“I felt enormous pressure, and there was nothing I could do. I could hear my brother’s voice, and kept seeing him in the faces of people on the street,” she said.
When she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital, Elli said she became “the crazy one in the family”.
In 2016, she made her first suicide attempt. When at last she decided to tell her parents, her mother was furious with her.
“Do you want to harm our family? Do you want to send your brother to prison?” Elli recalled her saying.
When she went to the police to denounce her brother, she was told that the abuse had happened too long ago and was discouraged from filing a complaint.
But in 2018, when she learned that her brother’s wife was expecting a baby, she knew she had to act.
She lodged her complaint just four days before the 15-year statute of limitations on child abuse was due to expire.
‘Feeling guilty’
“I wanted to hear (in front of a court) that he was guilty,” Elli said. “Until that moment, I was the one feeling guilty.”
In court, her mother defended Elli’s brother, as did most of her relatives.
In 2020, he was handed a suspended three-year sentence. Two years later, an appeals court gave him another three years. That sentence was also suspended.
Once in court, Elli said she “no longer felt different, or alone.”
She had the support of sailing champion Bekatorou and around 30 other women.
But much remains to be done.
“Mouths have opened but ears remain shut in our patriarchal society,” Elli said.
