Sexual assault, especially suspected cases, is heatedly used by anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and public services like the police to demonstrate how some foreigners are. The police admitted today to a mistake in tabulating suspected sexual assault cases during 2020.
The mistake originates from a foreigner suspected of sexually assaulting his wife 141 times. Since the person was reported as 141 individual suspects, the amount for 2020 is therefore too high.
The police and Statistics Finland have confirmed the mistake.
The correct percentage of all suspected sexual assaults last year was 27.2%, not 38.5%.
Another interesting finding of the sexual assault statistics is that Northern Europeans, not Western Asians (Middle Easterners, Persians, and other nationalities), committed most suspected sexual assaults.
Why didn’t the media make a bigger deal about this fact?
Northern Europeans had the most sexual assault cases (58.9%), as many as 80% of alleged sexual assault against children.
Another important legal point that media coverage forgot to mention is that a person is innocent before proven guilty by a court of law. The number of convicted cases for sexual assault is only a fraction of the suspected ones. In 2019, 12.9% of all suspected cases were handed convictions.
Why do the police and anti-immigration parties drool over sexual assault statistics? For parties like the PS, such statistics prove that migrants are animals, and their racist views are justified. The police, who is the most conservative institution in Finland, and racism is a shameful reality.
If one goes back to before the PS won their historic parliamentary election in 2011, an essential part of their fuel was sexual assault statistics and portraying foreigners, especially Muslims, as animals.
One matter never mentioned in these sexual assault cases is the role that racism and ethnic profiling play in charging the person.
