Five French tourists were arrested in a Spanish Mediterranean resort town over the alleged rape of a 20-year-old Norwegian woman, EFE news agency reports, citing the Civil Guard.
The national police force said the five men, aged between 18 and 19, were in Benidorm, eastern Spain on vacation and were going to leave the country on Wednesday.
It is understood that the alleged victim is a resident of the nearby town of Alfas del Pi, which has the largest Norwegian community outside Norway. She and her female friend are thought to have made contact with the French holidaygoers via Instagram.
On Monday night, they met up at the holiday home where the Frenchmen were staying; one of the women left the house, leaving her friend alone with the five men.
The following day, the woman went to a hospital in Alfas del Pi claiming that she had been sexually assaulted. Her case was reported to police, who detained the suspects between 4 and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday, with the help of a German gendarme who happened to be in Benidorm on a police exchange programme.
The alleged victim provided the photographs of the alleged suspects from their social media accounts and was taken to a hospital for examination.
Officers have searched the apartment in the presence of the detainees and their lawyer. They have all denied sexual assault and said they helped the woman get dressed and called a taxi for both her and her friend.
The investigation is still open in order to determine the degree of participation of each of the five men, and they are expected to appear at the Benidorm courthouse on Thursday, police said.
According to the Geoviolencia Sexual assault-tracking project, sexual violence has been on the rise in Spain. The campaigners reported 14 group sex attacks in 2017, 60 in 2018, and 42 so far this year.
Last year, Spain’s socialist government pushed for a law dubbed “yes means yes”, which stipulated that sex without explicit consent should be considered rape instead of sexual abuse. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez promised the new legislation in the wake of public outcry over the notorious La Manada (wolf pack) rape case.
In the case that made national headlines, five men were accused of raping a teenage girl during the Pamlpona bull-running festival in 2016, but were initially acquitted of sexual aggression charges and found guilty of the lesser offence of sexual abuse. A higher court confirmed the initial sentence in 2018, but the Supreme Court reversed the decision in June 2019, increasing the jail sentence from 9 to 15 years for each of the perpetrators.
