Thousands took the streets in Madrid to protest over the gang rape ‘Wolf pack’ case. A court acquitted five men of gang rape charges. The rape took place during a bull running festival last year. The protests are because the men only received a 9 year sentence between them and fines, their charges were reduced to sexual abuse rather than rape. The prosecution had been pushing for a 20 years worth of sentence due to the gravity of the case.
According to a police report, the men promised to walk the woman to her car and then surrounded her and forcibly removed her clothes and had unprotected sex. Some of the men filmed the rape and posted footage on a Wattsapp group bragging about their conquest and sharing the videos. They also stole her phone. Many argue that if she had consented as the men claimed they would not have stolen her phone afterwards. Altamira Gonzalo, vice-president of Themis, a Spanish organisation of women jurists, told Efe news agency: “It should have been a courageous sentence. The courts can’t be so distant from society.”
Socialist party leader Pedro Sanchez tweeted his outrage “If what the ‘wolfpack’ did wasn’t group violence against a defenceless woman, then what do we understand by rape?”
You can read more about the coverage of this story in The Guardian here.