Around 15 months after a 15-year-old was raped in Hamburg's city park, the public prosecutor charged eleven young men between the ages of 17 and 21.
As the authority announced on Wednesday in the Hanseatic city, they are accused of offenses against sexual self-determination.
They are said to have sexually assaulted the drunken adolescent at night "with different levels of involvement, at different times and in different places".
The perpetrators took advantage of the victim's alcoholism: According to the public prosecutor's office, the 15-year-old was no longer able to object to what happened on the night of September 20, 2020 because of her alcoholism.
The case had caused a lot of media attention in Hamburg, the suspects were initially unknown.
Prosecutors said the charges required a complex investigation.
The Hamburg District Court will now decide whether to admit the indictment and to open the trial.
The length of the investigation and the fact that the suspects remained at large caused considerable displeasure on social networks at times.
At the beginning of November, a petition called for “immediate proceedings” and “the publication of the perpetrators' faces”.
During the same period, photos and the full names of alleged perpetrators were published on an Instagram account.
The public prosecutor's office then initiated an investigation, and the posts were deleted shortly afterwards.