Rape allegedly streamed online
Police in Sweden arrest three men
Three men in Uppsala, Sweden, were arrested Sunday on suspicion of raping a woman and streaming the assault live to a private Facebook group. On Monday, authorities urged people with access to the images showing the assault to make them available to investigators.
“Police and prosecutors have access to some of the images and video footage,” Magnus Berggren, a prosecutor in Uppsala, said at a news conference, the Swedish newspaper Expressen reported. “What we do not have access to is the segment showing the actual assault.”
Police were sent to an apartment in Uppsala, a university city about 65 kilometres north of Stockholm, shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday after receiving several calls reporting a rape in progress being streamed live to a closed group on Facebook, Expressen reported.
Police arrested three men, 18, 20 and 24, at the apartment, he said.
“We are gathering evidence, technical evidence, but also interviewing ,” Berggren said. “We have questioned a number of people and there will be more interviews.”
While Facebook Live streams occur in real time, the videos can be replayed by people with access to the page if the person who filmed it chooses that option, until the videos are taken down. There are ways for viewers to record the stream or take screenshots of it.
“Many have seen this on the Internet, and we are eager to prevent any spreading of the movie,” police spokeswoman Lisa Sannervik told the Swedish news agency TT.
Christine Chen, a Facebook spokeswoman, said, “This is a hideous crime and we do not tolerate this kind of content on Facebook.”
She added: “If someone does violate our community standards while using Live, we want to interrupt these streams as quickly as possible when they’re reported to us. So we’ve given people a way to report violations during a live broadcast.”
Swedish Television News reported there might have been two videos on Facebook, the first showing a rape and the second capturing a man trying to force a woman to deny she had been raped.
Berggren could not confirm this because the video was not available, the news channel reported.
Images of the suspects are being shared on social media, and hundreds of people are said to have seen the live video.
Linda Johansson t old Swedish Television News she started watching the second live video around 8 a.m.
“The girl was sitting in front of the camera while the man who filmed her tried to convince her to deny that she had been raped,” Johansson said. “He was putting words into her mouth. He was taunting and laughing throughout the whole clip.”