Of all the despicable acts of which subhumans are capable, apart from murder, about the lowest you can go on the bottom feeder chain of cretinous creeps and abominable acts is sexual abuse and rape of a minor – especially if you get away with it. Allegedly.

To many people, it sure looks that way in the case of Ilias Michos, a middle-aged shopkeeper, and Ioannis Sofianidis, who were charged with rape after confessing to having sex with a 12-year-old girl before a prosecutor said Michos shouldn’t be charged with rape, pimping, and collecting prostitution earnings because there wasn’t enough evidence.

Like what? The guy confessed, and the legal age for consent in Greece is 15 – waaaay too young of course – so is there any way to twist this isn’t statutory rape? What are they going to say? She wanted it?

As if this sordid case couldn’t get any more cringe-worthy, a prosecutor recommended that the girl’s mother – she won’t be getting any Mother of the Year awards – should be convicted for sexual abuse and exploitation. Maybe she can plead the Michos Defense and get off.

Greece’s privacy laws prohibit naming defendants in cases, unless they are politicians trying to get each other with spurious charges, or celebrities, but this case was so egregious that Michos and Sofianidis were named and had their photos distributed.

Sex scandals are not rare in Greece, ranging from the harassment of athletes and others that blew up during the #MeToo movement – led by Olympic sailing champion Sofia Bekatorou, who said she was raped by a Hellenic Sailing Federation Vice-President.

The alleged perpetrator, Aristidis Adamopoulos, denied wrongdoing but resigned his position and no charges could be brought because the statute of limitations had expired, barring any prosecutions.

“He said he would stop if I wanted him to, but he didn’t stop, no matter what I said. When he finished and got up from on top of me, I left the room ashamed and in tears,” she told a magazine. She was 21 at the time she was victimized in a trauma that never relented.

Not long after the prosecutor said Michos shouldn’t be prosecuted – he apparently didn’t do anything except have sex with her as he admitted – police arrested two men in another pimping ring targeting girls 14-18.

They weren’t named nor had their photos distributed in the media, although police said they allegedly drove the girls to hotels in Athens to meet ‘clients’, a euphemism for perverts and pedophiles.

The prosecutor said Michos should be found guilty of aggravated abuse of a minor under the age of 14 years by a person entrusted with care, possession of pornographic material involving a minor under 12 years of age without coercion and profiteering, facilitating the minor’s involvement in prostitution, and possession of weapons.

There were protests in the streets of the neighborhood of Sepolia over the recommendation to clear Michos of rape after attacks on his shop two years ago when the case broke, and the anger broke out again. Then all was quiet.

The trial is being held behind closed doors, hopefully to protect the victim from any more exploitation since we know the names of the alleged perpetrators, but not 24 other defendants who were arrested on charges of having sex with her.

Photos were shown of Michos with members of the governing party New Democracy, Balkan Insight said at the time the case broke, but there’s a phrase in Greek for that: ‘Τυχαίο; Δεν νομίζω’ – ‘Tyhaio, Then Nomizo’ (Coincidence? I think not).

At the time, he was also accused of recording the assaults and uploading the videos to the Internet with a fake profile he had created, and using it to attract clients to pay him to have sex with the girl, a minor.

Former government spokesman Yiannis Oikonomou said then that the names of 213 men who reached out have sex with the girl, which apparently isn’t rape even if she was 12, should be revealed, but they weren’t, of course. If one of them had been a member of a rival party his photo would be on a billboard in Syntagma Square in neon lights.

Sofianidis is said to have accepted paying the child, and not Michos, and denying that what he did was rape. What was it then? Child’s play? Both are presumed innocent, of course, and there’s a lot of allegations and charges, but do the math. Does it add up?

The main opposition SYRIZA party had accused the government of encouraging an atmosphere of impunity, but Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis rebuffed the charge and said the judicial system should be respected: it has 11,000 cases pending and at least one judge piling up 3,000 of them saying it was too much work to do.

Greece could use a version of the old American TV show ‘To Catch a Predator’ that featured confrontations between the host, partly filmed with a hidden camera, of adult men at a sting house arriving to have sex with someone they thought was a minor.

But here’s a thought in this case. The show was canceled after a Texas Assistant District Attorney shot himself to death as police tried to serve him with a search warrant after he was caught talking to and exchanging photos with a volunteer posing as a 13-year-old boy.

Hmmmmm.