In A 62-year-old man was sentenced to 8 years in prison because he had been sexually assaulting his neighbors’ underage daughter for three years, whom he had taken care of with his wife while her working parents were away at work.

The Mixed Court of Appeal of Thessaloniki found him again guilty of abusing a minor in lawlessness (follow-up), with the recognition of a mitigating factor of previous cohabitation, confirming the original sentence. After the judges’ verdict, the 62-year-old, originally from Georgia, returned to prison.

The case was revealed in 2019, in the west Thessaloniki, when the parents of the (then) 9-year-old patient saw one day the 62-year-old’s wife returning from the market, while they believed until then that she was watching over their daughter. “We thought that the woman was guarding our daughter together with her husband,” the minor’s parents, who come from Albania, reportedly testified. “We wondered what he might be discussing with him since the accused does not speak Greek” they added, who suspected that something suspicious was going on.

Then the little girl gradually began to reveal what she was experiencing, so her parents contacted the authorities and the case took its course Justice. She herself, examined by child psychiatrists, described in detail specific actions of the 62-year-old that left no room for doubt as to the truth of her complaints.

For his part, the condemned from the first moment denied the acts, referring to a conspiracy that was set up against him. Among other things, in his apology during the appeals trial, which was held behind closed doors, he claimed that the minor’s parents denounced him because he refused to lend them money when they asked him for financial assistance.