Seventeen teenagers are suspected of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl “several times a week for several months” in Austria while filming or photographing their actions, police said on Friday, AFP reported, News.ro reported.

The actions took place in a troubled area in the south of Vienna “between February and June 2023, on the stairs, in the toilets, in the garage, in the hotel or in the home of the attackers,” police spokesman Florian Finda said. press .

The suspects, mostly minors, are of Syrian, Turkish, Italian, Bulgarian and Serbian origin. Two of them are under the age of 14, and they are not being held criminally liable.

Almost all of them are known to law enforcement for other crimes and are accused of various crimes of a sexual nature and producing images of sexual abuse of minors. Thirteen of them were questioned on Thursday and partially denied the charges.

The defendants and the victim, a citizen of Austria, met through one of the teenagers, with whom the young woman allegedly exchanged caresses. Then she came into contact with other boys.

They exchanged video recordings of the committed actions through social networks, one of them is suspected of threatening to publish the images if the victim refused. However, none of the images were posted online, police said.

Fearing reprisals, the young woman kept quiet before finally confessing in October to her mother, who immediately filed a complaint.

Her security is provided, the police informs.

The investigation will be handed over to the prosecutor’s office, which will be tasked with shedding light on this case, which is extremely rare in this country with a low crime rate, AFP said.