Grammy winners Mumford and Sons have just announced that they will not be performing at the Swedish festival, Bravalla after reports that 35 girls were sexually assaulted at the event last week.
The band consisting of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall and Ted Dwayne took to their official Facebook account to address the issue at hand and to announce the cancellation of their performance at the Swedish festival. They said they were gutted and that they wouldn’t perform there again until the necessary precautions and action was taken.
Over 5 rapes were reported with various cases of sexual assault at the Bravalla festival and more than 35 cases of groping in the Putte i Parken festival where victims were aged between 12-17. Swedish pop star Zara Larson also took to Twitter to express her anger and grief towards the people who were responsible for these heinous crimes.
“You deserve to burn in hell!“- she wrote. She also tweeted- “Damn you who shamelessly rapes a girl in the audience. You deserve to burn in hell. I hate you guys.” Needless to say, her outburst is extremely justified.
These attacks aren’t unfortunately an isolated attack as there were 5 cases of rape reported at the Roskilde rock festival in Denmark recently. That being said, it’s also important to note that the problems aren’t around Sweden. There were several cases of sexual harassment reported at the 2015Β Glastonbury Festival as well. What’s even more saddening is the fact that hundreds of these incidents go unreported by policemen who try to hush it up.
Although a majority of these festivals were handing out anti-groping bracelets to the attendees, it clearly isn’t enough to curb the issue at hand.
A concert is a place to have fun with friends, enjoy the music and let go of yourself. No one should have to go through what these poor girls went through. Let’s hope stringent action is taken in the future to prevent such crimes!Β