Dozens of men took part in the gang rape of a Brazilian teen. Then the video surfaced online.
Dozens of men took part in the gang rape of a Brazilian teen. Then the video surfaced online.
The 16-year-old girl arrived at her 19-year-old boyfriend's house in Rio de Janeiro around 1 a.m. last weekend. She remembers being alone with him there. The girl says her next memory is waking up in a different house surrounded by more than 30 men, many of them armed. All, or at least some of them, took part in her rape. Naked, injured and penniless, she found some spare clothes and made her way home, she later said.
Her nightmare was far from over. On Wednesday, two of the accused attackers tweeted pictures of her, as well as a 40-second video. The tweets were promptly taken down but not before they accrued hundreds of "likes" and misogynistic comments. In the video, the girl is apparently seen waking up from a drug-induced unconsciousness. Text attached to the video roughly translates to, "Pounded the girl – get it? Hahaha." In the other post, a different man is pictured with his face next to the woman’s genitalia. The caption reads, “Rio state opens a new tunnel for the speed train.”
Police have issued arrest warrants for four men. The boyfriend and another man are accused of rape, and the other two face charges for uploading the video and pictures on social media.
The attack took place in one of Rio de Janeiro's favelas, which are dense and mostly poor neighborhoods often built onto the side of Rio's steep slopes. It occurred at a time of heightened concern over a renewed wave of violence in the favelas. Hit by low oil prices, the Brazilian government has been cutting back on public spending, and the police and special forces that heavily patrol the favelas have seen funding slashed. After the attack, however, Brazil's new president, Michel Temer, announced that he would be creating a department within the federal police to focus on violence against women.
The BBC reported that the girl's family had watched the video and spoken to local media.
"I regretted watching it. When we heard the story we didn't believe what was happening. It's a great affliction. It's a depressing situation," the girl's grandmother told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. "She is not well. She is very confused. This was very serious."
Various groups of activists have been planning protests against the poor treatment of women over the coming days, rallying on social media around the hashtag #EstuproNuncaMais (RapeNeverAgain). One video, below, has been watched over six million times across the world.
Almost 50,000 rapes were reported in Brazil in 2014. In Rio de Janeiro, they occurred at a rate of 13 per day. If convicted, a rapist can face between six and 10 years in jail under current laws. In response to the comments seeming to blame the victim — "If she had just stayed home, she would have been fine" — Brazilian feminists have widely shared news reports of women being attacked in their own homes.
Rio de Janeiro will host this year's Olympic Games, which will begin in August.