UPDATED: Another woman reported a sexual assault during the night in Oslo, just two days after four women were raped in Oslo during a five-hour period on Saturday night. Police are investigating whether the same rapists may be involved in all four of Saturday’s cases.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported Tuesday morning that a young woman had contacted police after an alleged sexual assault on a street in Oslo’s Sinsen district. She was said to have been assaulted in the vicinity of Trondheimsveien, and police later arrested a suspect at his home. They said they did not believe there was a connection between Tuesday’s rape and those over the weekend.
The latest reported assault came after four women reported rapes on Saturday, one of them outside the fashionable new waterfront real estate complex next to Aker Brygge, called Tjuvholmen. In that case, a woman leaving the stand-up comedy bar called Latter (Laughter) at Aker Brygge at about 1am was approached by two men. They started talking and walked with her through Aker Brygge and over a new pedestrian bridge towards Tjuvholmen. They suddenly attacked her, police said, with both of them raping her at the Tjuvholmen busstop.
“This is very, very serious,” Hanne Kristin Rohde of the Oslo Police District told NRK on Monday, adding that some of the women tried to run from their attackers but were chased and captured. “No woman should be subjected to something like this.”
The victim at Tjuvholmen wasn’t alone in being assaulted Saturday night, and now police are investigating whether three more rapes, carried out between 11pm and 3:30am on the other side of town may be connected. In all four cases, the assailants spoke broken English or Norwegian, or both.
The first assault took place in the park at Sofienberg, in the popular Grünerløkka area. The victim was initially approached by a man at the intersection of Sofienberggata and Kirkegårdsgata, before he forced her into the nearby park.
In the second case, at around 2:30am, a woman was assaulted after leaving the popular restaurant Olympen in Grønlandsleiret. She was attacked after leaving a grocery store and raped in Mandalsgata.
The third rape occured around 3:30am in a side street to Brugata downtown. In all three cases, the assailant was described as being between 25 and 35 years old with dark hair and dark clothing, wearing either a cap or a hooded jacket and possibly Asian. He was alone and spoke poor English and/or Norwegian.
“We’re not ruling out that it can be the same person, but that’s not certain,” Rohde told NRK. “We have no concrete suspicion.”
In the Tjuvholmen rape, one of the men was also described as being around 30 and having short, thick dark hair, a dark shirt and black jeans. His accomplice was described as 20 to 30 years old with a shaven head, white shirt, thin tie and dark trousers.
Rohde said several inspectors were working on the cases, examining whether any surveillance cameras could have picked up the attacks, and that police were seeking help from the public. Tips can be called in to 22 66 90 50 between 8am and 4pm, and 22 66 99 66 after 4pm.
Views and News from Norway/Nina Berglund
Click on our Readers Respond feature if you’d like to comment on this story.
