Italian police are investigating multiple New Year’s Eve sex attacks on women in central Milan reminiscent of the horrifying assaults in Cologne in 2016.
The investigation was launched on January 7 after one of the attacked women spoke to Belgian media and described being surrounded by dozens of men who allegedly groped her.
Laura Barbier, 20, a student from Liege, in Belgium, had travelled to Milan, Italy, with five friends aged 20 and 21 to celebrate the New Year.
The group of four young women and two men watched the fireworks on the Piazza del Duomo outside Milan’s cathedral, where men wearing balaclavas were filmed causing chaotic scenes by shooting fireworks into the crowd on the same night.
‘Young people set off fireworks into the crowd, to create a crowd movement. It was very dangerous, we had a feeling of unease, as if there was going to be an attack,’ Laura told Belgian broadcaster RTL.
Feeling unsafe, Laura said she and her friends tried to leave the square, but they were stopped by a mob of 30 to 40 men shouting shouting ‘vaffanculo Italia’ (‘f*** off Italy’) and ‘polizia di merda’ (‘s*** police’) who surrounded them.
‘That’s when we were touched on our bodies, on our clothes and some of us, including myself, inside our clothes,’ Laura said.
‘Three out of us four girls were sexually assaulted. A friend had her breasts groped and her buttocks touched. [The men] put their hands in my pants. It went very far.’
Hellbound and Down 