Seventeen young people between the ages of 13 and 18 were arrested in Austria on Thursday accused of conducting a harrowing long-term ordeal of sexual abuse against a 12-year-old girl.
Police in Vienna seized the suspected male rape gang after the victim filed a complaint claiming to have been forced by her boyfriend to have sex with his friends before being passed around “like a trophy” for over a year.
Authorities from the Vienna State Criminal Police Office conducted a mass operation on Thursday morning, arresting multiple suspects and storming dozens of apartments. Four cell phones were also seized in connection with the allegations.
According to Kronen-Zeitung, the victim’s boyfriend is accused of coercing the girl into having underage sex with him and forcing her to engage in non-consensual sexual intercourse with a number of his friends.
The gang allegedly took multiple videos of the attacks which took place over a sustained period in various locations, including a parking garage, an apartment, and a communal stairwell.
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According to the Austrian newspaper, the victim can be heard repeatedly shouting “Stop!” in the footage saved on the seized cell phones as she is raped by multiple perpetrators. She was subsequently blackmailed with the existence of the footage to remain silent with her tormentors vowing to spread it to her family and friends if she contacted the authorities.
After finally telling her mother about her horrific experience, the schoolgirl filed a police complaint which led to the arrests.
The gang members were interviewed separately at the Favoriten police station in the Austrian capital and all but one have since been released pending further investigation.
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They all had the same story, claiming the victim had “made herself look older and pretended to be a 14-year-old” – the age of consent in Austria – and insisted that all acts were “consensual.”
The Vienna public prosecutor’s office must now evaluate the evidence and decide how to proceed, bearing in mind that because the majority of the suspects are minors, they fall under the juvenile criminal law and would only face a maximum of five years in prison for the alleged offenses.
