Article about the rape of a swedish girl during the festival

Every weekend we create our own small reality to relax and sometimes also escape from everyday trouble and stress. But especially within the trance scene we have quite a few sensitive people who are aware of all that problems on this planet going on also during we dance and enjoy our lives. Sometimes it also happens that this sad reality breaks into our parties- Thievery, fights, arguments... those remind us that life is not only “happy sunshine”. And sometimes there are even incidents which are that horrible and heavy that we do not really find words for our disgust. We all remember that dead baby on Shivamoon 2002 for example… Now another really worse incident happened on this year´s Fullmoon festival. Some of you might already have heard about it or read it in one of my last newsletters: A woman was raped on Monday morning at this festival. For myself this issue was that shocking that I instantly decided to do some more research about it to reveal the truth of this sad story. And actually I finally found a person who talked with me about this incident. Its a very close friend of the victim and so I was able to gather some real detailed information. Here is my report.

The victim is a girl from Sweden, Fullmoon 2007 was her very first festival experience ever. On Sunday evening she was celebrating on the dancefloor together with a friend but then suddenly had some physical complaints and so went to the Chill Out with her friend to relax a little. After a while they went on and she lost her friend when going to the toilet. She returned to the mainfloor where she entered the stage for she was in posses of a VIP armlet. Still she had not recovered from her complaints in that moment. On the stage the culprit, a guy from the USA who had come with one of the mainfloor deco teams without being really member of that team, got aware of her. He brought her right under the mainstage and started violating her there. While he rapes her, he tells stories about his past 5 years in prison and that he did not have sex for five years. He also talks about girls only teasing guys up because they want to be treated like this. And he not only rapes her, he also beats her up and even tries to bite off one of her ears. As said the victim is kind of sick in this situation and so not really able to defend herself.

But finally her survival forces come back and she beats the culprit that hard that he turns blind on one eye. She manages to escape and runs to one of the securities. Instantly a lot of persons get aware of the situation and of course get very, very angry. The culprit gets beaten up that hard that there is not much left of him when the police arrives to arrest him. The victim girl is brought to the hospital. Beside the massive psychological shock her ear and her legs are injured. She is treated very bad at the hospital, the doctors dont even give her a headache tablet.

When this story goes the circuit in the camping, people get very angry of course and when it is confirmed that the culprit was with the deco team, a riot develops. Especially the Swedish people get scissors, lighters and spray cans to destroy the decoration. But it are also some Swedish persons who convince the promoter to take down the decoration before the stage is burned by the riot. So everything calms down very close before the mob takes revenge.

The culprit is now in prison till his trial starts. Fortunately the victim has a very strong lawyer on her side. There are rumors that the culprit escaped from the USA because of another punishment which now awaits him there after his prison punishment here in Germany.

At this point for me it is very important to say that Chriss, the promoter of Fullmoon gave maximum support to everybody and really cared for this horrible issue. He is definitely not responsible for this guy being with one of the booked deco teams because the culprit came with the deco team on the one hand, but was not a original member on the other hand. So big thanks goes to Chriss and the security guy Dave for their big support of the victim and her friends. This terrible incident could have happened on every other festival too, it has nothing to do with Fullmoon festival as an festival.

May this shocking story encourage all of us to take care of each other- not only in everyday life but also at our beloved parties!