Two different music festivals in Sweden were the location of several dozen sexual assaults this last weekend, according to the Associated Press.
At a three-day festival in Karlstad, a city west of Stockholm, 32 cases of sexual assault by boys or young men were reported by young women and girls as young as 12. At the Bravalla Festival in Norrkoping, police are investigating five cases of alleged rape in addition to more than a dozen cases of sexual assault.
Police have identified seven of the perpetrators from the festival in Karlstad, though none have yet been detained.
“We want to catch the suspects because we need to talk to them,” Police Inspector Leif Nystrom told the Associated Press. “The number of such cases has increased slightly since last year, but I’m really not sure if this is a common problem at festivals.”
Swedish police faced allegations earlier this year of failing to inform the public of numerous sexual assaults against teenage girls at a previous music festival.
Mumford & Sons, who played at Bravalla Festival, posted on their Facebook page that they were “appalled… gutted by these reports” and that they would not play the festival again unless police and organizers could guarantee that they were “doing somethig to combat what appears to be a disgustingly high rate of reported sexual violence.”