A Belgian teenage girl was reportedly gang raped by at least ten illegal immigrant minors after her 14-year-old boyfriend allegedly loaned her out to them for sex, Nieuwsblad reports.
The girl, 14, was sexually abused on three separate occasions between April 2 and April 6. The alleged perpetrators were minors between the ages of 11 and 16-years-old, all of immigrant origin, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the ten suspects took turns raping her, while others recorded the sexual assaults on their phones and shared the footage to social media.
The incidents occurred after the girl's boyfriend lured her out to the Kabouterbos forest in Kortrijk, West Flanders where she spent two days being raped, tormented, and abused, according to prosecutors.
She was reportedly physically attacked by her boyfriend before he let the gang of minors sexually assault her.
The boyfriend has been described in court documents as a "loverboy," a terminology used to describe human traffickers who make their victims fall in love with them.
According to prosecutors, case investigators said the suspects showed a "complete lack of sense of norms."
None of the minors involved in the attack urged one another to stop the abuse, sources told Nieuwsblad.
Fearful of alerting her parents and the authorities, the teenage victim waited several days to come forward, even though the alleged abuse happened in early April.
The ten boy suspects were not apprehended by police until April 25.
Six of the suspects are being held in a closed institution, while four of them were placed under house arrest.
The six minors who are being held in an institution appeared in juvenile court on Wednesday. Two of them were released on conditions.
Police arrested four additional minors, including the girl's boyfriend, who are all believed to be involved in the attack. The four of them remain in custody.
At least one defendant is a 16-year-old Somalian boy, according to his public defender lawyer Kelly De Caluwé who questioned "how it is possible that these children have lost all sense of norms."
"To me he is not a rapist. Although he realizes that something very wrong has happened. That realization comes gradually," she said, speaking about her client.
Vincent Van Quickenborne, the mayor of Kortrijk, stated that although he had been aware of the situation "for some time," he was taken aback upon learning about it.
'The public prosecutor's office does not allow me to say anything about the facts themselves, but I had been aware of the investigation for some time,' he said.
'These are cra*py acts for which there are no words. I say that not only as a politician, but also as a father of 3 young children," he added, according to the Daily Mail.
It's unclear when the suspects will make another court appearance.
