THESSALONIKI – A 27-year-old man accused of spiking a woman’s drink at a New Year’s celebration and raping a 27-year-old woman was acquitted by a council of judges who said she lied about the alleged assault.

It happened in Greece’s second-largest city and caused a sensation, coming at a time of sexual scandals and assaults against women but the finding was that the woman who brought the claims, Georgia Bika, made them up.

The council accepted a 60-page report of the First Instance Prosecutor, Kyriaki Kliaba, who called for the man’s acquittal, stating that the testimony of the alleged victim “constitutes fiction and unabashed lies,” said Kathimerini.

The report said the evidence, including witness statements, were at odds with her story and that forensic and toxicology tests conducted in Thessaloniki, and Bern, Switzerland, and the collected urine samples did not find any drugs or other substances, while the amount of alcohol detected was minimal.

“She made up a story with herself as the heroine victim, embellishing it each time with the most gross lies, in order to give more credibility to the description of the events, presenting herself as a victim of rape by the accused and not only,” Kliaba said of what the findings were.

He was not identified but Bika was ordered to pay his legal expenses although it wasn’t said if she will face charges of filing a false report nor what damage may have been caused to the movement supporting sex assault victims.

The woman had claimed that she attended a party at the invitation of a friend, which was attended by a number of businesspeople and decided to leave but felt unwell and then booked a room at the hotel.

She said she remembered three men approaching her in an elevator but then passed out and said that the next morning she woke up men’s clothing in the room and reported the rape to police. It wasn’t said she fabricated the story.