Two girls, believed to be around 15-years-old, were reportedly raped at a Swedish festival over the weekend and another dozen have reported being victims of sexual assaults.
The two rape incidents are said to have taken place at around 8 pm at the “We Are Sthlm” festival in Stockholm on Saturday night, with the two alleged rapes being caught on CCTV cameras, according to a report from Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
The two alleged attackers, simply described as two men, are said to have approached the pair of girls from behind and then raped them. The police later confirmed there had been two reported rapes at the festival.
“We are now investigating this and obtaining preliminary survey material and cameras are of course the kind of thing investigators will look at,” officer Ola Österling of the regional police said but added that currently no one had been arrested in connection with the incidents.
Police added that a further dozen cases of sexual assault were also reported to officials during the course of the festival and that so far, one person has been arrested.
Sex attacks and rapes have been a major issue a the We Are Sthlm festival for several years with the 2016 event seeing a total of 50 reports of sexual harassment, which was double the figure from the previous year.
In January of 2017, Anders Ygeman, who was at that time the minister of Home Affairs, played down the rise in sex attacks at festivals stating that such attackers nothing new.
Later that year, a report from non-profit organisation The Night Shift challenged Ygeman’s remarks and noted that sex attacks had increased as much as 1,000 percent in 2016.
Rape attacks in Sweden are now a major issue across the country, with the city of Uppsala recently seeing a wave of rape attacks.
Last week, pepper spray manufacturers and retailers claimed that they had seen an explosion in sales due to the increase in sex attacks.