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Toronto police are on the hunt for four women in their thirties after a 19-year-old man says he was sexually assaulted.
The victim told police he was at a nightclub alone in the Entertainment District where he met the four women. Instead of driving him home as promised, the women took him to a nearby parking lot and proceeded to sexually assault him.
0408 09:49 Sexual Assault Alert, Queen Street West/Spadina Avenue is.gd/vFpb5D
— Toronto Police(@TorontoPolice) April 8, 2013
“Although the majority generally is females that are victims or complainants, it is not completely unusual for a male to be the victim of a sexual assault,” Detective Constable Thomas Ueberholz, of the Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit, told The National Post.
While women are by far the more likely victim of sexual assaults, a Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics report in 2003 found that men account for eight per cent of adult victims of sexual assaults reported to police and are just as likely as women to report the crime.
Nicole Pietsch, co-ordinator of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, told The National Post that men often encounter stigmas after reporting an incident of sexual assault just as women do.
“Other men will say for example, ‘Oh, he’s so lucky,’ like that was actually a positive thing when it wasn’t,” she said. “I think that that just feeds into the myth that sexual violence is something the victim wants.”
All four women are described as white, aged 30-36, approximately 5’4″ and 190-200 lbs. They were wearing short black dresses and high heels and were driving a silver Honda SUV. The driver is described as possibly having British accent, short blond hair and a tattoo of wings on the back of her neck. Another woman was described as having longer dark hair that was dyed red at the bottom.
Anyone with information is being asked to contact police at 416-808-7474 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).