According to statistics released by police in the German capital of Berlin, the city saw 210 rapes between March and July, an average of two rape cases per day.
The State Police criminal investigation unit, known in Germany as the Kripo, said that cases of serious rape in Berlin are surging, and of the 210 cases reported between March and July at least 50 of the victims were children below the age of 16.
The Kripo also say that around half of the suspects in the rape cases come from a foreign background — far higher than the migrant population of Berlin, which amounts to around 29.9 per cent of the city’s total residents, Focus reports.
Marcel Luthe, a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), commented on the statistics, saying: “The far disproportionate proportion of foreign suspects shows that the causes urgently need to be clarified and discussed transparently. And then effective crime prevention must be pursued.”
Berlin has seen a steady rise in reported sex crimes in the last several years, with 2019 seeing 4,809 cases — up 15 per cent form the year prior.
One in five victims is said to be under the age of 21 and over a third of the alleged perpetrators have been from migrant backgrounds.
The release of the statistics comes just weeks after a German court convicted and sentenced a group of migrants in the city of Freiburg for gang-raping a German teen girl over a period of four hours in 2018 after they had drugged her at a local nightclub.
Eight of the men were Syrians, with others coming from Iraq, Afghanistan and one man being a German citizen. They were handed meagre sentences of three to five and a half years in prison.
Since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, rapes and sex attacks involving migrants have been a major issue in Germany and other countries.
In Sweden, broadcaster SVT revealed in 2018 that migrants were behind 56 per cent of rapes and attempted raped and represented eight-in-ten assault rape cases.
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