More information is being released about the gang rape of a fourteen-year-old girl in a bush in Kortrijk. The facts allegedly took place on two or three occasions between April 2 and 6 during the Easter holidays, we heard from sources in the investigation.
The fourteen-year-old main suspect is said to have taken his girlfriend with him to the so-called ‘Kabouterbos’, adjacent to the Scheutistenlaan in Kortrijk. His friends, all between 11 and 16 years old, were waiting there. “The girl was loaned out and raped several times and in different ways,” we hear.
Loverboy
According to well-placed sources, her boyfriend was a ‘lover boy’ type, who deliberately allowed the girl to be abused by his friends. Several sources speak of “reprehensible behavior” and “revenge-mongering facts”. With young perpetrators who show a “complete lack of sense of norms”.
The girl was raped by several boys while others filmed the facts and forwarded them on their mobile phones. The images may also have been shared on Snapchat, but their mobile phones have already been confiscated. The eleven-year-old boy was known to have had to be a lookout. According to our information, all suspects are immigrant boys.
Two weeks
The facts remained under the surface for a long time because the girl did not dare to inform her parents or the police. Only on April 25, more than two weeks after the facts, was the police able to arrest the suspects.
Of the ten suspects, six were locked up in a closed institution until today. On Wednesday, a number appeared before the juvenile judge, who released at least two more suspects. Four more young people are now in custody.
Nur Demirtas
“Disputed facts”
The fourteen-year-old who ‘offered’ his girlfriend will remain locked up. “But he disputes that everything happened as it is now reported in the press,” says his lawyer Nur Demirtas, who cannot say much else about the merits of the case. “My client also wants the truth to come to light and for the matter to be thoroughly investigated.”
“He understands that he is now locked up, but this is also traumatizing for him. This is also very difficult for his parents, wealthy people who have tried to give their son a good upbringing. They don’t understand how this could happen. It also strikes me that suspects of such crimes are becoming younger and younger. That is very disturbing.”
“Not a rapist”
Lawyer Kelly De Caluwé defends a sixteen-year-old suspect with Somali nationality. “I asked for a re-examination because due to the language barrier he said things that did not match what he meant. To me he is not a rapist. Although he realizes that something very wrong has happened. That realization comes gradually.”
Kelly De Caluwe
The lawyer therefore has major questions about what happened. “I’ve never experienced this in my career. These are horrible facts. And the suspects are very young indeed. Not only the juvenile judge but society as a whole must ask itself how we are going to combat such cases.”
Contradictions
All suspects were interrogated simultaneously and separately in this case, so that investigators can compare all statements. According to what we heard, there are many contradictions in the statements and several main suspects contradict each other. They shift the blame to each other and minimize their own share, as we heard.
The suspects under the age of sixteen, the majority, cannot be handed over. They are only imposed “protection measures” and these measures can be maintained until the age of 21. The sixteen-year-old suspects could possibly be prosecuted for rape ‘as adults’.
A view of the grove where the events took place