When Europe ignored the sex crimes of immigrants, all women suffered

Women in Cologne, Germany, protest immigrant sex attacks in 2016.

When I lived in the Netherlands from 1992 to 2006, I saw an influx of immigrants into society. In 2000, individuals with a “non-Western migration background” made up 8.9 percent of the Dutch population — about 1 out of every 12 people. Today, about 1 out of every 8 people in the Netherlands now has a non-Western migration background.

Meanwhile, women of a foreign/migrant background make up 52 percent of residents in Dutch women’s shelters.

As someone who gained refugee status in the Netherlands, I served as an interpreter for many of these women and had to translate distressing, harrowing experiences related to “honor” violence, forced marriages, and sexual assault. I came to realize that the main issue was not primarily economic poverty, which could be cured by financial means, but cultural clashes.

Gender relations in Western countries are very different from those in traditional societies and patriarchal cultures, where men and women are treated less equally. For instance, women in most Western countries can move about in public spaces with relative safety. In contrast, in a significant number of Muslim-majority states, women need to be accompanied by a male guardian or wear a type of covering in order to avoid serious sexual harassment from men.

In Europe, the multicultural approach has frequently meant turning a blind eye to human rights abuses such as female genital mutilation and child marriages. After all, why take a risk of causing offense? Why risk being viewed as racist? A flashmob gathers in front of a railway station to protest against the New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Cologne, Germany.Getty Images

This is what I call “the bigotry of low expectations.” All of a country’s residents can and should be held to the same standards, regardless of their culture of origin. Applying the same standards to all is the opposite of discrimination.

Where low expectations can lead is illustrated well by the UK’s “grooming gang” scandal, a phenomenon almost entirely ignored by the American media. The scandal has affected thousands of young girls, who were “groomed” by men from mainly Pakistani communities for sexual abuse, prompting a senior official to acknowledge that “cultural reasons” could be at play in the behavior of perpetrators. Fearful of being accused of racism, for years British authorities ignored credible reports of the problem, preferring to turn a blind eye until the scandal was belatedly exposed in the press. Or consider the sexual assaults on 1,200 women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2016. Women were viewed as fair game by perpetrators, many of whom were of non-German origin.

Those who cry “racist” at these concerns miss the mark. In refusing to impose their values on others, including real respect for women in the public sphere, Europe’s multiculturalists thought they were being compassionate. They did not realize how damaging an absence of universal values could be, not only to members of immigrant communities but also to...





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