The Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating a complaint of sexual assault on a woman at her home, last Saturday afternoon, in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). The alleged attackers entered the house through the balcony after scaling the facade of the building where the victim lives.
The woman called the Mossos after ten at night to report that she had been raped and a victim of robbery. According to her statement, the aggressors were three. The woman herself was taken to the hospital, where she underwent a medical examination. Her injuries were compatible with sexual assault, and the agents activated the protocol.
The investigation is currently open and it is about locating the three alleged aggressors, with the aim of determining the participation of each one of them and if they had any type of previous relationship with the victim. Initially, an attempted robbery that ended in rape was investigated as a hypothesis, although later it was suggested that the victim knew the alleged aggressors.
The police sources declare that, with the investigation incomplete, it is not possible to opt for any of the theories, but they do consider that, “statistically, sexual assaults by strangers are very few.”
The access through the facade of these men was verified by the Mossos d’Esquadra with the recordings of an external security camera, located in the street. However, it has not yet been possible to identify any of them.
This case coincides in time with another group attack by five men in Tudela (Navarra) who have been arrested. It also happened last Saturday. The alleged attackers went to court this Tuesday. The Municipal Police of Tudela arrested them this Sunday after sharing the investigation with the Foral Police and after the victim filed a complaint for the facts.
At noon this Tuesday, a hundred citizens gathered in front of the Tudela town hall to show their rejection of the alleged sexual assault. Authorities also attended, such as the mayor, Alejandro Toquero, and the first vice president of the regional government and counselor for the Presidency and Equality, Félix Taberna, as well as the managing director of the Navarro Institute for Equality, Eva Istúriz.
The concentration was called for 12 noon under the slogan “Tudela says no”, written on a banner, accompanied by the cry “not an attack without response”. The mayor told the media that Tudela “does not tolerate and will never tolerate sexual assault” and that he does not want silence to make them complicit in what happened. For his part, Vice President Félix Taberna stated that “it is not trivial that the number of complaints about these cases has been increasing in the last 20 years”, and Eva Istúriz stressed that violence against women “is one of the most serious problems that we have as a society”.
“I also want to highlight a message to women who have suffered, who may be suffering violence: that they can go to the resources, that it is very important and that we will always be there to support and accompany them, and that in the future, with the 24-hour crisis center that we have talked about more than once, is going to be a fundamental tool”, added Istúriz.
