In response to an information request by the national-conservative Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, data released by the Ministry of the Interior of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia revealed that 2,949 rapes were reported last year, which corresponds to eight rapes per day and represents an increase of more than 25% compared to the previous year.
The number of rapes involving more than one perpetrator—sometimes referred to as ‘gang rapes’—also rose dramatically across North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, in 2022, climbing from 172 in 2021 to 246 in 2022, a year-over-year increase of 43%, the news outlet RTL Deutschland reports.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, women living in cities were most at risk of becoming victims of serious sexual assault. Nearly one in three (30%) rapes were reported in the state’s five largest cities, with Cologne police recording 309 (nearly one per day); the Düsseldorf police 175; Dortmund 135; Recklinghausen 133; and Wuppertal 117.
Alarmed by the precipitous increase in sexual assaults, Michael Maatz, the deputy state chairman of the police union Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP), has called on the government to launch an inquiry as to the cause.
“We need to do research into the cause,” Maatz told RTL
AfD MP Markus Wagner, one of the state lawmakers who submitted the information request to the interior ministry, insists that the growing problem should not be accepted “with a shrug of the shoulders.”
Continuing, Wagner said:
These shocking figures have only now been released by the Ministry of the Interior through our inquiry. Without the AfD parliamentary group, you would probably never have found out. However, the information about the origin of the perpetrators was refused. But we don’t put up with that and keep asking.
What we have been demanding for years is now more urgent than ever: effective measures to protect our women and a clear naming of the perpetrator profiles, without politically correct bans on thinking!
NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul commented on the numbers to RTL:
A dramatic event that worries me very much. It’s not a question of streets and squares. It mostly takes place at home.
Crime statistics from the police report that about 60 percent of the attacks happen “in the private sphere” and that most perpetrators are partners, ex-partners or acquaintances.
The problem’s growth, unfortunately, is not unique to North Rhine-Westphalia. Nationwide, the number of recorded cases of rape, sexual coercion, and sexual assault of the most serious kind, including fatalities, rose sharply last year, climbing from 9,903 in 2021 to 11,896—an increase of more than 20%.
Instances of sexual assault have risen dramatically in France as well. According to figures from the country’s interior ministry, the number of victims reporting rape or attempted rape increased by a staggering 32% between 2020 and 2021, while sexual harassment cases increased by 33% in the same period. Between 2021 and 2022, reports of sexual violence, including rape, attempted rape, and other sexual assaults, jumped by another 11%, figures from the French interior ministry revealed.
