A woman in Vienna was charged with inflicting bodily harm after stabbing a Syrian migrant, despite the fact that the migrant was trying to rape her.
The woman was attacked shortly before midnight on Tuesday last week as she entered her apartment building on Schönbrunner Strasse in the district of Meidling.
Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports that the attacker grabbed the victim’s private parts and pushed her to the ground.
“But then the rape attempt took a dramatic turn: the woman, with presence of mind, managed to pull a knife out of her purse,” reports Remix News. “She stabbed her attacker several times with it until he let go of his victim, grabbed her purse and ran away badly injured. The perpetrator was discovered by the police a short time later with cuts and stab wounds at a nearby subway station and taken to a hospital.”
After he was treated for his injuries the man, a 24-year-old Syrian asylum seeker, was found to be in possession of marijuana and was arrested.
Vienna police delayed making the case public by three days and only revealed details after media outlets started asking questions, prompting accusations by some that authorities had tried to bury the incident.
The public prosecutor’s office subsequently charged the woman with bodily harm despite the fact that she was trying to defend herself from being violently attacked and molested.
Lawyer Michael Dohr said the victim was still traumatized and that the decision to charge her was an “absolutely insensitive approach.”
Read More: Woman in Vienna Charged With ‘Bodily Harm’ After Fighting Off Migrant Rapist