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Swedish music festival cancels next year's event amid rape reports

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
Swedish music festival cancels next year's event amid rape reports
One person was reportedly raped during Håkan Hellström's concert at Bråvalla. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

Following reported rapes and sex offences at this year's Bråvalla music festival, there will be no festival in 2018, the organisers said on Saturday.

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One of Sweden's largest music festivals, Bråvalla has been arranged outside the eastern Swedish town Norrköping every summer for the past five years, and this Saturday, July 1st, is the final day of the 2017 edition.
 
 
But the popular festival will not return in 2018 due to concerns over several cases of sex offences, the organizing company FKP Scorpio said in a press release on Saturday.
 
"Words cannot describe how incredibly sad we are about this, and we most seriously regret and condemn this. This is not f-ing okay. We do not accept this at our festival," a festival representative wrote.
 
Police later said four rapes had been reported in total, 23 cases of sexual molestation ("sexuella ofredanden"), one case of sexual coercion, 13 assaults, 116 cases of minor narcotics offences and 97 thefts.
 
One person was reportedly raped during a Håkan Hellström concert.
 
The organizers did not say if or when the festival will return. Nor would they say whether the company's financial situation had anything to do with the cancellation – FKP Scorpio reported a loss of 75 million kronor ($8,904,500) in 2016.
 
"We don't have any further comments on that. We have issued a press release, and that's what applies here," FKP press spokesperson Johanna Jonasson told Swedish broadcaster SVT.
 
Taking place near Norrköping in eastern Sweden, the Bråvalla festival was hit by a spate of reported rapes and sexual assault in 2016.
 
The British band Mumford and Sons, which headlined the 2016 festival, said they would boycott Bråvalla until they had had assurances from the organizers and police they were doing something to combat the problems of sexual violence.
 
 
Meanwhile, a debate about sexual molestation raged in Sweden in 2016 after it emerged that groups of boys had been groping girls at the We Are STHLM youth festival for two years running.

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