Students suspended over rape jokes on Facebook

ELEVEN students at a top university have been suspended after details of an online chat group emerged in which users made vile jokes about rape and sexual assault.

The University of Warwick has suspended the group of male students pending a disciplinary investigation.

One of the alleged participants joked about how it is ‘sometimes fun to just go wild and rape 100 girls’ and said another woman he knows ‘looks like a rape victim’.

The student also allegedly renamed the Facebook chat group at one point to ‘F*** women disrespect them all’.

It is also claimed he wrote he could not wait to have ‘surprise sex’ with some firstyear students and wrote that he needed to go to the gym to get ‘stacked’ so he could ‘hold the freshers down’. Screenshots showing some of the alleged messages, believed to date back to last year, were published by student newspapers The Boar and The Tab and have been presented to the university for investigation.

One member of the chat group, who was apparently talking about flatmates stealing food, wrote: ‘Rape the whole flat to teach them all [a] lesson.’

Other messages in the group chat contained racial slurs, anti-Semitic comments and one that said that ‘racism is class’.

The messages came to light after complaints were made to the university.

A University of Warwick student union spokesman said: ‘Warwick SU is aware of the ongoing university investigation into a group Facebook chat involving a number of Warwick students.

‘We are also co-operating with the university’s ongoing investigation, and hope to see a conclusion as swiftly as possible.’

A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: ‘We are aware of matters relating to a social media group involving a number of students and are liaising with Warwick University.’

The University of Exeter last week expelled several law students who sent racist and misogynistic messages on the messaging service Whatsapp.