The DIXI Resource Centre Against Rape says that the debate on ‘rape culture’ has stirred up strong emotions among rape survivors.
But what is not mentioned is the ethnicity of the perpetrators. It is never an issue in the discussion. This was pointed out by Lise Sørensen of Document during the NRK Debate on 8 October, but it did not attract enough attention for Dagsavisen to take it up.
Instead, they choose to focus on Subjekt columnist Pål-Henrik Hagen, who questioned the NKVTS figure stating that one in five women has been raped. Dagsavisen refers to men as a group and ‘the silent majority’. There is no mention of who has actually been convicted or charged.
“The debate has stirred up a lot of emotions – anger, frustration and a sense of powerlessness,” says Rannveig Kvifte Andresen, managing director of DIXI, to Dagsavisen.
The figures available in Norway do not specify ethnicity. According to Kripos, 82 per cent of the 1,695 reported perpetrators in 2019 were Norwegian citizens, and 71 per cent were born in Norway. 22 per cent were born outside Europe.
Kripos provides no information on how many of the Norwegian citizens were born abroad, nor does the report give figures for those born in Norway to immigrant parents. Kripos refers to Statistics Norway (SSB), which has found a slight over-representation of immigrants when adjusted for age and gender. Immigrants currently make up 17.5 per cent of the population, according to SSB.
There is every reason to question the figures provided by SSB, as they conceal the origin of individual offenders on the basis of Norway’s racism clause.
In Sweden, a study by Lund University showed that 47.7 per cent of those convicted of rape between 2000 and 2015 were born outside the country, according to SVT.
The researchers were unable to determine the cause of this over-representation.
