Seventeen teenagers are suspected of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl “several times a week for several months” in Austria, videotaping or photographing their actions, police said today.

The events unfolded in a poor district south of Vienna “between February and June 2023, in the stairwells, toilets, in a parking lot, in a hotel or in the perpetrators’ homes,” a police officer told reporters. Florian Fita.

The suspects, mostly minors, are of Syrian, Turkish, Italian, Bulgarian and Serbian origin. Two of them are under the age of 14 and are not considered criminally responsible.

Almost all of the suspects were known to police for other crimes, are now charged with sex crimes and producing images of sexual abuse of a minor.

Thirteen of them were brought before the investigator yesterday and partially deny the facts.

The accused and the victim, an Austrian citizen, met through one of the teenagers, who had molested the girl. He then made contact with the other boys.

They shared videos of their actions on social media, and it is suspected that one of them threatened to publish the images if the victim refused to go with him. But according to the police, no video was posted online.

Fearing reprisals, the girl did not reveal what she was going through until she finally confided in October to her mother, who filed a lawsuit.

The investigation is expected to be carried out by prosecutors, who are called upon to shed light on this case, a rarity in this country, where the crime rate is low.