Former professional Belgian footballer Frédéric Dupré has spoken out after his daughter was one of the victims of alleged sexual assaults by a pair of migrants at a swimming pool in Ghent.
The alleged sexual assaults and harassment occurred on Thursday at the Rozebroeken swimming pool and saw the two asylum seekers, supposedly minors, arrested and interviewed by police after they were removed from the pool by lifeguards.
Among the alleged victims of the pair was the 13-year-old daughter of Frédéric Dupré, a former professional footballer who played for Standard Liège in the mid-2000s, Sudinfo reports.
Dupré commented on his daughter’s experience, saying her afternoon “turned into a nightmare,” and added: “She was shocked, these guys were very aggressive,” claiming the pair had groped his daughter’s breasts and genitals.
The former footballer also took exception to the fact that the two asylum seekers were released by police following their questioning, saying: “I really don’t understand why these boys have been released. These are two young people with asylum seeker status, the police told me they would make a statement but nothing else.
“As a parent, you are powerless in the face of this,” he lamented.
Since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, sex attacks in swimming pools by migrants have been reported in several countries. Some involving simple sexual assaults and harassment, but others have seen children raped by migrants.
In one particularly brutal incident, a ten-year-old boy in Vienna was raped by an Iraqi asylum seeker in late 2015 and injured so badly in the ordeal that he had to be hospitalised.
The migrant later claimed he was having a “sexual emergency” and told police: “I couldn’t stand not having sex as I have excess sexual energy.”
The mother of the victim later came forward saying that she regretted telling her children that migrants needed their.
“You certainly can’t call me a racist, but to try and defend himself in that way is just monstrous. It’s like me saying I’m going to go to a bank tomorrow and rob it because I don’t have enough money for my five children.”