Brit, 19, describes harrowing sexual assault in Milan NYE crowd
UPDATED: 08:53 GMT, 19 January 2025
A nineteen-year-old British victim of the horrifying mass sexual assault attack in Milan has bravely shared how she was assaulted by an 'organised' group of men she did not know as she brought in the new year with friends.
Imogen - who we are identifying by just her first name - had spent the evening with two male friends from England and a group of six Belgian students they had met in Italy before heading to the Piazza del Duomo to watch the fireworks.
In a harrowing testimony she described how she was ‘grabbed and pulled back’ while passing through a busy crowd, surrounded by around 30 men she did not know. ‘They held my arms, my hands. I couldn’t defend myself.’
‘Several men, at the same time, started to grope me, while another tried to pull up my dress,’ she said. ‘I was struggling to get free, and they were enjoying my distress.’
Imogen, a university student in northern England, said that one man tried to sexually assault her with his hands, and claimed that another mentioned raping her.
'As I panicked, and fought for freedom, it became apparent that they enjoyed my distress and this only excited my attackers.'
She described the ‘dehumanising’ ordeal as a ‘fight to survive’, saying she escaped and was saved by her friends only when she started screaming.
Imogen, who tells us she is now safely back in the U.K., said she is struggling to regain her confidence and faith in humanity after feeling that she was going to be killed or raped in an unfamiliar country she thought to be safe.
'I am broken-hearted to have to fight this battle at the very beginning of my adult life,' she told Belgian media.