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Chicago Police Say They're Investigating Livestreamed Gang Rape Of Teenage Girl

Chicago police say they've located a missing teenage girl who was sexually assaulted in an attack streamed live on Facebook.

The Associated Press reports that the girl was apparently raped "by five or six men or boys" in the video, which was watched live by dozens of people.

It's the second incident in the past three months where an apparent violent crime in Chicago, with multiple assailants, was broadcast live on Facebook as it happened.

The girl, 15, was found by officers and reunited with her family, a police spokesman said on Twitter. Police are now conducting interviews.

According to Chicago news outlet WGN-TV, the high school freshman went missing on Sunday afternoon after heading out from home to visit a store.

On Monday her family discovered video on Facebook, which had streamed live, which they say showed the girl being assaulted by multiple people.

NPR has not seen the video. WGN reporters say that they have seen screenshots, which are too graphic to publish, and that police have the full video.

The Associated Press reports:

"Police only learned of the attack when the girl's mother approached police Superintendent Eddie Johnson late Monday afternoon as he was leaving a department in the Lawndale neighborhood on the city's West Side, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. She told him her daughter had been missing since Sunday and showed him screen grab photos of the alleged assault.

"He said Johnson immediately ordered detectives to investigate and the department asked Facebook to take down the video, which it did."

Approximately 40 people had watched the video, and none of them had called police to report the rape, the AP and WGN report.

"Here's what's even more disturbing, more than the fact that they did this, there were so many people that saw it and didn't pick up the phone to dial 911," Johnson told the TV station.

"That's not right," he said. "It's just not right."

Police began searching for the girl, who was located Tuesday.

"She was apparently sitting on a porch, crying," WGN anchor Tonya Francisco reports.

In January, Chicago police arrested four people who were charged with hate crimes for kidnapping and attacking a mentally disabled man. That assault, too, was live-streamed on Facebook, and received widespread media attention.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Camila Flamiano Domonoske covers cars, energy and the future of mobility for NPR's Business Desk.
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