A 16-year-old Afghan refugee, who had recently taken a course on how to behave towards women, has been charged with raping a female employee at a refugee shelter in Belgium. The center’s spokeswoman told RT he had had “an eye on her for quite some time.”

The incident took place in the Belgian town of Menan near the French border. The minor, who “has been staying in the center in Menan already for five months,” followed the “young cook into the basement,” where he allegedly raped her, An Luyten, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross Flanders, told RT.

She added that the teenager “apparently already had an eye on her for quite some time.”

Belgian prosecutors confirmed that the Afghan minor had attacked the young woman, who works for a catering firm providing services to the Menan refugee center, adding that a judge had ordered that the suspect be detained in youth custody until his next hearing.

According to the Red Cross Flanders, which runs the center, the “boy” had attended a course on how to behave towards women given by the organization just two weeks before sexually assaulting the young girl.

4 Migrants rape 19yo at asylum center in Norway, film crime https://t.co/Xb3u5LuwdNpic.twitter.com/lnU9FUzIHW — RT (@RT_com) February 22, 2016

“When a minor comes to Belgium and when a minor comes to a center of the Red Cross Flanders, we teach them two things: first thing is sexual education… sometimes we are talking about children who are 14, 15, 16 years old. Without parents, they do not know anything,” Luyten told RT.

“We also have to explain what the normal ways of treating women here in Flanders [are],” she added.

Luyten stressed that, although “this is a very serious case and we will condemn it very strongly,” it was “a single case,” and it would be “unfair” to extend blame for it to “all the 5,000 people that we shelter at this moment.”

Iraqi refugee rapes 10yo boy in Austria, explains it as ‘sexual emergency’ https://t.co/H1lO7TYfJWpic.twitter.com/ezSWpnjuOD — RT (@RT_com) February 7, 2016

However, the incident has already thrown more fuel on the already raging migration debate, as Tom Van Grieken, leader of the Belgian anti-immigrant party Vlaams Belang, said in a tweet that “people who need a course on how to treat women should not be there in the first place.”

Friday’s incident was just one of the latest in a string of sexual assaults linked to the Europe’s ongoing mass refugee influx.

On December 4, four male refugees living in a shelter in Norway raped and beat up their 19-year-old female friend, who was later taken to a hospital in serious condition. The culprits even recorded a video of their crime, which ended up becoming key evidence in the case.

In another incident last December, an Iraqi refugee raped a 10 year-old boy at a swimming pool in Vienna, Austria, after which the victim, who suffered severe internal injuries, was admitted to a children’s hospital. Following the assault, the assailant simply remained at the pool until he was detained by police, to whom he explained that that he had had a “sexual emergency,” as he had not had sex in four months.

Austria not to deport Afghan asylum seeker who raped 72yo woman https://t.co/kg2QVwRkCupic.twitter.com/IRbseBc2NJ — RT (@RT_com) January 29, 2016

A wave of public indignation was also caused by a series of sexual attacks in Germany on New Year’s Eve. First reports indicated that a large number of sexual assaults, including several rapes, had taken place in the German city of Cologne. However, leaked police documents later revealed that attacks had actually taken place in 12 German states and the number of victims in only four German cities, including Cologne, had exceeded 1,200. According to police documents, the suspects were mostly men of migrant origin, although the majority of them had been living in Germany for some time, and were not recent arrivals.

READ MORE: ‘New form of criminality’: Sex attacks on NYE in 12 German states, says leaked police report

