Mass sexual assault

In Egypt, several mass sexual assaults have received wide international coverage.^[1] In Arabic, the term "mass sexual assaults" translates as تحرش جماعي (taḥarrush jamāʿī), often incorrectly transliterated in the media^[2] as "taharrush gamea" following a German police report into the 2015/2016 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany.^[3]: 15

On 15 February 2011, CBS News released a statement that Lara Logan, a South African journalist and war correspondent, had been beaten and sexually mass gang raped on 11 February, while covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square, in Downtown Cairo, Egypt, following Hosni Mubarak's resignation by a mob of around 300 Muslim men.^[4] 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with her about it on 1 May 2011; where she said she was speaking out because of the prevalence of mass sexual assault in Egypt, and to break the silence about the sexual violence women reporters are reluctant to report in case it prevents them from doing their jobs.^[5][6][7][8] Logan explained that the incident involved 200 to 300 Muslim men and lasted around half an hour. She had been reporting the celebrations for an hour when her camera battery failed. One of the Egyptian CBS crew suggested they leave, telling her later he heard the crowd make inappropriate sexual comments about her. She felt hands touching her, and can be heard shouting "stop", just as the camera died. Someone in the crowd shouted that she was an "Israeli Jew", a claim that CBS said, though false, was a "match to gasoline". Logan said that the Muslim mob tore off her clothes and, in her words, raped her while taking photographs with their cellphones. They began pulling her body in different directions, pulling her hair so hard she said it seemed they were trying to tear off chunks of her scalp. She was dragged along the square to where the crowd was stopped by a fence, alongside which a group of women were camping. The Muslim women in the crowd cheered on as Logan was being raped, slut-shaming Logan and also hurling antisemitic slurs at her. Logan was flown back to the United States the next day, where she spent four days in the hospital.^[6][7] She was contacted by President Barack Obama when she arrived home.^[9][6][7]

During New Year's Eve celebrations 2015/2016, incidents of mass sexual assault and numerous thefts occurred in Germany, mainly in Cologne city center and numerous other cities. Over 1,200 women were reportedly sexually assaulted, in large part by Muslim^[10] men of Arab and North African origin.^[11]

The 1992 Ajmer rape scandal was a series of Islamic gang rapes and blackmailing in which 250 female Hindu students, aged between 11 and 20, were reportedly victims of a series of gang rapes and blackmailing. The perpetrators, led by prominent-Muslim leaders, Farooq and Nafees Chishti, were extended member of the Khadim family of Ajmer Sharif Dargah and leaders of the Indian Youth Congress in Ajmer, Rajasthan.^[12] Over several years, ending in 1992, they lured victims to remote farmhouses or bungalows, where they were sexually assaulted by one or several of the men and photographed naked or otherwise revealing positions to prevent the women from speaking out.^[13]

The 2002 riots in Gujarat, which was triggered by the Godhra train burning of 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, saw targeted violence against Hindu women and children, documented by civil society groups reported "mass rapes, live burials and burnings, acid attacks, impaling, and other brutal forms of torture that was deeply gendered, and linked violence against women with violence on their children – both born and unborn".^[14] Survivors reported "that sexual violence consisted of forced nudity, mass rapes, gang-rapes, mutilation, insertion of objects into bodies, cutting of breasts, slitting the stomach and reproductive organs, and carving of Islamic religious symbols on women's body parts.^[15] The Concerned Citizens' Tribunal, characterised the use of rape "as an instrument for the subjugation and humiliation of a community".^[15]

In July 2012, a teenage girl was sexually assaulted for up to 45 minutes by a large group of Muslim men outside a bar in Guwahati, Assam. No one intervened until the police arrived.^[16]

In August 2013, a 22-year-old Hindu photojournalist, who was interning with an English-language magazine in Mumbai, was gang-raped by six Muslim men, including two juveniles.^[17][18] The incident occurred when she had gone to the deserted Shakti Mills compound,^[17] in the Mahalaxmi neighborhood of South Mumbai, with a male colleague on an assignment.^[18] The accused had tied up the victim's colleague with belts and raped her.^[17][18] The accused took photos of the victim during the sexual assault, and threatened to release them to social networks if she reported the rape.^[17][18] Later, an eighteen-year-old call centre employee reported that she too had been gang-raped, in July 2013, inside the mills complex.^[19]

In March 2015, a 74-year old nun was gang raped during an armed-invasion and robbery in the convent school she worked in, by a group of Bangladeshi Muslim men in Ranaghat, in the Nadia district of West Bengal. Two men were arrested, who were illegal aliens living on Indian soil and had fled to Bangladesh after the robbery, where they were tracked down and apprehended by India's law-enforcement.^[20]

In January 2018 an 8-year-old girl, Asifa Bano, was gang raped by six men and a juvenile in the Rasana village near Kathua in Jammu division. The forensic evidence revealed that Bano had been raped multiple times by different men, and that she had been strangled to death, as well as being hit in the head with a heavy stone.^[21][22][23] The main culprit was Sanji Ram, a former local district collector where the incident took place.^[24]

In July 2023 a video emerged of two Christian women in the Manipur state of India being forced to strip down naked and paraded through the streets by a large mob of men. The women were also sexually assaulted and slapped by the mob. The incident is said to have taken place in May of the same year however police only took action once the video went viral.^[25][26]

In August 2024, a 14-year-old Hindu schoolgirl of the Bodo ethnicity^[27][28] was gang-raped by three Muslim men in Dhing,^[27][28] a village in the Nagaon district of Assam. The victim was reportedly lured to a secluded area under false pretenses and assaulted for hours. The victim was later found half-naked in a semi-conscious state near a pond about and was immediately rushed to a hospital for medical treatment.^[29] The victim's father describer her as being too traumatized to talk.^[29] The perpetrators were later identified as Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in India.^[27][28] The rapists filmed the act and threatened the juvenile victim with further violence if she reported the crime.^[27][28] The prime accused, Tafiqul Islam alias Tafazzul Islam, died by drowning in a pond while attempting to escape from police custody.^[27][28] The other two accused, Faridul Islam Khan and Golap Uddin, were nabbed in Dimapur, Nagaland and Morigaon respectively, both attempting to flee the country and escape back to their native Bangladesh.^[27][28]

On 2 June 2022, at least 6 underaged girls were molested on a local train between Peschiera del Garda and Milan by young men of North African origin^[30] who had attended an illegal rave party hours prior.^[31] Authorities later identified about 30 suspects.^[32]

During the 2022 New Year's celebration in the central Duomo square in Milan, at least 9 women were allegedly molested in separate mass sexual assault incidents.^[33][34] A 19-year-old woman was reportedly assaulted by about 30 men "of foreign origin" who repeatedly molested and groped her and attempted to strip her of her clothes until the police managed to intervene. The victim was then brought to a nearby hospital.^[35] Two young German tourists reported being assaulted and groped for at least ten minutes by about two dozen men who "spoke Arabic". The girls lamented the indifference of the police, who reportedly failed to aid them even after hearing their cries for help. The two denounced the fact once they got back to their home city of Mannheim. On January 11 at least 18 suspects, all youngsters of North African origin, were identified and searched by Italian authorities, who were aided in their investigation by facial recognition software.^[34]

At the 2025 New Year's celebration in the central Duomo square in Milan several girls were molested by a crowd of 50 to 100 people. When they succeeded in reaching the police they didn't get any help.^[36][37][38]

British television presenter, Saira Khan said in 2016 that she had been sexually assaulted by a crowd in Pakistan in 2007 while filming a documentary for the BBC. She accused the BBC of having ignored the attack.^[39]

On 14 August 2021, Ayesha Akram, a social media celebrity, was sexually assaulted by a huge crowd at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore.^[40][41][42] In a video recording of the incident that went viral days later, the crowd was seen picking up the woman, throwing her up in the air between them, tearing off her clothes, and assaulting and groping her.^[43] The incident caused widespread outrage in Pakistan, with the Amnesty International and many prominent figures expressing their outrage and disgust over the assault.^[43]

On 8th September 2020, a French woman was gang raped on the desolate highways of Lahore.^[44] The woman was originally driving home with her kids at night, when she was apprehended by unidentified robbers. They smashed her car window, dragged her to the nearby field, and raped her at gunpoint, making her children watch. They then ran away with her cash and jewellery.^[44] Umar Shaikh, the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) of Lahore, who served the chief investigator, shifted the blame on the gang-rape victim, citing Islamic jurisdiction. His comments triggering nationwide protests by Pakistani women, which was crushed by counter-protesting muslim men, who used bricks, stones and sticks on them.^[44]

Muktar Mai, a Pakistani woman was gang raped in 2002,^[45] as a result of clan vengeance in her native village,^[45] for crimes allegedly committed by her brother. She spoke at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City in May 2006, drawing praise from UN officials for her bravery.^[45]

In May 2022, a 25-year old mother of two was gang-raped by three men on a moving train. The woman was on-board the Karachi-bound Bahauddin Zakaria Express train from Multan. Three men were arrested, tried and later acquitted due to lack of evidence.^[46]

Female participants at We Are Sthlm, a summer music festival for teenagers in Stockholm, reported in 2014 and 2015 that they had been surrounded and molested by groups of Muslim males, mostly teenagers. Police were accused of having failed to publicize the attacks because the suspects were mostly from Afghanistan. The incidents came to light only after the 2016 New Year's Eve attacks in Germany when the Stockholm Police were accused of covering up the incidents, which they denied.^[47]

On the night of 21 January 2017, in Uppsala, a group of three Muslim refugees gang raped a nearly unconscious woman for around three hours and livestreamed the sexual assault on Facebook. The stream was circulated on a closed Facebook group with around 60,000 members.^[48][49] Two Afghans with a temporary residency grant, one 18 and one 21 years old, were arrested, and a 24-year-old Swedish citizen was held for failing to report the crime; under Swedish law, their identities could not be released at the time.^[50][51] Foreign media later identified the suspects respectively as Maysam Afshar, Reza Mohammed Ahmadi, and Emil Khodagholi, who was acquainted with the victim beforehand.^[1][52]

Mass sexual assault of black slaves was prevalent in the US, and was labeled as "prostitution" by the abolitionists.^[53]

In July 1999, Woodstock 1999 took place and police subsequently investigated four complaints of sexual assault and rape, including digital rape, that allegedly occurred. At least one eyewitness, who was working as a volunteer at the event, reported to The Washington Post that he had seen a woman who was crowd surfing pulled down into the mosh pit and raped by five men.^[54]

On 11 June 2000 at least 44 women reported being sexually assaulted and robbed by a group of 60 men during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York. The police were heavily criticized for their handling of the attacks.^[55]

In February 2001, witnesses saw groups of men grope women, tearing off their clothes and apparently digitally penetrating them during the Mardi Gras celebrations in Seattle, Washington.^[56]

• Bystander effect
• Nanjing Massacre
• War rape
• Crime prevention

• Rape Narratives in Motion. Germany, Springer International Publishing, 2019. Editors: Gabriella Nilsson, Lena Karlsson, Monika Edgren, Ulrika Andersson