Swedish police say that sex crime reports in November have risen by 33 per cent compared to last year with some claiming that the increase is due to the #MeToo movement.
The total number of sex crime reports in November totalled 868, according to the crime statistics from the Swedish Crime Prevention Council (Brå). Investigator Lisa Wallin noted that there had been a distinct rise in the number of complaints following the #MeToo campaign which encouraged women to speak out against sexual abuse, Swedish public broadcaster SVT reports.
While many of the #MeToo cases have involved workplace sexual harassment or abuse, the agency did not reveal the exact nature of the complaints they had received. They did, however, note that the number of rape reports had also increased since last November by 16 per cent with 631 individuals reporting they had been victims of rape.
The total number of reported sex attacks so far this year has also increased since 2016, up by eight per cent.
“We know that sex crimes are reported to police, about one in 10 victims make a police report. But after the MeToo debate, more people may have chosen to handle such events in a different way and bring this to light,” investigator Wallin said.
Sex attacks in Sweden are currently at their highest levels since 2006 when the annual reports began to be published. In November, Brå reported that 15.6 per cent of those they had surveyed reported having been the victim of a sexual attack or harassment within the past year.
Despite Extra Security, Sex Attacks Double at Swedish Festival https://t.co/NzZVCQmOMe pic.twitter.com/XMapwFPqOz
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 23, 2016
While some have claimed that most of the sex attacks and serious crimes in Sweden are committed by migrants, the Swedish authorities have refused to publish the ethnic or religious backgrounds of criminals since 2005.
The Swedish Moderate Party have requested that the government publish new statistics revealing the ethnic background of criminals but the government has so far refused. Private individuals have attempted to publish the figures, but the government recently decided to exclude access to websites that release such data, like the legal search engine Lexbase, from the public.
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