Appeal to victims put out relating to “serial rape” throughout Flanders

The police put out an appeal on Tuesday to victims. They suspect that a presumed rapist and thief, with a well organised modus operandi, had targeted more victims than the 19, who have already come to light since his arrest last September. The appeal has been published at the request of the Limburg investigating judge and the Limburg Public Prosecutor - Hasselt Division. At issue are “serial rape”, assaults, fraud, theft and embezzlement, perpetrated in Flanders, over a period of several years.

The man ended up developing a highly precise modus operandi.

He contacted his victims via the dating site Twoo. On there he used a false identity, claiming he was a Telenet technician, of Italian origin, using the pseudonym “Raf, Rafke, Rafaello, Roberto or Raphael Bastiaans.”

Highly active on the site, amongst other things on its chat facility, in the end he would arrange to meet the women he was liaising with, either at their homes or a public car park. He then invited them to have a drink. Into this he placed, without them knowing, “a powerful sedative and an ecstasy tablet, a highly dangerous cocktail which can, in some cases be fatal.”

Before his victim passed out, “Raf” requested the her bank card PIN and subsequently stole its contents from her.

In the statement put out police state, “In numerous cases, women were not only victims of theft but were assaulted or raped. In respect of victims who resisted his anaesthetic cocktail, he used violence.”

The statement says, the suspect was in the end arrested on September 27th, 2016, and the warrant for his arrest was extended last week.

As it is “vital to be able to establish the period during which “Raf” carried out this behaviour,” the investigators are “appealing to all women who had contact” with him. “The police are re-examining, at the same time, all suspect deaths during recent years so as to determine whether or not ‘Raf’ is in any way implicated.”


The Brussels Times


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