The Athens Mixed Jury Court of Appeals today delivered a unanimous verdict finding Petros Filippidis guilty on both counts of attempted rape for which he has been on trial for months.

Specifically, Filippidis was found guilty of the felony of attempted rape against a female actress in 2010, which allegedly took place in his dressing room at the “Mousouri” theatre. He was also unanimously found guilty of a second charge—attempted rape of another actress colleague in his car in 2014, on a street in Palaio Psychiko.

Upon hearing the verdict, the two women who had reported the actor broke down in tears. Present in the courtroom were Anna-Maria Papacharalambous and Lena Drosaki. Also in attendance was Spyros Bibilas, among others.

The court is expected to announce Filippidis’ sentence later today.

It should be noted that the presiding prosecutor, Andreas Karaflos, had previously recommended that the defendant be acquitted of both attempted rape charges. As the prosecutor had argued, the testimonies of both women were filled with contradictions and, in his view, did not paint the picture of a rapist, but rather “that of a man with a penchant for masturbation.”

In his court testimony, Petros Filippidis denied the charges, claiming that he had the consent of the two women who reported him, and that he would never have proceeded sexually if they had resisted. He even attributed the charges against him to what he described as “coordinated actions” by the then leadership of the Greek Actors’ Union (SEI), aimed at pushing him out of the theatre industry.

“I am at risk of going to prison, and it is up to you to judge how unjust that would be. I don’t want your pity—I want a fair trial,” he said at the end of his testimony, expressing to the court his greatest fear: the possibility of returning to prison, where he had already been held in pre-trial detention for 12 months.

“I spent a year in prison because of a lady who lied, and I was acquitted,” Filippidis stated, referring to his prior pre-trial detention based solely on a rape allegation made by a third woman. However, in February 2023, a lower court unanimously found him not guilty of that specific rape charge due to reasonable doubt.

In contrast, the same lower court had found Filippidis guilty of the two attempted rape charges—rulings that the Court of Appeals reaffirmed today. His claims that he had consensual sex with the two women failed to convince a single member of the first-instance court, which sentenced him to eight years in prison, with the sentence suspended pending appeal.