Tunisian man arrested after separate alleged sex assaults on three British holidaymakers at Valencia hostel

Valencia

A 32-year-old suspect allegedly pretended to be a worker at the Spanish tourist establishment before targeting two teenagers and their roommate in the bathrooms

Natalia Penza

A Tunisian man has been arrested after separate alleged sex attacks on three British holidaymakers including two teenage women at a Spanish hostel.

The 32-year-old suspect is said to have pretended to be an employee at the tourist establishment in Valencia before targeting the younger pair.

The incident police responded to before making the arrest happened just before 1.30am on Tuesday after the two British women aged 18 and 19 arrived in an Uber.

The alleged sex offender, believed to be a guest at the hostel, opened the door to them according to local reports and tricked them into following him to a bathroom before sexually assaulting them after a struggle.

He is said to have grabbed them by the arms to stop them leaving when they sensed something was amiss before groping the older of the two teenagers and trying to kiss the younger woman as he put his hand under her skirt.

He then allegedly followed them to the women’s bathroom, took his clothes off and started having a shower.

The female pair responded by calling police and when they arrived a third British woman aged 26, understood to be a roommate of the other two, told cops the same man had sexually assaulted her on Sunday morning.

She said she had been cleaning her teeth in the women’s bathroom and he put his arms around her after creeping up on her from behind before rubbing himself against her without her consent.

A spokesman for the National Police in Valencia said: “We got a call about 2.30am yesterday morning, June 9, asking us to go to a hostel in the city where a man had apparently sexually assaulted two women.

“The alleged victims are three young British women.

“One of the incidents happened around 1.20am that same morning and the other on Sunday.

“The later incident occurred after two British women arrived at the hostel in an Uber and a man opened up the door to them pretending to be a worker at the establishment and told them he would accompany them and took to them to the men’s bathroom where he allegedly sexually assaulted them by touching them on their private parts and bottom.

“Those two women fled at some point and took shelter in their rooms and alerted the police.

“Once officers arrived they located the suspect who was arrested on suspicion of three separate sex assaults.

“The third relates to an incident that occurred on Sunday at the same hostel because another young British woman told officers that same man had targeted her while she was in the women’s bathroom cleaning her teeth.

“The arrested man is a 32-year-old Tunisian national.

“He was handed over to a specialist Violence Against Women court in Valencia yesterday.”

The travellers’ hostel where the sexual assaults allegedly occurred is located in Valencia’s Camins al Grau neighbourhood and is around a 10-minute drive from the historical city centre.

Last month a van driver was arrested on suspicion of abducting a young British tourist on the street of a Spanish holiday hotspot and sexually assaulting her.

He allegedly bundled her into his vehicle after spotting her walking back to her hotel from a nightspot in the Mallorcan capital Palma.

Detectives said at the time he got out of the van and grabbed her by the arm to force her into the passenger’s seat.

He then sped off and sexually assaulted her as he drove along the road.

The British woman, whose age has not been revealed, only managed to escape after the man had to stop at a red light and two people in a car following them who had witnessed the street abduction intervened.

The witnesses managed to take a photograph of the suspect’s licence plate which was key to enabling police to locate the man and arrest him.

The horror incident happened in the early hours of May 11 on Palma’s iconic seafront promenade called the Paseo Maritimo.

On May 1 a foreign tourist whose nationality has not been revealed was allegedly sexually assaulted on waste ground in the Manacor halfway between Palma and the island’s east coast by two men she had met in a bar said to have spiked her drink.

The holidaymaker said she started feeling unwell after leaving her drink unattended to go to the toilet.

The men she had met that night reacted by offering to drive her back to her hotel according to police but allegedly took her to waste ground and sexually assaulted her on the back seat of the car.

Cops were called by locals she begged for help after managing to escape the vehicle.

Two arrests were made.