A 14-year-old Belgian girl committed suicide four days after a group of youths allegedly gang-raped her in a cemetery in Ghent.
The girl from Gavere was allegedly raped on May 15th after she was lured to a cemetery in Ghent, where her mother lives, planning to meet a boy. However, rather than the friend she had expected, she was met by a group of five teenage males.
The five youths took turns assaulting and raping the 14-year-old and reportedly also filmed the abuse, which was later uploaded to social media, according to a report from Sudinfo.
Her parents were unaware of what happened and only found out after her death when the mother of their daughter’s friend — in whom she had confided — told them about the attack.
“I always told my children that they could come and talk to me if something went wrong, that I would listen to them even if I didn’t agree. If only she had told me something about it, I might have been able to do something,” the victim’s mother said.
Two days after the 14-year-old’s funeral, police took the girl’s laptop and tablet and were able to identify the five suspects using data from the devices. Police arrested two adults and three minors.
There have been numerous cases of young girls being raped and footage of the sexual abuse being posted on social media apps in several European countries in recent years.
In 2017, in the Swedish city of Uppsala, the gang rape of a woman was broadcast on a live stream on Facebook. Just days later, another woman identified one of the men involved, an asylum seeker, who had raped her in 2015.
A year later, in France, four men were suspected of gang-raping a 19-year-old girl in Toulouse and broadcasting the abuse on Snapchat.
Social media apps have also been used to blackmail girls into sex. Earlier this year, a 22-year-old man was sentenced to four years in prison for using Snapchat to coerce underage girls in the no-go suburbs of Paris to have sex.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.