Mass sexual assault is the collective sexual assault of women, and sometimes children, in public by groups of unrelated men. Typically acting under the protective cover of large gatherings, victims have reported being groped, stripped, beaten, bitten, penetrated and raped.
Egypt
In Egypt, several mass sexual assaults have received wide international coverage. In Arabic, the term "mass sexual assaults" translates as تحرش جماعي, often incorrectly transliterated in the media as "taharrush gamea" following a German police report into the 2015/2016 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany.
During New Year's Eve celebrations 2015/2016, incidents of mass sexual assault and numerous thefts occurred in Germany, mainly in Cologne city center.
India
Several cases of mass sexual assault have been reported in India. In July 2012, a teenage girl was sexually assaulted for up to 45 minutes by a large group of men outside a bar in Guwahati, Assam. No one intervened until the police arrived. During the 2002 riots in Gujarat, targeted violence against Muslim women and children documented by civil society groups reported "mass rapes, live burials and burnings, acid attacks, impaling, and other brutal forms of torture that was deeply gendered, and linked violence against women with violence on their children – both born and unborn". Survivors reported "that sexual violence consisted of forced nudity, mass rapes, gang-rapes, mutilation, insertion of objects into bodies, cutting of breasts, slitting the stomach and reproductive organs, and carving of Hindu religious symbols on women's body parts. The Concerned Citizens' Tribunal, characterised the use of rape "as an instrument for the subjugation and humiliation of a community".
Pakistan
British television presenter Saira Khan said in 2016 that she had been sexually assaulted by a crowd in Pakistan in 2007 while filming a documentary for the BBC. She accused the BBC of having ignored the attack.
Sweden
Female participants at We Are Sthlm, a summer music festival for teenagers in Stockholm, reported in 2014 and 2015 that they had been surrounded and molested by groups of males, mostly teenage boys. Police were accused of having failed to publicize the attacks because the suspects were mostly from Afghanistan. The incidents came to light only after the 2016 New Year's Eve attacks in Germany when the Stockholm Police were accused of covering up the incidents, which they denied.
United States
In July 1999 Woodstock 1999 took place and police subsequently investigated four complaints of sexual assault and rape, including digital rape, that allegedly occurred. At least one eyewitness, who was working as a volunteer at the event, reported to the Washington Post that he had seen a woman who was crowd surfing pulled down into the mosh pit and raped by five men. On 11 June 2000 at least 44 women reported being sexually assaulted and robbed by a group of 60 men during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York. The police were heavily criticized for their handling of the attacks. In February 2001, witnesses saw groups of men grope women, tear off their clothes and apparently digitally penetrate them during the Mardi Gras celebrations in Seattle, Washington.
Vietnam
In July 2015, there were allegations that at least 20 girls or women at the Ho Tay water park in Hanoi, Vietnam were reportedly sexually assaulted by a group of more than 70 men who assaulted, scratched and inappropriately touched them. Men groped the women and tore their bikinis from their bodies, and Vietnamese officials blamed the women for being attacked. Bystanders ignored the women while they were assaulted, and people cheered and applauded the men who posted photos of themselves assaulting the women on Facebook.
