Swedish police hunt festival gang who carried out 35 sexual assaults

Festival crowd
(Image credit: Getty)

Swedish police are on the hunt for a gang of sex attackers after 35 assaults were reported at a music festival in Karlstad.

Officers say girls and young women aged from 12 to 20 were targeted at the Party In The Park event on July 2 and 3 and that they are looking for seven suspects in connection with the 35 cases of sexual assault.

Karlstad police officer Eva Hogfeldt says the attacks included alleged groping and other sexual misconduct. So far, nobody has been arrested.

The Daily Mail is reporting that one of the alleged victims, a 17-year-old, says she was groped and threatened at the festival on Friday.

She says: “Someone took the liberty of grabbing my butt really hard. I turned away and said to the group of boys behind us that this was not okay, but I did not know who had done it. After a while, I felt someone running his fingers between my legs touching my genitals. Luckily, I had jeans on me.

“It was creepy. Someone stood around me and groped me and I had no idea who it was. It was sick. We had come there to have fun, but the festival only lasted 20 minutes for us because it was so uncomfortable.

“The groping was at first a bit innocent. Just a touch on the bottom. Something that you can do by mistake in a big crowd of people. But it became worse and worse after that. The one touching me was becoming more and more rough every time.”

A number of bands have spoken out against sexual harassment and assaults at gigs. Earlier this year, Baroness slammed a fan who allegedly sexually assaulted another gig-goer at their show in Birmingham.

Baroness said: “The man detailed in this article, whoever you are, if you read this post, stay the fuck away from Baroness and our audience. We don’t need you at our show, we don’t want you in our audience.”

Meet the people stamping out sexual harassment in metal

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.