Two professional footballers were hauled before a court in Ibiza in handcuffs on Thursday over an alleged sex attack on a British teenager.
Karlan Ahearne-Grant and Reeco Hackett-Fairchild appeared before an investigating magistrate on the Spanish party island after the 19-year-old lodged a formal complaint with police.
The two 20-year-old Charlton Athletic players were arrested along with another Briton – a 26-year-old who has not been named – over an alleged attack at a hotel in Cala de Bou near San Antonio. The third suspect was brought to court later on.
It is alleged that one man forced himself on the holidaymaker while another held her down and a third filmed what was happening on a mobile phone.
The hearings were held in private, as is normal in the early stages of a Spanish judicial investigation.
Spanish police said in a statement: ‘National Police officers arrested two English men on Tuesday in San Jose in Ibiza as the suspected authors of a sex attack. The parents of the 19-year-old victim, who is also British, reported the incident to police.’
The statement said the teenager and a female friend were on holiday in Ibiza and went to San Antonio on Monday afternoon, where they met men from a British football team in a bar. The women were said to have agreed to go back with some of the men to the hotel where they were staying.
The statement continued: ‘Once they were in a room, one of the youngsters was allegedly sexually attacked by one of the players, while a second took hold of her and a third recorded her on a mobile phone.
‘After the incident, the visibly affected victim and her friend left the hotel to go back to the woman’s parents. The victim’s parents quickly suspected something was wrong and after discovering what had happened went to speak to the police.’
Officers subsequently arrested two men at their hotel at around 6.40am on Tuesday.
A well-placed police source said the third man was ‘the suspected sex attacker’.
Ahearne-Grant, who was born in Greenwich, south-east London, has represented England at youth levels up to Under-19. He has made 69 appearances for League One Charlton and was on loan at League Two Crawley Town for much of last season.
Fellow striker Hackett-Fairchild, from Redbridge, north-east London has made only a handful of appearances for Charlton.
A club spokesman said: ‘The club have been made aware and are looking into this matter. Due to the ongoing investigation we will not be commenting any further at this stage.’
Cala de Bou, which is in the municipality of San Jose, is a popular location for tourists looking to stay somewhere quieter than San Antonio but within easy reach of the brash Ibizan party scene.
It is just seven miles from the airport and home to a number of hotels and holiday apartments.