PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA—A South African man was raped by three women for his semen this week, the latest incident in a series of attacks that has seen groups of women sexually assaulting men in the country.

A 33-year-old man said he was held at gunpoint by the women on Tuesday. He alleges he was forced into a black BMW, given a drink that caused an erection, and then raped near the coastal city of Port Elizabeth. The women put his semen in a cooler box before leaving him in an open field and driving away.

“They pointed at him with a firearm directly, a shotgun,” said constable Mncedi Mbombo. “They gave him something to drink, then they left him after they got the sperm.”

Mbombo suspects the women could be working as part of a syndicate dealing in semen sales. “We are taking it serious,” he said of the investigation.

The incident comes at the same time local news organizations have reported women at the Zimbabwe border selling semen to sangomas, traditional healers who then use the substance in their popular rituals.

There have been multiple cases of women raping men in 2015, though not all of them have been in pursuit of bodily fluids. Earlier this year, police confirmed that men in Diepsloot and Tembisa, areas just outside of Johannesburg, were kidnapped by gangs of women and sexually assaulted.

Rape is shockingly common in South Africa, where more than 25 per cent of men say they have raped, and nearly half of those say they have raped more than one person, according to a 2009 study by the Medical Research Council, a government health organization.

The issue is compounded by a corrupt police force that lacks the resources — and will — to follow through on rape cases.

Men who are raped are taken even less seriously. When the Port Elizabeth man was describing the assault, police officers started laughing at him, reported local newspaper The Herald, whose reporter witnessed the exchange.

Martin Pelders, the Johannesburg-based founder of MatrixMen, a support group for men who have been sexually abused, said that when he heard the police were mocking the victim he thought, “Oh my God, not again.”

Pelders said police in South Africa don’t know how to effectively address men who are sexual assault victims.

“They often don’t open cases, or they are encouraged not to open cases,” he said, adding “we need to change the way that we see rape in the country, there are male victims.”