Lavender14 said:
I don't think it was me you asked or else I've missed it.
I know what you're referring to and I think that's a very specific incident which is also kind of a bit of an anomaly statistically speaking. Utterly horrendous and awful for the women impacted. But it definitely reeked of organised crime to me as opposed to just asylum seekers having that 'mentality'. Investigation concluded that this wasn't something that seemed to be normal or representative of any demographic or religion. But then the police response was pretty poor so I don't think we have enough information to get a solid understanding of the motivation and context behind it. That was almost 10 years ago now. I think if it was purely representative of migrant men we'd have seen it repeated many more times since on that scale and we haven't.
I have to disagree.
An anomaly is something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. It refers to an irregularity, exception, or oddity that stands out from the usual pattern.
If you look at the extensive coverage on previous incidents in the middle east this is far from an oddity. Lara Logan was famously raped for almost 30 mins by a mob of 200-300 men while covering the Arab Spring. She says she might've died were she not rescued when she was. There are also plenty of other examples.
Several more journalists were among the hundreds of women who experienced mass sexual assault over the following few years: French journalist Caroline Sinz in November 2011; British journalist Natasha Smith in June 2012; Egyptian journalist Hania Moheeb on 25 January 2013, along with 18 other women; and a Dutch journalist in June 2013.[32]
The excepts below explain it in more detail. This is focusing on Egypt but there are similar issues in many other countries. There are loads of examples I haven't posted as there is just so much.
Mass sexual assault is a widespread issue in Egypt and has been the subject of significant international attention since 2005,[n 1] when Egyptian security forces and their agents were accused of using it as a weapon against female protesters during a political demonstration at Tahrir Square in Cairo on 25 May of that year.[3] It has since become increasingly prevalent, and by 2012, it had become commonplace for crowds of young men to sexually assault or rape women during festivals and political protests throughout the country.[4][5]
Commentators say the attacks reflect a misogynistic attitude among Egyptian society that penalizes women for leaving the house, seeks to terrorize them out of public life, and views sexual violence as a source of shame for the victim, not the attacker. Sexual assault has been used as a weapon against female protesters in 2005 and since July 2012, although the perpetrators are not exclusively politically motivated.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality on May 23, 2013, reported that an estimated 99.3% of Egyptian women said they faced some form of sexual violence.[13] The source was a 2013 UN report which estimated that 99.3% of women aged 10-35 had been sexually harassed (including wolf whistles, dirty looks, and other non-violent harassment) and 90.9% had been raped.[14]
A survey of male and female students at Sohag University found an overall child sexual abuse prevalence of 29.8%, with the rate for females (37.8%) being higher than that for males (21.2%).
The attacks in Egypt, and the term taharrush ("harassment" in Arabic), came to wider attention in 2016 when women in Europe reported having been sexually assaulted by groups of North African men during New Year's Eve celebrations. German police compared the attacks to the mass sexual assaults in Egypt.[50]
During the 2015–2016 celebrations of New Year's Eve in several German cities, a large number of sexual assaults occurred. Approximately 1,200 women were reported to have been sexually assaulted, especially in the city of Cologne. In many of the incidents, while these women were in public spaces, they were surrounded and assaulted by large groups of men who were identified by officials as men of North African and Arab origin.[1]
Most of the attacks took place in Cologne, Germany, where 359 women filed sexual-assault complaints[51] but women also filed complaints in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart; Salzburg, Austria; Helsinki, Finland; Kalmar and Malmö, Sweden; and Zurich, Switzerland.[52] The news coverage prompted allegations that similar attacks had taken place in Stockholm in 2014 and 2015 during We Are Sthlm, a music festival for teenagers, but were covered up.[53]
According to a German local government report, the German federal police compared the attacks to "taharrush gamea (collective sexual harassment in crowds)", a practice they said existed in African countries, as reported by the media during the Egyptian revolution.[50]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_sexual_assault_in_Egypt
On New Year's Eve, December 31, 2021, to January 1, 2022, a phenomenon attributable to taharrush gamea was documented in the center of Milan . In Piazza Duomo , at least five girls were surrounded and harassed by a large group of men [ 47 ] who spoke Arabic . [ 48 ]
A similar incident reportedly occurred again in Piazza Duomo on New Year's Eve 2025, when three Belgian women were allegedly groped and harassed. [ 49 ]
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taharrush_gamea