A 16-year-old girl was allegedly lured to an apartment in Vienna and subjected to a prolonged sexual assault by multiple migrant men, who are accused of filming the attack and threatening to release the footage if she went to the police.
As reported by Kronen Zeitung, the teenager was invited to the flat by a man she did not know, before the situation escalated rapidly once she arrived. The door was allegedly locked behind her, trapping her inside as the assault began.
Investigators believe the victim was forced onto a mattress and raped, despite attempting to resist and calling for help. A second suspect is also accused of assaulting the girl, while a third individual allegedly participated in filming the incident.
Authorities have identified one of the suspects as a 19-year-old Syrian national living in Graz. He has reportedly been arrested in connection with the case. The other two suspects remain at large, with police continuing their search.
The alleged attack took place in May last year but only came to light after the victim encountered the Syrian migrant months later. Following the chance meeting, she reported the incident to the police. He had only recently been released from prison for other unknown offenses.
Prosecutors are now investigating the suspects on suspicion of rape, coercion, and blackmail, with particular focus on the alleged use of recorded footage to intimidate the victim into silence.
The case is the latest in a long line of attacks by foreign nationals against Austria’s vulnerable, namely, children and the elderly.
In March 2024, a 14-year-old schoolgirl was found dead in the Viennese apartment of a 26-year-old Afghan migrant who entered Austria during the migrant wave of 2015. The girl had been kidnapped, drugged, and raped before ultimately dying from a drug overdose.
In November 2024, a Syrian migrant was jailed for 10 years for raping and assaulting a 17-year-old girl at Salzburg train station. The 27-year-old unemployed asylum seeker approached the girl before dragging her into a toilet cubicle. The court heard how he beat the girl, strangled her, and forcibly raped her “in a particularly degrading manner.”
In December of that year, a Somali asylum seeker was jailed for six years for the brutal rape of a 14-year-old girl at a train station in Langenzersdorf, Lower Austria.
The victim, who had been talking with her mother on the phone as she walked home, was dragged between two vehicles in the station’s parking lot and raped. Her phone and purse were then stolen by her attacker.
In court, the Somali national grinned and said, “I couldn’t hold back.”
In March last year, two Algerian men faced trial in the Vienna Regional Court for the brutal assault of two teenage girls, aged 14 and 15, whom they allegedly lured into an abandoned building, drugged, and raped at gunpoint.
That same month, an Afghan man convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl avoided prison despite the victim becoming pregnant. He said during his trial in his defense, “I thought it was allowed.”
Last June, four Syrian men were arrested after a teenage girl who had been raped was found unconscious with overdose symptoms and injuries. She was in such a bad state that she had to be placed into an induced coma.
The following month, a Bulgarian gang targeted a 16-year-old girl visiting the Laaerbergbad swimming pool in Vienna. She was forcibly held under the water while one man attempted to rip off her bikini.
In October, an Afghan caregiver faced trial, accused of raping an elderly woman whose attack was witnessed by her son via livestream. In his testimony, the son said his mother had “lost the will to live” following the assault. The Afghan was ultimately sentenced in January 2026 to three and a half years in prison.
In September last year, a 10-strong migrant youth gang faced trial for the sustained gang-rape of a 12-year-old girl in Vienna. The girl told the court how she had been pressured into sex in parks, stairwells, hotel rooms, and apartments across the city’s Favoriten district. The men were ultimately acquitted after the court found there wasn’t enough evidence to show the sex wasn’t consensual. The men may, however, face new charges after another 12-year-old girl came forward to report similar attacks.
In January of this year, Heute newspaper warned that underage girls in Austria were being approached by men of Arab descent who offer them drugs and promise more in Vienna. The public warning came after authorities revealed the death of another 16-year-old girl in a Viennese hotel room.
