A 22-year-old American tourist was raped just yards from one of London’s most iconic tourist attractions, Trafalgar Square.
The young woman, who was on holiday in the British capital, attended a south London hospital after having suffered what emergency services described as “vaginal injuries” in the early hours of Sunday the 3rd of June, according to details released by the Metropolitan Police on Thursday.
The American national told police she had been ordered to get out of a taxi, after her friend vomited. She was then seen on CCTV with her companion in the company of two men at 3 am in Haymarket – just yards from Trafalgar Square, home of the National Gallery and Nelson’s column with its iconic four lions.
She said she could not remember what occurred between her being thrown out of the taxi and waking up and reporting her injuries to the hospital, but the CCTV footage showed her being carried by one of the men to a nearby doorway, where evidence suggests she was raped.
Police released footage of a man sought in connection with the assault (pictured), and the Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command (CASO) has launched an investigation.
Under London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, rape in the capital has risen by almost 20 percent – but police claim to not know the causes of the increase.
Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Force Sir Craig Mackey said in February that “there is something going on with sexual offending in London that we don’t fully understand, the causes of it. We see the end of it, [but] we don’t understand the causes.”
In April, London overtook New York City for the number of murders for the first time in over 200 years, with New Yorkers in London claiming to be in fear following the “crazy” spike in violent crime.
Postgraduate student Adam Janeway, 28, told the Evening Standard in April: “I don’t know what you’ve got going on here, man – it’s crazy.
“You got people throwing acid in other people’s faces, kids riding around on mopeds stealing cell phones.”
Documentary producer Leslie Lee told the evening paper that London resembled New York before former mayor and Donald Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani got tough on crime and cleaned up the city in the 1990s, saying the Republican mayor’s “infamous zero tolerance approach to crime resulted in a much, cleaner and safer Big Apple”.
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