Guest Column from Renaissance Horizon
In 2017, Dominik Feri, who has an Ethiopian father, was elected to the Czech Republic’s Chamber of Deputies as a member of the establishment center-right TOP 9. He was widely praised in media worldwide as “the first Black” member of the Czech parliament. Politico exalted him as number eight among the twenty-eight politicians who would most shape the future of Europe.
The major German media outlet Die Welt praised him as the “Czech Star with an Afro Hairstyle” in an article titled “Let’s Make Europe Great Again!” Feri was number five on their list of eight politicians who were supposedly restoring faith in the EU. Number one on the list was the president of France. Die Welt even called him “a beacon of hope” in one article.
Then in 2018, he was involved in a fight at a wine-tasting party with two other men. During the incident, he appears to have been knocked down, and something sliced his back, requiring stitches. Feri sent an upbeat tweet of himself smiling and indicating that he was wounded when he tried to break up a fight. Other party guests detained the man who knocked him down, and a police report was filed.
Then, when he was getting stitches at the hospital, he told reporters that two Whites called him a racial slur and then assaulted him. This was an international media sensation. Politico wrote two articles hyping him as the victim of a racially motivated attack. Die Welt wrote three articles claiming he was “brutally” attacked for his race. However, this story fell apart, and no one was ever prosecuted for a crime. For starters, he told the police a different story than what he told the media. He reconciled with the other two men, and they bought him a new dress shirt to replace the one that was torn. Politico and Die Welt never mentioned that the racial attack narrative fell apart.
In 2021, Feri became associated with the #MeToo movement. Once again, receiving praise from the international media.
Now he is on trial for raping a minor, raping a woman, and attempted rape of another woman. The trial began on February 14th, 2023. He faces up to ten years in prison.
The first charge is for alleging performing sex acts on an underage girl while she was unconscious. The girl says that Feri invited her to his apartment in Prague in March 2016. She says he tried to get her to have sex with him, and she refused. Then she was given a soda that caused her to lose consciousness. Feri admits to taking the girl on a date and sleeping in the same bed with her. He denies any sexual contact or drugging her.
The charge of rape is for allegedly forcefully raping a woman at his apartment in November 2016.
The charge of attempted rape is for an incident that allegedly occurred inside the Chamber of Deputies in 2018. The woman says that Feri attempted to forcibly rape her when she came to his office to interview for a job as an intern.
Feri publicly doxed two of the victims in the lead-up to the trial. Their lawyers are calling this an “act of intimidation” by Feri.
Other women have made allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior. Feri resigned from his seat in the Chamber in 2021 and conceded that some of his behavior towards women had been inappropriate.
The first stage of the trial concluded on February 16th. The court will reconvene in April, and the trial will continue.
Suddenly there are zero articles about him in the English or German media. If you look him up on Politico, you will still see him depicted as a trailblazing Black hero who was the victim of a racially motivated attack. The end. No further updates. If you look him up on Die Welt, you see a bunch of articles praising his “Rasta-Mähne” hair and portraying him as a rock star. Yet zero articles about the rape charges or the start of the trial.
