French woman says she was raped on same night as Italian student
A 22-year-old French woman claims she was raped in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto on the same night as a French student was attacked by “two or three foreign men” in an alleyway in Martim Moniz.
Common to the two incidents are the fact that both victims had only just alighted from TVDE vehicles (hailed via digital platforms), and recognised their attackers as foreigners.
In this latest story – referring to the early hours of last Sunday morning – the young French woman admits to having been drunk, and believes that she must have lost consciousness inside the TVDE vehicle.
She has reportedly told police that she woke up in a ‘residence’, naked from the waist down.
“Entering into panic, she fled, going straight to the city’s Hospital de São José, where medical examinations were carried out which confirmed that she had been raped”, CNN Portugal has explained.
At this point, she filed an official complaint.
This far, the alleged rapist has not been identified – although it will not be difficult to find out what driver picked the victim up at around 2am on Sunday morning.
The French woman meantime has given a description of the driver to PJ police.
Complaints involving TVDE drivers are not new – and although not all of them involve sexual assault, a number do. Nonetheless, a plan to launch a ‘women only TVDE platform’ was thwarted recently, due to it being considered ‘discriminatory’ against men. This is despite the fact that many men (fathers/ husbands/ boyfriends etc) had reportedly welcomed the idea, as it meant that they could feel their daughters/ wives/ girlfriends would be able to hail rides at night – on their own, or with other female friends – in greater safety.
