Young beautiful trainee accountant Eleanor de Freitas, aged 23, killed herself after being accused of making a false rape claim. Her grieving father is now taking legal action against the man his daughter accused of rape, Alexander Economou, aged 36.
The son of a Greek shipping magnate had responded to Eleanor’s rape claims by bringing private prosecution action against her for making false claims. The man she claimed had raped her spent 200,000 pounds to bring the private prosecution against her.
Economou says that Eleanor’s claims had resulted in tarnishing his reputation, but de Freitas is going after him following the tragedy of his daughter’s suicide.
Economou has released a statement, day before his High Court hearing on Monday, November 23:
My reputation has been permanently and irreversibly damaged.
I have been widely and repeatedly accused of a terrible crime which I simply did not commit. My family have received anonymous death threats. My personal relationships and my business relationships have all suffered terribly since Mr de Freitas went to the press.
It has been three years of hell and I hope that my legal action will finally put an end to what has become a nightmare ordeal.
Not once in all of this have I forgotten that a young girl has tragically taken her own life. But grief does not give anyone the right to ruin an innocent man. I just want this to be over. I have no other choice but to pursue this course of action.’
On his part, the young girl’s father says that he did nothing to attack the son of the shipping magnate. It should be noted that Economou has spent an estimated £200,000 gathering evidence to support his claim that he had not raped the deceased, also a bipolar sufferer. Evidence in Economou’s defence includes CCTV images of him and Eleanor visiting a shop to buy sex toys just a day after she claims he had assaulted her.
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