Parents 'Wanted Virginity Check For Daughter, 18, After Finding Secret Boyfriend'

Couple "threatened to kill" the teenager, court hears.
Exterior of Kingston Crown Court where the parents of an 18-year-old stand accused of controlling or coercive behaviour and one count of making a threat to kill (file photo).
Exterior of Kingston Crown Court where the parents of an 18-year-old stand accused of controlling or coercive behaviour and one count of making a threat to kill (file photo).
PA Archive/PA Images

A doctor refused to carry out a “virginity check” on a couple’s 18-year-old daughter when they frogmarched her to a clinic after discovering her secret boyfriend, a court heard.

Mitra Eidiani, 42, and Ali Safaraei, 56, also threatened to kill their daughter Sophia’s boyfriend, warning him they were “dangerous” because they were Muslim, a jury was told.

The teenager was bitten by her mum, threatened with a kitchen knife by her dad after returning from the doctor, had her passport taken from her and was told she would be sent “back to Iran to marry a cousin,” Kingston Crown Court heard.

The parents found out Sophia, a college student whose last name was not given in court, was in a relationship with her workmate Bailey Marshall-Telfer, 18, when the pair were caught meeting secretly at her home.

They then visited Marshall-Telfer at work, where Eidiani suggested “that they, as Muslim people, were dangerous”, the court was told.

David Povall, prosecuting, said Eidiani came home unexpectedly while Marshall-Telfer was at their house in Wandsworth, south London.

He initially tried to climb from a bathroom window but she discovered some of his belongings, including a pair of headphones, the jury heard.

Eidiani wept as Sophia told the jury: “We panicked because we didn’t expect it to happen so I had no choice but to tell him to go on the roof.

“We were both scared, we didn’t know what to expect and obviously it would be a shock for my mum.”

She added: “She did tell him not to come back and we should not have contact anymore.

“She did break his headphones and Bailey was shocked when he saw them.”

Povall said after Eidiani broke the headphones, she told Marshall-Telfer: “That’s the least way I can cause you some harm’.”

He added: “She shouted, she was threatening, she took a photograph of him and she insisted that he leave the house.”

Povall said Sophia’s father then returned home after the boyfriend had left.

He added: “Sophia describes hearing from inside her room her mother begging her father, ‘please, don’t hurt her’.

“But in any event, her father came up to the room shouting at her angrily, telling her that he would kill her and insisting that he and his wife should take Sophia to the doctor so that it could be checked whether she was still a virgin.”

Sophia told jurors: “I did get threatened – that if I didn’t go, stuff like I can get killed.”

The family went together to a doctor, but the GP declined to carry out the check.

Sophia added: “The doctor asked me the reason why I was in that day and I didn’t talk, I just told my mum, as they were the ones that wanted me to get checked.

“They said ‘if she wants to get checked she has to say herself’.”

The prosecutor added that Safaraei enterted the consultation room to see if he could make the check happen.

“The doctor was adamant, rightly, and in due course the family left without Sophia having been violated in this way,” Povall said.

But when the family returned home from the doctor, her mum became “extremely angry” and bit Sophia, the jury heard.

A photograph of a large yellow bruise on her forearm, allegedly caused by the bite, was shown to the jury.

In the following days, the parents made life “extremely unpleasant” for Sophia and Marshall-Telfer, Povall said.

He said: “She was called a prostitute, her father threatened to kill both her and Bailey.

“She was told she was disowned, it was suggested she might be sent back to Iran to marry a cousin.”

Marshall-Telfer was later threatened by Eidiani while at work at a Sports Direct store near Clapham Junction, where he had met Sophia, the court heard.

Safaraei and Eidiani, both of Clapham, south London, deny two counts of controlling or coercive behaviour and one count of making a threat to kill.

Eidiani also denies one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Eidiani pleaded guilty to one count of criminal damage, related to the headphones, at an earlier hearing.

Parveen Mansoor, representing Safaraei, told the court he is not a Muslim and “would have been fine” about his daughter having a boyfriend.

The trial continues.

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