Teenagers in custody for gang raping Schiedam woman

Three teenage boys are in custody for gang raping a 35-year-old woman from Schiedam, Rotterdam in November last year. A magistrate remanded them into custody for two weeks on Thursday, Eindhovens Dagblad reports.

The suspects, 15-year-old twins and a 16-year-old friend, were taken from their beds and arrested on Monday morning. The gang rape happened on the twins' 15th birthday, according to the newspaper.

The woman was attcked in her own car on Bokelweg, next to the office park on the A20 between Rotterdam and Schiedam, around 7:00 p.m. on November 23rd last year. Over about 8 minutes she was repeatedly raped by three teenagers. Video footage shows the woman walking to her car, not realizing that she was followed by three teenagers, two of them on bicycles. She gets into the car and moments later one of the teens was in the car with her. The boys get into and leave the car in turn.

The three teenagers left the twins' house around 6:30 p.m. that night and the twins came back home around 7:30 p.m., their mother told the newspaper. They said they were going to meet a friend at a gym.

The three suspects attend the same pre-vocational secondary school in Rotterdam West and live in Oud-Mathenesse, a short distance away from where the crime was committed. All three of them are suspected of rape, a spokesperson for the Public Prosecutor said to Eindhovens Dagblad.

"I can not believe it", the twins' father said to the newspaper, just before the boys appeared in front of the magistrate on Thursday. "I'd like to hear from my boys what happened. Three young boys, according to the police, raping a woman in a car for eight minutes, how is that possible? I ask myself that. I can't imagine that from my boys."

Lawyer Sandor Bosch, representing the twins, did not want to give the a substantive comment to the newspaper. "The boys are in restricted custody and it does not seem wise to say anything."