Brazil issues warrants for teen’s gang rape

R IO DE JA N E IRO • Police said Friday that they have identified and are searching for four of the more than 30 men suspected of gang raping a 16-year-old girl, a case that has rocked Latin America’s largest nation and highlighted its endemic problem of violence against women.

The announcement came as acting President Michel Temer called an emergency meeting of the security ministers for each of Brazil’s states to consider genderrelated crimes.

“It’s absurd that in the 21st century we have to live with barbarous crimes like this,” Temer said in a statement. He promised to create a federal police force unit tasked with tackling crimes against women.

The assault came to light after several men joked about the attack online, posting graphic photos and videos of the unconscious, naked teen on Twitter.

Police also asked for the public’s help to track down the four men and identify the others. Local reports said more than 800 people had called a hotline that was set up to share information.

Authorities say the rape happened last Saturday while the girl was visiting her 19-year-old boyfriend in a favela (shantytown) on the west side of Rio de Janeiro.

She says she arrived at around 1 a.m. and remembers being alone with him there.

Her next memory is of waking up in a different house surrounded by more than 30 men, many of them armed. All or at least some of them may have raped her. Naked, injured, and penniless, she found some spare clothes and made her way home, she later said.

Her nightmare was far from over. Wednesday, two of the accused attackers tweeted pictures of her, as well as a 40-second video. The tweets were promptly taken down, but not before they accrued hundreds of “likes” and mis- ogynistic comments. In the video, the girl is apparently seen waking up from a druginduced unconsciousness, and a man says, “Pounded the girl — get it? Hahaha.”

In the other, a different man is pictured with his face next to the woman’s genitalia. The caption reads, “Rio state opens a new tunnel for the speed train.”

Police said they had been unable to confirm exactly how many men may have taken part.

The girl’s boyfriend was one of the men being sought, but police said they did not know whether he was one of the attackers. Police said the men were armed, though it wasn’t clear if the weapons were used to intimidate the victim during the attack.

The incident occurred ook place in one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, dense and mostly poor neighbourhoods often built onto the side of the city’s steep slopes. It occurred at a time of heightened concern over a renewed wave of violence in the favelas.

Hit by low oil prices, the Brazilian government has been cutting public spending, and the police and special forces that heavily patrol the favelas have seen funding slashed.

The BBC reported the girl’s family had watched the video and spoken to local media.

“I regretted watching it. When we heard the story we didn’t believe what was happening. It’s a great affliction. It’s a depressing situation,” the girl’s grandmother told Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.

“She is not well. She is very confused. This was very serious.”

Brazil, a conservative, majority-Catholic nation of 200 million people, has long struggled to curb violence against women.

Last year, when Congress passed legislation sharply increasing punishments for violence against women, then-president Dilma Rousseff noted 15 women were killed per day in Brazil simply “for a question of gender.”