The family of an Albanian teenager who was sent to Austria to recover from horrendous bus accident says she has returned home pregnant and was likely sexually abused while being treated in a hospital.
TIRANA, Feb. 20 – Albanian prosecutors have started to investigate claims that Florie Peci, 23, a student seriously injured after her bus with her classmates fell off a cliff a year ago, is pregnant as a result of sexual abuse while she was in a coma.
Her brother has sent a letter to prosecutors claiming that she has got pregnant while staying at a rehabilitation clinic in Austria where she was taken after the accident.
The victim’s brother, Gazmend Peci, send a letter to the general prosecutor’s office in Albania, asking for an investigation after doctors discovered his sister’s pregnancy. On Thursday he wrote an open letter to local media, detailing the allegations of abuse.
In the letter, Peci said that he believes that his sister was sexually assaulted between Sept. 20-25, 2012 at Neurologisches Therapiezentrum Gmundnerberg in Austria.
Peci was part of the group of strudents of the Elbasan Aleksander Xhuvani University. Police said that the driver was going over the speed limit when the bus veered off a bend on a mountainous road and plunged off an 80-meter cliff. The driver died in the crash, along with 11 students from a university in the city of Elbasan and the fianc顯f one of the students.
The accident occurred near the town of Himare, 220 kilometers south of the capital Tirana. Twenty-six students were also injured. Two were in a coma since the crash and were flown to Austria for specialist treatment.
Peci was one of them after two months in a coma Peci was taken at a rehabilitation clinic. After her coma ended Peci was transferred to the Neurologisches Therapiezentrum Gmundnerberg rehabilitation clinic in the Austrian town of Gmunden for specialist treatment.
Peci’s family members claim that she was sexually abused during her sessions. They also said that her sister continuously accompanied her, but not all the time. Florie and her sister were also taken care by an ethnic Albanian family from Kosovo living in Austria.
Her brother said that in January it resulted that Florie was pregnant. Gynecologists say that goes back in the last week of September, the time when she was still at the clinic. But Florie has not been clear and says she remembers nothing. Authorities in Austria also are investigating allegations that she was sexually abused.
Her family alleges that she became pregnant as a result of a sexual attack at the Austrian clinic where she was being treated after the bus crash last year. But they offer no proof.
Peci is being treated at Tirana’s Queen Geraldine Maternity Hospital and doctors have declared that both the mother and unborn child are in a stable condition. They say an abortion at this late stage would be illegal under Albania’s laws.
Prosecutors in the town of Wels in Austria have sequestered the victim’s medical history and are waiting for more information from their Albanian counterparts, in order to determine whether the alleged crime happened on their territory or after the victim returned home.
In Albania prosecutors are in the process of questioning a group of persons in order to determine the exact date when the victim was impregnated.
