Why are governments putting women and girls at higher risk of sex crimes?

[Absentmindedsmile]

Fact: Hundreds of thousands of men are entering Europe (as in the continent), from countries where women and girls are second class citizens.
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Fact: The sex crime rate statistics associated with different nationalities living in the UK have been published. An example is provided below.
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**Facts:
….the [sex crime] rates, based on convictions per 10,000 of the population put Afghans, with 77 convictions, at the top with a rate of 59 per 10,000 – 22.3 times that of Britons.
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They were followed by Eritreans, who accounted for 59 convictions at a rate of 53.6 per 10,000 of their population.
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Britons accounted for 12,619 sex offence convictions, representing a rate of 2.66 per per 10,000 of their population in England and Wales.
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https://archive.md/6AXAy Archive version
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Fact: This example data blows up any erroneous claims from people suggesting that British men commit more sex crimes when numbers in the population are accounted for / are more likely to commit a sex crime.
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There’s above is factual data. It is not racist to provide it. To claim this, is quite simply, wrong. Perhaps it’s projection, the mind boggles.

To want ‘no debate’ and bleet on with incorrectly placed accusations of racism, is to shut down people’s valid concerns.

Tin hat on for the people who want no debate on this issue, and instead of protecting women and girls, insist on protecting men from countries where women and girls are treated as second class citizens.

More data has been promised.
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Obviously it always been there. It’s a national scandal. Why is the government allowed to make it worse? It’s the last thing women and girls need.

I'd be banned for saying what I think of you.

You’d get even more depressed if you understood how much some men from some countries hated women’s girls.

@Absentmindedsmile I also work intensively to promote EVAWG and I'm also very confused as to what was said that was racist or bigoted. I'd say its pretty collectively acknowledged that the level of public outrage is not the same when women and girls are harmed by men of colour or a particular immigration status compared to locally born white men.

Plus if you are serious about EVAWG why does it matter where the women and girls are? Why are you only interested in protecting British women and girls and ignoring the fact that many asylum seeking men are in fact creating safe pathways into the UK for women and girls they care about who are in danger in their country of origin?

I am white British and I was raped by a white British man. They’re capable of it too

Some men from some countries like the UK?

Because your post was a nonsense. The OP was making the point that we have enough problem with British men being violent against women without importing vast numbers from countries where women are subjugated as standard and you immediately bit back with a comment about deporting the white men in the case you highlighted. Well funnily enough the ‘white men’ are ours and the ‘immigrants’ aren’t, which pretty much made the OPs case for her.

Yes no doubt. Though if you think uk men treat women and girls badly, do some research into how women and girls in some other countries are treated.

Start your research here:
Iran, Pakistan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Morocco. Starter for 10. There are more.

Yes. I’m sorry that happened to you x

But only if they think like you, apparently.

It's absolutely not a nonsense.

It speaks to the fact that when a white local man does an unspeakable thing to a woman people say that's awful, but not all white men. But when an immigrant man - particularly of colour does the same thing or similar thing, people want the entire demographic out. To the point of quite literally burning down houses with women and children still in them. It's quite simply racist.

My concern is that we do have sacred castes and there is a desire to close down discussion which only leads to people feeling that they are being squashed. In the end this encourages the far right and makes people more likely to vote for them. It is not racist to say that cultures are different and that in some places women who wear certain clothing/don’t cover their hair etc are perceived as available. In some countries (for example India) there are stereotypes about white women being always up for it. Even if rates of crime were the same, it would surely be helpful to consider how to deal with people coming from a different culture and not just expect them to integrate by magic.

It isn’t just a question of cultural differences. The vast majority of these so-called refugees are young men. (Their wives and parents have presumably been left behind to face the ‘war and persecution’ on their own.) Young men have high sex drives and quickly become sexually frustrated. If you move 50 young men into a small town or village, no matter what their culture or background, you are likely to see an increase in sexual assaults. It’s always a big concern in war, of course, when you have disproportionate numbers of young men suddenly billeted in a foreign town.

Agree.

Especially when the poster types Fact …. As if it gives more weight - and then posts statistics that don’t back up what they think they are saying 🤦🏼‍♀️

I get that you aren't statisticians, @BeckyAMumsnet, and I don't expect you to be. I also don't expect you to take sides in this debate. But the claims presented by the OP have been robustly fact checked by Sky News, which is bound by impartiality guidelines, and they have very clearly demonstrated that Farage has misrepresented the facts.

Could you not at the very least have acknowledged that at least one reputable, mainstream news organisation has cast doubt on this so-called data, instead of the slightly wishy washy admission that "the population figures used in these comparisons may be out of date"?

I do understand MNHQ wanting to be impartial but you're essentially allowing proven misinformation to stand and leaving posters here to do the work. And frankly, someone without access to the facts would likely interpret your post as coming down on the side of the discredited information in the OP being true, because you confirmed that the data comes from official sources without properly explaining how it has been manipulated and misinterpreted in order to mislead. Again, I'm not expecting you to provide those technical explanations, but if you're going to confirm the official source of the raw data, you could at least balance that more effectively by pointing to the independent analysis undertaken by Sky News.

You say that you want to tackle racism on the site, and I do really want to believe that, but I am just not seeing the evidence. Why are you allowing these people to dominate the narrative with their lies?

The majority of reports of rape/ sexual assault do not lead to a conviction, only around 50% of rape cases that make it to court lead to a conviction. Of course far, far more reports of sexual assault never make it to trial at all, fewer than 4% of the assaults reported led to a charge. And of course many women don’t report to the police at all.

The figures you’ve shared only show the number of convicted crimes. We know systematic racism exists within policing and the courts, I’d therefore be very wary of assuming that just because foreign nationals are more likely to be convicted of sexual assault it means they are more likely to commit sexual assault. It would be interesting to know how many men of each nationality have been accused of assault and the percentage of these allegations which lead to conviction; I would not be surprised if a white British man is more likely to get away without a conviction following an allegation of sexual assault than a foreign national.

But it’s clearly different. Obviously you can’t do anything about British men in terms of immigration policy, but you can do something about migrants. It’s bad luck for the migrant men who are not sex offenders but we don’t owe them anything. We do owe it to our women and girls to consider their interests above those of non-citizens.

This is a core part of the problem: some people (middle class, extreme left) see us as all one global family and don’t think we should prioritise our own national interests above others’. Other people (probably the majority) see it as a fundamental duty of the state to prioritise the national interest and interests of citizens over the interests of non-citizens.

If there was a simple solution to having lots of asylum seekers wanting to live in the UK and getting here whatever way they can I'm sure every recent government would have done it. Fortunately or unfortunately we have laws in this country and you can't just send people back to countries where they may be killed, without due process.

I never understand why there is such a strong desire to come here rather than stay in France or Germany or any other European country they have passed through to get here. Lots of brits seem to want to move to Europe... I know some have relatives here and some speak English rather than French, etc, but it sometimes seems perverse to endanger your life to get here from mainland Europe.

This site is becoming so depressing, the racism is more blanant than ever.

Apologies for this being anecdotal. The three men who have committed crimes against women in my family and local community recently have all been white. I have heard nothing similar about the asylum seekers in town although a friend reports that a few of them helped with a local litter picking event.

There are good and bad men of every skin colour and nationality.

I think that all cultures have women as second class citizens some are improving on this over time but even that is precarious as history has shown but there is not a country in the world that does not have an issue with male vawg.
That is true but I do have an issue with men ' escaping persecution' from a country where women can't speak in public, are denied an education, healthcare and can't leave the house without a male escort. How are these men being 'persecuted' in comparison? They've left women and girls locked at home and run away.

I agree about statistics hiding complexity. One fundamental issue is the use of the term 'sex crime', which encompasses the range from vaginal, anal and oral rape in private to (as per the case of an asylum seeker housed in The Bell in Epping being heard today) trying to kiss a girl on the lips and putting his hand on her thigh in front of other people. All of these things are undesirable but rape cannot but cause deep trauma. This is not the case for a kiss.

I would like to know what is done to help newcomers understand British culture so they are clear on how to behave towards women and girls. Clarity means 'Never touch or speak to a woman you do not know.' What do we know about how the availability of free online porn affects that understanding, especially in men from cultures in which women are almost completely covered in public? Here too, I am not making excuses for any man.

While I am appalled by Nigel Farage whipping up anti-migrant sentiment in preparation for the next election, I am equally appalled at the Conservatives and Labour not thinking bigger. The seeds of the problem of over migration were sown 10 years ago. Filling hotels with migrants, majority male, from cultures unlike ours, and without consultation with local authorities, was bound to be problematic, especially when those men have little to do all day - unless they are working illegally, thanks to lax labour regulation.

For typo

This isn’t about people being good or bad. There are programmes in universities educating students on things like consent, because we acknowledge that culture matters.

Posts that promote hostility towards people based on nationality, ethnicity or religion will be removed.

What's taking so long?

In the last weeks, we have seen how vital conversations about violence against women and girls (VAWG) are being hijacked by an anti-migrant agenda that fuels division, harms survivors and ultimately impedes the real work of tackling the root causes of society-wide violence, to the detriment of women and girls.

We write as organisations on the frontlines of combatting VAWG to urge the Government to address this dangerous narrative.

We condemn all acts of violence against women and girls and the immense harm which such acts cause to individuals and communities. The facts about violence against women and girls in the UK are stark:

• Almost one in three women will experience domestic abuse, and sexual offences are at the highest level recorded.
• One woman every four days in the UK is murdered by a partner or ex-partner.
• More than 90% of perpetrators of rape and sexual assault are known to their victims.
• One in two rapes against women are carried out by a partner or ex-partner.
• One in three adult survivors of rape experience it in their own home.
• Women who can’t access public funds, such as welfare support or housing assistance – due to No Recourse to Public Funds conditions – are three times more likely to experience VAWG.

We have been alarmed in recent weeks by an increase in unfounded claims made by people in power, and repeated in the media, that hold particular groups as primarily responsible for sexual violence. This not only undermines genuine concerns about women’s safety but also reinforces the damaging myth that the greatest risk of gender-based violence comes from strangers.

Every act of VAWG is a form of injustice. It is an injustice that violence against women and girls is carried out in our workplaces, in our schools, in our streets and most commonly, in our homes. It is an uncomfortable reality that it is committed in every economic group, ethnicity, age and social group, and overwhelmingly by the men who are in women and girls’ lives. VAWG is also perpetrated by people who move to the UK, but the racist idea that this is solely an imported problem flies in the face of women and girls’ daily experiences in the UK.

These horrifying facts must be addressed with sustainable investment in prevention and support services, and by removing state-imposed barriers to support for survivors. Instead, the issue is being hijacked by people seeking to use women and girls’ pain and trauma – and the threat of it – for political gain.
Over recent weeks, people claiming to care about the “safety of women and children” have left families, women and children living in temporary asylum accommodation afraid to leave their front door. They follow in the footsteps of the rioters who used the appalling murder of three young girls as an excuse to bring violence to our streets; with targeted attacks against migrant, minoritised and Muslim communities. That two out of five of those arrested for that disorder themselves had police histories of domestic abuse illustrates not only the pervasiveness of gender-based violence but the disingenuous nature of many of those who claim to have the interests of women and children at heart.

Meanwhile, members of Parliament freely share false statistics about the nationality of perpetrators. Government ministers have even endorsed some of this summer’s demonstrators as having ‘legitimate’ concerns, which risks normalising and enabling the spreading of racist narratives by the far-right.
Not only do these falsehoods fail to keep women safe, they serve as a racist distraction that actively impedes the urgent work of addressing gender-based violence. Myths and misconceptions about sexual violence act as a barrier to justice for survivors. Spreading an inaccurate picture of VAWG in the UK allows the people – overwhelmingly men, from all walks of life – who harm women and girls to hide behind racial stereotypes and scapegoating. Meanwhile, hostile immigration policies propped up by this misinformation put many of the most marginalised women and survivors in the UK – racialised, migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women – at even greater risk of harm, destitution, homelessness, exploitation and criminalisation.

The government has pledged to halve violence against women and girls. This is a challenging but achievable ambition, but it cannot be done while lies about its causes are endorsed by those in the highest positions of power – Parliament and the media – and allowed to spread unchecked.

We urge the Government to show leadership in responding to the weaponisation of VAWG, including changing its framing of migration, promoting an accurate picture of violence against women and girls, and holding those who spread misinformation to account. We cannot afford for this agenda to drive further attacks on migrant communities or harm efforts to develop a coherent, effective strategy to address the real causes of gender-based violence. All women and girls deserve for us to face and confront the reality of VAWG, so that we can pave the way in ending it.

https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/100-womens-rights-groups-warn-against-racist-weaponisation-of-vawg/