“I was living under a constant state of fear, he would tell me you’ll lose your sister and your mother if you don’t do what I tell you. He threatened me daily” declares to parapolitika.gr the mother of deceased Panagiotakis, who now accuses her husband of murdering their child. Dimitris is currently serving a prison sentence after his conviction for domestic violence.
Following sweeping changes in the Forensic Service of Patras, one of the case files investigated by Internal Affairs officers and to be examined by the 3-member committee of forensic doctors from the Ministry of Justice concerns the death of a 2.5-year-old infant in 2013. The child had been examined by Patras coroner Ilias Gkotsis, and according to “incorruptible sources,” all evidence points to the fact that the infant’s death was not due to pathological causes but to brutal beating. Following the infant’s death, a trial ensued with the child’s father as defendant, who was ultimately found innocent by unanimous court decision. Curiously, during the trial, the report compiled by the Patras coroner was read, according to which the death was due to pathological causes. However, among the prosecution witnesses was Andreas Iliades, a well-known doctor from Patras, who had seen the child and found it covered in injuries, bruises, and even broken ribs.
During the trial, the court obviously relied exclusively on Ilias Gkotsis’s report, acquitting the defendant. It also failed to consider that there had already been an incident of abuse involving the family’s first child, who had been transferred to hospital with severe injuries. Only one of the family’s children lives with their mother, while the other two have been placed with foster families by prosecutor’s order. “For years, I was patient. He was abusive toward me. But it never crossed my mind that he was equally abusive to our children. I didn’t speak up and did whatever I could to survive. Just hours ago, everything in my life has been turned upside down. I never thought he would abuse our own children, it never crossed my mind, perhaps because I was living in a state of permanent fear and his word was law” states the mother of the deceased infant speaking to parapolitika.gr. She now lives with relatives and will plan her next moves in the coming hours.
She will wait, however, until the 3-member forensic committee completes its findings regarding the infant’s cause of death. The unfortunate woman, 11 years after losing her child, sees her life turned upside down, currently unable to process the unprecedented developments in this high-profile case that adds to the erroneous expert opinions of the same coroner in the case of the mother from Patras who was convicted in first instance by judicial authorities for murdering her three daughters, as well as that of young Eirini, who was recently imprisoned and accused of murdering her own sister and three other children, all children of her friends.
