Outspoken Katie Hopkins, English television personality and newspaper columnist, went to Sweden to see what she could see.
Reading through this, I couldn’t help think that Hopkins was attending one enormous funeral — for a country, for a culture, for freedom.
Swedish women reaching out by email, by letter, to quietly show me what has become of their country.
Dads writing that they were worried for their daughters, tweeting that Sweden is not the place people imagine it to be, that young girls are scared to go out at night.
A news feed filled with reports of the rape and assault of Sweden’s young women, some inexplicably streamed live on Facebook by the gang as they attacked.
Other reports filed quietly away in a box marked unmentionable: the rape of a 14-year-old child by an ‘unaccompanied minor’ immigrant who later bragged he was 45.
When Trump turned the world’s attention to Sweden by clumsily referring to the effects of mass-migration on what used to be seen as the most liberal country on earth, the country was ready and waiting to blow.
Katie Hopkins speaking to people at the scene outside Kista Police Station in Stockholm
He provided the touch-paper to the explosive mixture of thousands of bored young migrants who were born into fighting and have brought the battle with them.
Fuelled by the oxygen of publicity, they performed here last week in Rinkeby, nicknamed ‘Little Mogadishu’: looting, rioting, burning out cars.
While liberals countered with accusations of fake news, the right highlighted the chaos caused in this town where 90% of Rinkeby residents are foreign, mostly recently arrived.
Rape statistics were shared and widely interpreted: either Stockholm was ‘the rape capital of Europe’, or the increase in sexual assaults was a mere statistical anomaly and look, if you turn the graph on its side you will see the numbers are actually falling.
But in a world of polarised news, there still have to be some truths waiting to be told. Even if they are only observations from a single white female with no security and suffering protestor fatigue.
And I’ve found it all here in plain sight for anyone to see or hear – if they’re listening. If they can stop taking pictures of burned out cars or reinterpreting rape statistics to suit their agenda.
One young girl of 27 — let’s call her Lucy— is now terrified of going out alone. She lives near a busy shopping centre which draws migrants from no-go zones, and dreads her walk to work and home.
Katie speaks to ‘Lucy’, a young girl of 27 who leaves near a bridge under which men gather all day and night
Under the bridge near her flat a gang of men gathers. All day and night. They have easy access to her up a stairwell. Like little billy goat gruff, she runs across, carrying her safety spray. Scared.
She knows the latest rape cases by heart, quotes them to me, the words tumbling out, a long line of horrible happenings. She is waiting for her turn to be added to the list.
She can’t tell her mum. She doesn’t want her to worry.
Sweden’s official statistics show increases in “lethal violence” (which includes murder, manslaughter and other deadly assaults) and sexual offenses. Between 2012 to 2015 there is a sharp 65 percent spike. In the same period, there was also an almost 49 percent increase in sexual offenses (a category including, among other offenses, rape).
Looking at rape by itself, from 2006-2015 there was a 40 percent increase in the number of reported rapes all thanks to Muslim migration.
According to United Nations data, in 2010 Sweden had the second highest rate of rape in the world.