Month: October 2021

The crime shocked the whole of Austria last summer. A 16-year-old Afghan had sexually abused a 7-year-old girl in Schärding and then beaten up her father. Now he was on trial in Ried in the district of Innkreis. The sentence caused outrage.

The sentence for the 16-year-old Afghan refugee is 30 months for severe sexual abuse of minors. However, anyone who believes that the perpetrator will serve the two and a half years is mistaken. Two thirds of the sentence were conditionally waived for the child abuser. So he will only have to serve 10 months. In addition, the Afghan was ordered to undergo therapy and was assigned a probation officer. He also has to change his place of residence, as he has to stay at least 10 kilometres away from his 7-year-old victim. 500 euros in compensation for pain and suffering were also awarded to the little girl. Further claims could be brought in civil court.

Since the court of lay assessors met in camera, the reasons for the lenient sentence for the sex offender cannot be understood. According to § 206 StGB “Serious sexual abuse of minors”, a significantly higher sentence would have been possible, even against the background that the sentence is reduced by half due to the juvenile age of the offender according to the Juvenile Court Act. But it has become symptomatic of the justice system to be particularly lenient with criminal foreigners.

While Federal President Alexander van der Bellen or the political party of the Greens call for the “humanitarian” admission of more Afghans to Austria, cases like this one show the turmoil of uncontrolled migration. The fact that a 7-year-old girl is lured into the cellar and sexually abused by a “neighbouring boy” – as some newspapers euphemistically wrote last year in order to disguise the migration background – or that, as in Vienna, a 13-year-old girl is raped to death by four Afghans, apparently does not lead to a rethink. The problems of migration policy are also reflected in the numbers of inmates in Austrian prisons. Of a total of 8,486 inmates, almost exactly half are foreign nationals – and this despite the fact that foreigners make up only 17 percent of the population living in Austria.

https://www.wochenblick.at/skandal-urteil-fuer-afghanen-nach-missbrauch-einer-7-jaehrigen-in-ooe/

However, an acquittal seemed certain for him. The courts decided somewhat differently. Domenico Lucano, former mayor of Riace, a village in Calabria in southern Italy, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for “criminal association, abuse of power, extortion and embezzlement”. He must also repay the sum of 500,000 euros paid by the European Union and the Italian government. As reported by franceinfo on Thursday September 30, Domenico Lucano was accused of organising marriages of convenience. His aim: to allow foreign women who are to be deported to stay in Italy. He was also accused of passing on funds intended for the village’s waste management to associations for migrants, reports franceinfo. The conviction was a major setback for the former mayor of Riace. This was despite the fact that the court had originally demanded eight years in prison. Domenico Lucano said he was ” devastated”: “Today I am dead inside. I am speechless. I did not expect this verdict.

The secretary of the Democratic Party (PD), Enrico Letta, lamented shortly after the verdict that the conviction was “terrible” as it might “reinforce the mistrust against justice in our country”. In contrast, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini judged on his Twitter account that “Calabria does not deserve to have crooks and friends of illegal immigrants”. Domenico Lucano had been arrested in autumn 2018, reporters can remember. He was subsequently placed under surveillance in his accommodation.

https://www.valeursactuelles.com/monde/italie-un-maire-pro-migrants-condamne-a-13-ans-de-prison-pour-avoir-organise-des-mariages-blancs/

Coming on the heels of a Swedish study, a government report from Finland revealed that especially immigrants were prone to commit sexual offences.

Commissioned by the Sanna Marin administration, the recent 148-page study done by the Finnish Youth Research Network and the University of Helsinki’s Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy (Krimo) examined the risks related to the background of sex offenders and underlying reasons for sexual offences.

The researchers tried to minimize the ethnicity and culture of foreigners, stating that no single factor could account for the prevalence of sexual crime since perpetrators were often “bad at solving problems, impulsive, had issues with regulating emotions, and poor self-esteem”.

In 2020, almost 38 percent of rape suspects in Finland were foreign-born, while they only represent 7 percent of the Finnish population in a country of 5,5 million inhabitants.

But the fact remains that non-Western immigrants are overrepresented in child sexual abuse cases and the number of these suspects has risen even more dramatically in recent years, reaching 24 percent in 2019.

From 2011 to 2020, 27 percent of all rape suspects were foreign-born and those suspected of child sexual abuse was 15 percent. Young male immigrants were more prone to the sexual exploitation of children, while such minors represented a significant group of perpetrators.

The study also emphasised that social disadvantage alone could not explain the overrepresentation of immigrants, but cited “mental illness”, the use of intoxicants, antisocial behaviour, and a criminal past as contributing risk factors.

“To be able to prevent sexual crimes effectively, we need to understand the risk factors and behavioural patterns associated with those who commit the crimes”, researcher Teemu Vauhkonen of the Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy concluded in a statement.

In 2019, measures to address criminal offenses by immigrants when granting residence permits were allegedly strengthened. The government announced legislative amendments by which the status of international protection could be terminated for persons who have committed an aggravated offense in Finland.

Schools programmes were moreover aimed at helping children to recognize grooming behavior and safe social media use. Measures to prevent sexual offenses also included providing more resources to internet police, more severe punishments for sexual offenses and increased cooperation among the public authorities and preventive police work, but these seem to have had little success.

Online grooming was still a huge problem in Finland, a survey by the Save the Children charity found in April this year. Perpetrators frequently offer money, cigarettes, and alcohol in return for explicit images or physical meetings. Involving children under the age of 16 in sex is illegal in Finland.

In a study which featured 499 schools nationwide, almost 9 in 10 Finnish 11 to 17-year-olds have been subjected to grooming at least once.  Some 80 percent of children have received explicit images from an adult, while 75 percent have been asked to send them, national broadcaster Yle reported.

And one in ten Finnish children experience sexually explicit messaging on a weekly basis, the survey found. One third of the underage respondents said they had been offered rewards in return for sexual acts or messages. Nine percent of children who experienced grooming said they had agreed to video calls, whereas six percent said they had met in person.

At least 40 percent of the children said they had agreed out of curiosity, but one third admitted that they did not quite understand the reality of the situation.

In May this year, the objective of the Report on Internal Security submitted to parliament, stated that Finland wanted to become a safer country for all people and population groups in the future.

Minister of the Interior Maria Ohisalo listed marginalization, social unease and multiple deprivation (mental health problems, social exclusion, etc.) as the biggest threats to internal security in Finland. “We need to prevent multi-generational deprivation and, in particular, strengthen the sense of security of the underprivileged,” Ohisalo said.

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/10/01/finland-immigrants-overrepresented-in-sex-crimes/