While masses of Egyptians celebrated the ousting of former president Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square, shocking crimes went unnoticed, buried beneath the shifting government.
As anti-Morsi demonstrators set off firecrackers, honked horns and danced, embracing one another, at least 80 women were sexually assaulted by large mobs-some were harassed, others, raped.
Since Sunday, Tahrir Square has seen upwards of 169 counts of sexual mob crime, the Guardian reported.
Now, women's rights advocate and co-founder of Tahrir Bodyguard Soraya Bahgat has called for the recognition, documentation and persecution of sex crimes that have occurred even as far back as the 2011 Arab Spring movement, but went relatively unnoticed.
"Egypt is full of sexual harassment and people have become desensitized to it-but this is a set up," Bahgat told the Guardian. "We're talking about mob sexual assaults-from stripping women naked and dragging them on the floor-to rape."
Some members of the women's rights campaign claimed that more than one woman was raped with a sharp tool.
"It's been underreported because a lot of people are unwilling to come forward," Bahgat continued," and because no one wanted to disturb the sanctity of Tahrir."
According to the Guardian, women who were sexually assaulted typically were in the enormous crowds of people in the Square, swallowed into obscurity. Groups of men waded through the masses, looking for lone women, then surrounded them, yanking their clothes off until they were naked. Some women reported being molested and groped by men.
One woman relayed her experience on a Facebook group for safety organization Op Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault.
"Suddenly, I was in the middle, surrounded by hundreds of men in a circle that was getting smaller and smaller around me," she recounted. "At the same time, they were touching and groping me everywhere, and there were so many hands under my shirt and inside my pants."
Bahgat called this kind of sexual attack a "circle of hell."
The government has largely turned a blind eye to these kinds of crimes, OpAntish organizer Mariam Kirollos reported. Most women are blamed for the attacks.
"People always ask: what was she wearing?" Bahgat said.
Additionally, sexual harassment is not clearly defined under Egyptian law-that makes it much harder to prosecute the criminal.
"There's no accountability whatsoever," Kirollos said of the sex crimes. "There has also been zero effort by the government to change how the media or the education system deals with this problem."
Egypt's National Council for Women is currently teaming up with Egypt's interior ministry to instate a program that enables women to report molestation or harassment to an all-female coalition of police officers.
But Kirollos stressed that legislation was merely the first step.
"It's going to take more than just laws, and more than just implementing those laws, to stop this happening," she stated. "Society needs to change to stop it."
