There has been a surge in the number of reported sexual assaults in Sweden, with over six per cent of women saying they had been victims of sex crimes in the past year alone.
Criminal statistics agency Brå reported that the number of adult women aged 18 to 84 who have experienced some sort of sexual assault had risen from 4.7 per cent of the population in 2016, to 6.4 per cent in 2017.
According to the agency, “Between 2006 and 2012, the level was relatively stable, but since 2013, the proportion that claims to be exposed to sexual offences has shown a clear increase.”
Maria Söderström, an investigator at Brå, commented on the report saying, “It is important to keep in mind that sexual offence is a crime category that encompasses a wide range of crimes. Everything from events such as violent sexual comments, to very serious crimes, such as rape.”
Earlier this year the agency revealed that the total number of reported cases of rape had also risen by ten per cent compared to 2016 with over 7,000 cases reported.
Rape and other sex crimes have been a major issue in the wake of the migrant crisis of 2015, with some claiming that migrants and those of migrant backgrounds were disproportionately involved in sex attacks.
In August, a month before the Swedish general election, Swedish state broadcaster SVT confirmed that migrant background men constituted the majority of those convicted for rape and attempted rape over the last five years.
When it came to rapes where the victim did not know their attacker, the number of foreign convicts was as high as 85 per cent of all cases, with half of the migrants being in the country for less than a year before the attack.