Published
Thu, Feb 6, 2020, 09:00
- The clips appeared on porn platform xHamster for five days before being taken down.
Attendees at German festivals Fusion and Monis Rache were secretly filmed while taking showers or on the toilet.
German investigative journalist and broadcaster Patrizia Schlosser first reported the Monis Rache toilets were violated in a video piece about peeping Toms in early January. The festival confirms it was targeted in 2016 and '18. On January 28th, Kulturkosmos Müritz e.V., the company behind Fusion, received anonymous emails confirming that their festival's showers, this time in 2019, had also been targeted.
"As far as we know at this stage, people were filmed in the showers on the Wagtail floor and four videos were put online on the pornographic platform xHamster under the username 'Hannes Lange (hanneshiddencam)'," reads the Kulturkosmos statement.
"As of January 28th, these videos were publicly viewable and had already been online for five days. They had between 300 and 500 views per video. The camera was apparently placed so that the bodies of the filmed people could be seen from the shoulders down, and there were several close-ups of female body parts. Faces or heads were not recognisable. We assume that the images were probably taken from a bag placed down on the floor. We immediately filed a criminal complaint and the videos were deleted by xHamster from the user's profile within 24 hours."
The statement continues: "We are shocked and simply stunned that this form of sexual attack can occur in a place in which sexism and violence are completely antithetical to our fundamental values. We would like to express our full solidarity to all those directly affected." Kulturkosmos adds that sexual assaults of this nature will be "much analysed in our preparations for Fusion Festival 2020" and that "prevention measures will be implemented."
According to the statement, no one has been charged in connection with the Fusion case, though the team is "trying to identify the perpetrator and are checking if and how we can take legal action against him."
Kulturkosmos urges anyone who thinks they may have been affected to contact the police directly. Monis Rache has shared resources for reporting and counselling here.
Update: There will be a protest—"Rache am Patriarchat! My body is not your porn"—in response to the sexual violations committed at Monis Rache on Friday, February 14th, at 6 PM local time at Hermannplatz in Berlin. Find more information here.