Fact-Check Central

Does Sweden have an immigrant rape crisis?

Status: False

Banning immigrants from Muslim-majority countries is one of the cornerstones of Donald Trump's response to terrorism, and one heartily supported by his core supporters. On Feb. 18, 2017 he spoke at a rally of those supporters in Melbourne, FL and defended this policy defended that plan with the claim that,

"We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening. We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers [of refugees]. They’re having problems like they never thought possible..."

The comment raised many eyebrows because nothing happened in Sweden on Feb. 17, or any date leading up to it. Trump isn't exactly known for being well-spoken or informed, so the White House was forced to respond with the usual damage control that always seems to be required when he speaks in public. Eventually it was discovered that yet again he had misspoken and was referring to claims he'd misheard during a Fox News segment that had aired the previous evening, not an actual incident. Backtracking only made matters worse of course, so after a day or two he went back to what he knows best--the red meat Twitter offensive,

"Give the public a break - The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!"

The incident put Sweden back under the same 2016 election year spotlight that made it the Far-Right's poster child for why everything that's wrong with the world is the fault of dark-skinned people from non-Christian nations, and how a new age of peace and prosperity will dawn if we would only ship them all off to internment camps on the most remote wind-blown rock in the Aleutians. Fake news and propaganda sites have published one story after another about Sweden's "rape crisis" (Perlmutter, 2017; Craig, 2017; Thorn, 2016; etc.). A widely circulated Facebook meme alleged that a 14-year-old Swedish girl had been kidnapped, tortured, and gang-raped by three refugees. Swedish police were said to be handing out "don't touch me" bracelets to women to prevent "migrant sex attacks" (Hale, 2016; Gehl, 2017).

None of this checks out of course. The 14-year-old girl turned out to be German rather than Swedish, and later copped to having made the allegations up (LaCapria, 2016b). Furthermore, the image in the circulated meme wasn't even her--it had been posted to Flickr by a girl hoping to win a "Little Picture of the Year" contest. The bracelet campaign was part of a larger sexual harrassment awareness program that had nothing to do with any alleged refugee rape crisis (LaCapria, 2016c). Interestingly, many of these stories (including three of those cited above) feature the collage shown below of praying Muslims and what are purported to be Swedish women who were beaten and raped by immigrants.

Reverse image searches reveal that the blonde woman figuring most prominently in it was taken from a stock photo published by an online royalty-free image collective.