On Friday, three men who work as bartenders at Twisters bar on the Poelestraat were acquitted of charges of raping a woman at the bar.
Translation by Traci White
RTV Noord reports that during the incident in 2016, the three men had sex with a woman who had been drinking at the bar. The woman said that she was so inebriated – she was also on drugs on the night in question – that she was not able to consent to having sex.
The three men, all of whom are in their 20s, said that the woman had made it clear to them that she wanted to have sex. The three men and the woman engaged in sexual activities in the warehouse of the bar. Sikkom reports that immediately after the incident, the woman sent a message to a friend saying that she had been raped by three men.
The woman’s lawyer called for 240 hours of community service and six month suspended jail sentences for the men. On Friday, the judge ruled that the woman was not so inebriated that she could not consent. Among other things, the judge based the ruling on security camera footage which supposedly indicated that the woman was cognisant enough to understand what was happening. The three men were not charged and the woman’s request for 18,000 euros in damages was dismissed.
| Sexual assault in Groningen
In August, Dagblad van het Noorden reported on an annual survey among Groningen students which found that ten percent of respondents said they were sexually assaulted in the first months of 2017. The survey relied on responses from 500 students. The national average among the general population is .1 percent. Groningen-based research agency Breuer&Intraval concluded that students seem to be under the impression that sexual assault and drug use are normal activities. |
Photo source: Wikipedia
Update: the public prosecutor will appeal, so this ain’t over yet.