Tahrir Square now home to an organized campaign of sexual assaults

On the two-year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, at least 19 women were sexually assaulted in and around Tahrir Square in one night, some with knives, activists said. Dozens more cases have been reported in the two months since.

“The message to women is, ‘You should stay at home, you should stop protesting, you should feel stigmatized,’” said Hania Moheeb, an Egyptian journalist who was herself assaulted in the square that night…

The men were “continuously giving the impression that they were helping out while they were the same perpetrators and attackers,” she added.

They dragged her to the outer edges of the square where another group of men came forward, saying they would help and take her to an ambulance, Moheeb said. But they stopped her as she tried to pull her clothes back on, carrying her half-naked to the ambulance.

“What I know for a fact is that my body was being violated up until the last second before I was put in the ambulance,” she said.