Male sexual assault victim urges caution to pedestrians
A 35-year-old man is calling attention to the dangers of walking along Half-Way-Tree Road at certain hours of the day, after he was pounced on by a gang, robbed, and buggered in the week hours of Monday morning.
The distraught caller to our newsroom, who pled not to be named, said he was heading down Ruthven Road towards Half-Way-Tree some time after 1:00 am, when he was pounced on by a group of at least eight people, including a female, bearing machetes and knives.
He said they forced him across the thoroughfare, and into an empty lot on Cargill Avenue, where he was relieved of his valuables, and cash. The man, his voice cracking, said it did not end there as the gang stripped him of his clothes, and robbed him of his dignity as they proceeded to bugger him.
He said after the gang fled in a waiting vehicle and on motorcycles, he ran out unto Half-Way-Tree Road, bleeding, where he was eventually assisted by a passerby and made a call to an acquaintance who later picked him up from the location.
According to the distressed call centre worker, he sought medical attention some time after, and tested for STDs, which came up positive for syphilis. Too humiliated by assault to give a report to the police, the man said he could not face going to court to face his attackers and relive the trauma: “It's too embarrassing,” he sighed.
“These guys were highly prepared, with lubricants and all kinds of stuff, and videotaping,” he said, noting that his assailants had in fact filmed the assault.
The man explained that the only reason he had opted to walk to Half-Way-Tree at that hour to charter a taxi was because his motor vehicle was out of commission, and he found it easier to get home on his own than to travel with the company bus.
“By the time they drop off everyone, sometimes its 3:00 am before you get home,” he said.
The man said he has heard of similar recent incidents in the area, but crime officer at the Centre of the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA), Deputy Superintendent of Police, Radcliffe Gordon, told on Wednesday that he was not aware of a spate of such incidents. He noted that there had been one such similar attack reported, since the start of the year, pointing out that given the nature of the crime, most victims would be reluctant to report.
“If it is happening, we have not been getting the reports enough to raise an alarm to say this is a recent phenomena which we ought to be paying attention to,” he noted.
A source told that there is, however, a rising trend of people meeting up with men for sexual encounters via an app, and then finding themselves in trouble, as they are sometimes robbed, or extorted. The victims also face being exposed by the men they meet up with, if they move to report the crimes.
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