A 20-year-old student in the Ixelles area of Brussels, Belgium has claimed that she was raped by a North African man who operates a fake taxi to prey on intoxicated women.
The 20-year-old claimed to have been a victim of the man on Saturday night. She reported to police that she had been raped after the man, who she described as being from North Africa, had posed as a taxi driver for the Collecto ride-sharing service, L’Avenir reports.
Denis Goeman, the spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, commented on the case, saying: “We have ordered a number of investigative acts be carried out to identify and locate the suspect.”
The victim also posted her account to the Facebook page “ULB Confessions” on Sunday. She said: “I think he’s prowling around Jefke (Ixelles Cemetery) and he sees the drunk girls walking alone. He stops and pretends to be a Collecto taxi. He explains that he wants to take you anywhere. Except that he takes the girls away from Brussels, to a house, to rape them.”
Since posting her account, other victims have also come forward recounting similar experiences in the same area. However, the prosecutor’s office had said they had not received any other reports of rape.
In January, in a similar case, a London court convicted 28-year-old Mohammed Awais of rape. It sentenced him to nine years and four months after he posed as an Uber driver and picked up an intoxicated woman in October of last year.
Then in August a 26-year-old migrant was arrested in the French city of Bordeaux after also being accused of raping a woman while working for Uber’s food delivery service Uber Eats.
The illegal Bangladeshi migrant entered the home of his 22-year-old victim at 3:05 a.m. after she had taken a sleeping pill, forcing his way into the apartment and allegedly raping her before fleeing the area.