Siren, I really dislike the implications that some posters are trying to draw from this, but reaching back to the social trauma of people at the epicenter of one the most destructive events in history for a comparison does not suggest to me that this is just something to be expected as a matter of the normal, everyday criminality that every society experiences.
That's a fair point. I'm not really trying to say this kind of thing is normal, but I think there are some important lessons from it. The stories from the German victims show the intense humiliation that people feel when they've been raped and how it makes many of them really unlikely to want to tell anyone. They felt ashamed at what their country had done but also were afraid that nobody would believe them because they were untrustworthy or worse, being afraid that people would say they deserved it because they were Germans. So when victims are afraid no one will believe them, they are less likely to report.
It also shows that people are capable of truly barbaric things when they've gone through incredible hardship (yes, even white people!) Refugees are coming from a very bad situation, so if they arrive in a new environment that's kind of unknown, and they remain poor or don't have a job, it's going to create some problems. Just like when people try to point to inner city black crime rates, and try to say oh it's the black culture when it's actually the living conditions.
It's understandable that people see crime statistics from refugees and immediately want to ban them all, but that means closing the door to people literally running from genocide. I've been to refugee shelters here in New York and seen the smiling children, running around and playing just like normal kids, pointing to maps and showing you happily where they grew up until they smile and say "bye!" when it's time for them to go to their English class. It might take some extra work to help them get going in society, but I'm prepared to do it. They don't deserve to die. I don't really know how European refugee shelters and policies are handling the situation, but my guess is that their solution is too bureaucratic and doesn't have enough understanding of the human condition. They might need some extra help coming from the circumstances they do, but that doesn't mean they're bad people. Anyone would be messed up coming from a situation like that.
And that's not even counting all of the examples of refugees who have done great things like Nadia Nadim, an Afghan refugee that fled the Taliban when they murdered her father. Now she plays on the Danish national soccer team and founded several clinics in Denmark to help hungry children, while studying at university to be a doctor. If Denmark didn't take her in, she would probably just be a body in the ground somewhere. It just goes to show what good people can do for society when given the chance.
