A gay gang that allegedly raped victims lured on the Internet, drugged them and infected them with the AIDS virus has shocked the Netherlands and raised questions over its liberal sex culture.Health Minister Ab Klink on Thursday called the case "horrible", as the press splashed the news across its front pages.
The matter came to light Wednesday, when police said they had arrested three seropositive homosexual men two weeks ago after four victims, men aged 25 to 50, accused them of rape and premeditated bodily harm.
Ronald Zwarter, the police chief in the northern town of Groningen, where the alleged crimes took place, said two of those arrested, a couple aged 48 and 33, had confessed.
"Their stated motive was that it excited them -- and also that, the more HIV-infected people there were, the better their chances of unprotected sex," he said.
"They considered unprotected relations to be 'pure'."
A fourth man who allegedly supplied the three suspects with several litres of the date-rape drug GHB and ecstasy tablets was also arrested.
The gang risks up to 16 years in prison.
According to police and prosecutors, eight more victims have come forward since the case was publicised.
Officials said the three seropositive men invited gays contacted on the Internet to private homosexual orgies.
When the victims turned up, they were allegedly given ecstasy and GBH (which is undetectable when mixed in drinks), leaving them helpless and, in some cases, with no memory of what happened.
The three suspects -- one of whom is a male nurse -- were said to have raped the men, and even injected some of them with a mix of their contaminated blood.
The case has deeply unsettled the Netherlands, and caused it to cast a hard look at its easygoing views on sex, with some figures suggesting that frequent homosexual orgies posed a public health risk.
"That homos organise orgies is nothing new, but this is something else. This is unimaginable," said Frank van Dalen, the president of a gay rights group called COC.
He stressed that the illegal use of GHB (gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid) -- known on the street by such nicknames as "Easy Lay, "Gay Home Boy" and "Liquid Ecstasy" -- also posed a danger in heterosexual circles.
Said Henk Krol, the editor of a homosexual magazine titled Gaykrant: "These people were drugged, it's therefore rape, pure and simple. It's shameful, disgusting and terrifying. Those who did this are crazy."
Health officials pointed to a recent rise in the number of HIV infections in Groningen -- from 14 in 2005 to 25 last year, out of the town's total population of 185,000 -- as significant.
"This doesn't mean that the rise is entirely explained by the orgies... but it's probable that part of the rise has been caused by them," Marco Ter Harmsel, of Grongingen's municipal health service, told the Dutch newspaper DRC.
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