Greek Court Finds Famous Actor Guilty of Attempted Rape

An Athens appeals court on Tuesday found Greek actor Petros Filippidis guilty of two attempted rapes. The judges did not accept any mitigating factors and sentenced the actor to three years’ imprisonment with a three-year suspension.

Two female plaintiffs burst into tears upon hearing the guilty verdict.

Filippidis, 62, was known for his comedic roles in theatre, cinema and television, and was very popular with the Greek public.

The sentence “will be the bullet that will finish me off,” Filippidis told the hearing.

The high-profile trial initially began in March 2022 and ended in February 2023; he was unanimously found guilty of two attempted rapes and sentenced to eight years in prison, but acquitted of a rape charge. However, execution of the sentence was suspended until the case was heard in the second instance.

When Olympic sailing champion Sofia Bekatorou revealed in 2021 she had been raped by an unnamed official of the Hellenic Sailing Federation, her testimony inspired a #MeToo movement in Greece.

Three well-known female actors, Anna-Maria Papacharalamous, Penelope Anastastosopoulou and Lena Drosaki, then filed a complaint the same year against Filippidis for sexual harassment, seeking his removal from the Greek Actors’ Union.

These complaints encouraged three other women to accuse the actor of rape and attempted rape. The first woman said that Filippidis had sexually assaulted her in September 2008 in the dressing room of the Ivi Theatre while she was visiting him on a business date.

The second woman accused him of attempted rape in February 2010 at the Mousouri Theatre. The third woman accused him of trying to rape her in a car in 2014.