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The Committee of inquiry of the Düsseldorf parliament into the excesses on the night has met 58 times since February 18, examined 400,000 sides of paper and over 24 hours of tape recordings of frightened women calling emergency services for help. Psychologist Rudolf Egg said during one of the sessions that at times there were just 38 police on duty trying to help the multitudes of women being sexually assaulted and robbed by the marauding gangs. He said the lax attitude of the police served to create a "legal vacuum" in which hitherto law abiding men were drawn into the frenzy.

GETTY Cologne NYE attacks carried out by 2,000 'African men' on 1,200 women, says report

GETTY People gathering in front of the main railway station in Cologne on New Year's Eve

Earlier action by police, he said, would have hindered the sex mob.

At times there were just 38 police on duty trying to help the multitudes of women being sexually assaulted Psychologist Rudolf Egg

Two final reports will be issued in May next year, but figures released this week show that most of the perpetrators in Cologne - and in other cities where there were similar but smaller attacks - have got away with their crimes. In Hamburg just ONE person received a sentence following 300 complaints from woman about being attacked on the night, three of them rapes. A two year suspended sentence was handed down in August on a 19-year-old Afghan asylum seeker accused of sexually assaulting a woman.

GETTY People gathering in front of the main railway station in Cologne on NYE

Two others were cleared in court hearings, a fourth awaits a trial next year. In Cologne, where 1,222 women were sexually assaulted or robbed, 370 investigations were quietly shelved because no perpetrators could be found. These included 211 cases of sexual assault and rape. At the end of November just THREE people had been found guilty of criminal behaviour on the night and sentenced to between 12 and 21 months. Two of the sentences were suspended. Eight hundred and 20 cases are still being investigated but prosecutors are not confident of convictions because most of the suspects cannot be identified by their victims. Of these, 372 are sex crimes.

Migrants clash with police across Europe Wed, February 15, 2017 Migrants clash with each other in over crowded camps across Europe. Play slideshow EPA 1 of 107 Moroccan Police look at immigrants trying to jump the six-meter-high fence in Ceuta, Spanish enclave on the north of Africa, 09 December 2016.

GETTY The Cologne main train station where violence against women occurred on New Year's Eve