Police in Rio de Janeiro are hunting more than 30 men suspected of taking part in the horrific mass rape of an adolescent girl, after which video of the victim shot by her attackers was posted online. The 16-year old was attacked in a favela in the west of Rio de Janeiro not far from one of the main venues for this summer's Olympic Games.
Her family told local media she had gone to visit a boy she was dating in the early hours of Saturday but returned home only on Tuesday, disorientated, dressed in men’s clothing and without her mobile phone.
Later a neighbour told the family that a video of the girl was online. The 40-second clip showed her on a bed partially naked, while a group of men laugh and touch her bleeding genitals. Amid gloating, one voice can be heard saying she had been raped by “more than 30”. The video was circulated widely via Twitter with many users posting misogynistic comments before the accounts were suspended.
The victim, the mother of a three-year old girl, is reported to have told police that she believes she was drugged. She said she woke up in a room surrounded by the gang.
The video prompted police to launch an investigation and they have already issued four arrest warrants. Among those sought is a 41-year old man who appears in the video clip and an 18-year old who posted it online. The case has renewed the debate in Brazil about the country's deeply entrenched rape culture and the failure of police forces to tackle it seriously.
In 2014, 47,636 rapes were reported in Brazil. However, according to the Forum for Public Security, a non-governmental organisation, only an estimated 35 per cent of all incidents in the country are reported. The group estimates a woman is raped in Brazil every 11 minutes.
This latest attack has provoked thousands to protest on social media using the campaign slogan #EstuproNUNCAmais (#rapeNEVERagain in Portuguese). Campaigners are particularly angry at reports that the perpetrators who shot the video blamed the victim for wearing a short skirt. One of the campaign's organisers feminist Manoela Mikos wrote on Facebook: "In a macho society, the woman is penalised for being a woman and the rapist counts on this."
According to the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, the victim later wrote on her own Facebook page: ". . . thank you for the support of everyone . . . Really, I thought I would be judged badly! But I wasn't, this could happen to anyone some day." The paper did not divulge the victim's identity.
Rio’s police force was heavily criticised in 2013 after it emerged they had failed to properly investigate claims by a local woman that she had been raped by a gang that went on to brutally assault a US woman. Only once a foreigner reported being raped were the three men tracked down and arrested.
