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Rapes in Sweden, Redux

by Fjordman

In early 2014, journalist Simen Sætre in the weekly Morgenbladet in Norway published an essay about rapes in Sweden. Curiously, he seemed to be more concerned about the fact that “xenophobic” and “Islam-hating” people like me write about this subject than he was about the actual problem. Sætre has previously claimed, with absolutely zero facts to back up his case, that my essays were never meant seriously. Ironically, the same man who makes claims without any basis in facts has suggested that my texts and views are not fact-based.

Let us look into this matter more closely.

In 2013, 5900 rapes were officially reported to the police in Sweden, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet — Brå). This figure was slightly lower than in 2012, but the reported number has been close to or above 6000 for several years. We’ll stick to a medium number of 6000 reported annual rapes for the last couple of years.

We know with certainty that there are numerous victims who don’t report rape to the police. Many criminologists assume that the official numbers only reveal a minority of such cases. This assumption is backed up by a number of studies.

[Header] Residence permits granted during the year — The number of reported rapes in the years 1980-2008 (Source Migration Board, BRÅ)

[Footer] (grey) Granted residence during the year — (red) Number of reported rapes during the year

The crucial question is: How much higher is the real number of rapes? Twice as large as the official numbers? Four times as big? Ten times?

In late 2013, I published an essay about this very subject in which I suggested two different estimates for how many rapes there truly are in Sweden. The lowest estimate was that one in four rapes committed are actually reported to the police and listed in official statistics. On average for the last couple of years, more than 6000 rapes have been reported in the country annually. If this merely represents one in four rapes actually committed, the real number is 24,000 rapes annually.

That was the lower estimate I proposed. The higher estimate was that merely one in ten rapes is reported. This would imply that the actual number of rapes in Sweden per year is not 6000, but rather 60,000. Suggesting that the actual number of rapes is ten times higher than the reported may sound exaggerated. I wasn’t convinced of this myself, which is why I made the calculations with both a lower and a higher estimate.

Nevertheless, a number of researchers have suggested that it is realistic to assume that only 10% of this type of crimes is reported. A Norwegian study published in early 2014 indicated that just 11% of the women who have been raped actually reported this to the police. This number is very close to the higher of the two estimates I suggested for Sweden.

Of course, one should always be careful with using data from one country to compare with those of a different country. That being said, Norway and Sweden are very closely-related nations. It is not unreasonable to assume that such numbers are comparable to some extent.

If the roughly 6000 reported annual rapes in Sweden make up 11% of the actually committed rapes, as this recent Norwegian study could indicate, then the true number of rapes in Sweden is 54,000-55,000. At that annual rate, the number of rapes committed in Sweden in roughly 20 years would approach 1.1 million. It is thus not totally unrealistic to assume that one million rapes or more are committed in Sweden a single generation. That’s a staggeringly high number for a small Scandinavian nation. Even half of this would still be very high.

By mid-2014 Sweden was estimated to house around 9.7 million people. Due to mass immigration in recent decades, about 15% of these were born in another country, in addition to second-generation immigrants. Half of the population is female, fewer than 5 million people. Of these, some are very old or very young.

Rapes of babies or women in their 80s do occur, but in relatively small numbers. Most rapes target young women of a fertile age, from their early teens into their 20s, 30s and partway into their 40s. If we assume one million rapes per generation, the risk of rape for young Swedish women today is shockingly high. This is an international scandal, and should be treated as such. Instead, Sweden continues to be portrayed internationally as some sort of Feminist Utopia.

One might argue that even if there are one million rapes, this does not automatically imply one million victims. Sometimes the same person is raped more than once. Technically speaking this is true, although that hardly makes the situation much better. Gang rapes used to be very rare in Scandinavia not so many years ago. They have now become disturbingly common in Sweden.

Rape of men, too, used to be uncommon in this part of the world. Not anymore. A 17-year-old boy reported being gang raped by several men in the town of Växjö in southern Sweden. In 2012, 132 men in Sweden reported being raped. Once more, we know that a significant number of such people don’t file a police report at all. The humiliation, shame and stigma attached to being a male rape victim are presumably at least as strong as for female victims.

If we again assume, as the study of women victims from Norway suggested, that only 11% or rapes are reported to the police, then 1200 rapes are committed against men in Sweden annually. That’s about one every seven hours.

All of the numbers I have mentioned here are based on official statistics. I extrapolate beyond them, but the numbers I suggest are not implausible.

The greatest taboo in Sweden is to suggest that any of these problems might have anything to due with the mass immigration that has literally changed the face of the country in the last two generations.

I do not suggest that immigration is the sole reason for these trends. However, it is well-documented in other Western European countries, from Norway to Britain, that a link exists. Immigrants from certain cultures, especially Muslims and Africans, are strongly overrepresented in cases of rape and violent crime.

The simple fact is that the Sweden of forty years ago, before the advent of non-European mass immigration, was a relative safe country with low levels of crime. Sweden today is much less safe for average citizens in their everyday lives. This goes both for street crime and for political violence, which is rising.

Sweden does have a few neo-Nazis, but much of the political violence comes from the extreme Left, sometimes quietly backed by the political Establishment and the mass media. Some of those targeted in political attacks are simply concerned citizens who peacefully voice their opposition to immigration policies that will render them a minority in their own country in a few decades.

Multiculturalism and mass immigration have made our society less safe. It is very hard to deny this — unless you are a journalist working in the mainstream media.

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