Cairo, Egypt – While chants and songs boomed in the city’s packed Tahrir Square, the epicentre of million-man marches that toppled two presidents in three years, mobs of sexual predators blended within the crowds, hounding female prey.

Although there are no official chronicles of the number of victims, local human rights groups claim more than 100 women were abused since protests started on June 28, with at least two cases of rape recorded.

“It’s no longer accurate to refer to such assaults as mere sexual harassment. They are sexual terrorism,” Fathi Farid, coordinator of local human rights group I Saw Harassmenttold Al Jazeera.

Millions of Egyptians, men and women, have taken to the streets since June 28, first to topple the country’s first democratically elected civilian president, Mohamed Morsi, then to celebrate his ousting when the army decided to side with the demand for early elections.

I Saw Harassment, together with a number of other civil society initiatives, including Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault and Tahrir Bodyguards – which were founded due to the state’s absence amid the epidemic of sexual violence the country has witnessed in recent years – ran a hotline and deployed volunteers in Tahrir Square and at other demonstration sites. Their aim was to thwart sexual assault attempts, especially as police forces boycotted the rallies, leaving protesters, especially women, vulnerable.

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