The former artistic director of the National Theatre of Greece was on Saturday arrested over allegations of rape against minors, amid a belated #MeToo awakening.
Dimitris Lignadis, a renowned actor and director, faces accusations of serial rape and indecent assault, an arrest warrant said.
Lignadis, 56, resigned on Feb. 6 citing a “toxic climate of rumors, innuendo and leaks.”
Photo: AFP
He is at the center of numerous allegations of sexual abuse of minors, Greek media have reported.
He was detained a day after Greek Minister of Culture and Sports Lina Mendoni said she had asked the supreme court prosecutor to look into rumors circulating about him and publicly described him as “a dangerous person.”
“We strongly pressured Lignadis to say if he was the one named in the rumors ... there was a steady denial that the rumors were about him,” Mendoni said.
“He deceived us, he deceived me,” she added.
Her comments angered Lignadis, who shot back: “If I am a dangerous man in my personal life or in my work, I think we should wait for this to be decided by the history and by other institutions.” Lignadis’ lawyer, Nikos Georgouleas, said his client rejected all the accusations and that he was arrested after presenting himself to the authorities.
A complaint was on Friday filed against Lignadis regarding the rape in 2010 of a 14-year-old boy, the Athens News Agency (AND) reported.
The now 25-year-old plaintiff is the second person that has accused the director of rape, ERT TV reported.
The prosecutor received another deposition late on Friday night, ANA said.
This witness alleged that he was at Lignadis’ home with friends under 18, where Lignadis was plying them with alcohol and drugs, and asking them to have group sex.
The Lignadis case has sparked a war of words between the government and opposition parties that have called for Mendoni’s resignation accusing her of dragging her feet in the case.
Alexis Tsipras, leader of main opposition party Syriza, on Friday said that the government had attempted a “cover-up” adding that Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was “a friend of Lignadis.”
“It’s truly obscene that Mr Tsipras tries to take advantage of all these shocking revelations, giving them a party-related tone,” a statement issued by the prime minister’s office said late on Friday.
Mitsotakis “knew Lignadis only for his theatrical performances which he attended,” it added.
More than three years after the #MeToo movement surfaced in the US, the code of silence in Greece was broken by a two-time Olympic sailing medalist Sofia Bekatorou.
Bekatorou in December last year alleged she was 21 when she was subjected to “sexual harassment and abuse” by a senior federation member in his hotel room, shortly after trials for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Several other high-profile figures including actors and university professors have also been embroiled in accusations of bullying, harassment and abuse in the past few weeks.
Giorgos Kimoulis, regarded as one of Greece’s finest actors, has been removed from this year’s Athens and Epidaurus Festival after a flurry of bullying claims from actresses, and one of the country’s top comedians, Petros Filippidis, has been removed from a popular state TV show after claims of lewd behavior by actresses.
However, under Greek law few of the complaints can be prosecuted as they allegedly occurred too long ago.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion