The girl’s ordeal reportedly began last Friday night when she went to stay at her boyfriend’s house on the western fringe of Rio de Janeiro. She woke up on Sunday morning and found herself surrounded by 33 men, many of them carrying heavy arms.
The girl was assaulted for 36 hours on Saturday while visiting a shantytown on the west side of the city and did not regain consciousness until Sunday morning.
The men, who have been described as drug dealers, posted obscene screen shots of the video on Twitter, some of them featuring their faces, along with profane descriptions of their actions.
The images received hundreds of comments before the Twitter accounts were suspended.
Police said they issued warrants for the arrests of four men, including the girl’s 19-year-old boyfriend.
He and another man, 41, are facing charges of rape, while two other men face charges for the distribution of images of the attacks on social networks, reports The Globe and Mail.
The incident came to lime light after more than 800 people contacted the police to report about the tweets they saw online.
The state Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rio has received hundreds of complaints from distressed members of the public who saw the images when they were first posted on Tuesday.
The Sao Paulo feminist advocacy organisation Think Olga issued a statement on the attack: ‘Women worldwide take their own lives when they find themselves in such circumstances, because they fear the same impunity that allows their perpetrators to defame them on social media,’ said in a statement on the attack.
‘This absurd violation of their privacy is comparable in severity to the crime itself, because it multiplies thousands of times with every view, every click.’
MailOnline/TOI
No comments:
Post a Comment