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Three Men Arrested on Suspicion of Live-Streaming Gang Rape on Facebook

In Sweden, three men have been taken into custody after allegedly live-streaming a gang rape to a closed Facebook group with 60,000 members.
Photo by Lumina via Stocksy

Live-streaming has really only been around for just over a year (Facebook Live started in 2016, while Periscope was launched in 2015), but since then we've seen individuals use the technology to broadcast violent assault, murder, and even their own suicide. In another grim but apparent first, a woman has been allegedly gang-raped in an incident that was live-streamed to a closed Facebook group containing 60,000 members.

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The Local reports the live-stream took place in the Swedish city of Uppsala in the early hours of January 22. Three men, aged between 19 and 25, have been arrested on suspicion of rape. One woman alerted the police after stumbling across the unverified footage on the group. "He tore off her clothes and lay down on top of her," she told local newspaper Expressen. The victim was reportedly close to unconscious.

As the attack was taking place, online users commented on the feed, with one allegedly writing, "Three against one, ha ha ha." Swedish broadcaster SVT reports that the three men subsequently created a second Facebook Live feed in which the woman said that she hadn't been attacked—a feed that was still running when police arrived to arrest the trio.

Read more: When People Live-Stream Murder and Suicide, Who Watches?

"The girl was sitting in front of the camera while the guy who filmed her tried to make her deny that she had been raped," one witness told SVT. "My heart broke," she added. Uppsala police have confirmed that they are investigating the case, and added that a number of people viewing the broadcast had contacted them to report the incident. At the time of writing, nobody has yet been charged.

In her work as the director of the Oxford Internet Institute, Dr Victoria Nash has researched public policy and online safety. "Very often… it's a continuation of behavior we've seen before the internet," she says of the phenomenon of live-streaming criminal acts, explaining that people have always historically sought notoriety for their actions, like serial killers sending letters to policeman or making high-profile jailhouse confessions. "There's always been this urge to achieve power through publicity," Nash argues. "But the internet adds another degree of outrage."

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Photo by Alejandro Moreno de Carlos via Stocksy

The fact that the alleged incident took place in a closed group adds another dimension of potential illegality, Nash explains. "Police specializing in child abuse tell me that online closed groups are often very concerning. They may be closed for a sinister reason—because individual members of the groups are there specifically for that purpose."

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Is there something inherent to live-streaming technology that makes it more attractive for potential criminals? "Live-streaming is more dramatic," Nash explains. "It's also harder to moderate or filter." She emphasizes that many watching a live stream of an alleged crime might doubt what they see. "In an era of fake news, our ability to make factual judgments about what is or isn't true is impaired."

Facebook told Broadly that the live-stream of the alleged gang rape was unacceptable. "This is a hideous crime and we do not tolerate this kind of content on Facebook," a spokesperson says, highlighting new safeguards that the social network has put in place to allow people to report disturbing content as they are being live-streamed. On its website, Facebook says it has a team "on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, dedicated to responding to these reports immediately."

"We support local law enforcement who make data requests related to criminal investigations, particularly when it comes to the safety of young people," the spokesperson adds. "We respond to valid requests relating to criminal cases."