Brussels police are looking for a suspect who brutally beat, kicked and raped a woman on Sunday 22 May, at 09:05 am, on a walking path in Park L28, near Rue Tielemans in Laeken.
The suspect is of average size and has dark hair that is long on the top and shaved on the sides and at the back. At the time of the event, he wore a white shirt, gray shorts and black sneakers with white soles.
If you have any information about the case, please contact investigators at vangen@police.belgium.eu.
Sexual violence in Belgium
Two-thirds of Belgians (aged 16 to 69) experienced some kind of sexual violence during their lifetime, according to studies conducted by the universities of Ghent and Liège in cooperation with the National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology in 2021.
Over 5,000 people participated in the survey, and some 16% of female respondents reported being raped.
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Despite these statistics, Belgium is ahead of many EU countries in its laws on sexual assault, as it reformed its sexual criminal laws to stress the consent of both partners in 2019, taking a cue from the UK's criminal law which recently broadened its definition of rape.
Most European countries first consider an incident as rape if coercion or a struggle was involved. Human rights activists denounce this approach due to the 'freeze' reaction that many victims experience.
