggressive, biting the victim’s lip and groping her against her will. The second defendant, Rames, is accused of grabbing the then-teen, leading her to a bush near a pond, and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.
Out of fear, Sina says she complied with the request, which then spurred Sayed to push her into the bushes and rape her as she protested and pleaded for him to stop, telling him that he was hurting her.
“My ‘no’ didn’t matter. They spoke in their own language. I was just a doll to them,” Sina told Bild.
During the trial, the court heard how Sayed arrived in Germany during the peak of the migrant crisis in 2015. He now works as an electrician and has a prior conviction for assault. The second defendant, Rames, is currently unemployed and lives with his parents. He didn’t finish school and has no formal qualifications, only living in Germany on a temporary residence permit.
At the trial, the defendants do not deny having sexual intercourse with the victim but insist the acts were consensual. In their testimony, they even suggested that the encounter had been initiated by Sina herself, a version of events strongly rejected by the victim who maintains she had set clear boundaries with Rames and told him in their conversations on the dating app that kissing was as far as she was willing to go.
The case has taken three years to reach a courtroom, a delay deemed unacceptable by the victim whose lawyer, Ulrich Warncke, filed a complaint with the judiciary over its handling of the case.
“The crime took place in June 2021, and charges were filed in October 2022. Since then, the victim has been waiting for a main hearing, hoping for closure,” Warncke said.
“Young women who experience such brutal violence are often completely abandoned,” he added in a strong rebuke of the German justice system.
The verdict is expected on Dec. 4.
