The majority of suspects in gang rapes in Germany are foreign nationals, according to government statistics, meaning that they are significantly more likely than their native German counterparts to take part in the horrific crime.
Last year, there were 751 instances of gang rape reported throughout Germany, according to police crime statistics released following a parliamentary request from the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the Bundestag.
The paper of record, Die Welt, reported that 53 per cent or 574 suspects in such cases were foreign nationals, including 110 who hailed from Syria, 64 from Afghanistan, 46 from Iraq, and 44 from Turkey.
In comparison, 509 suspects were said to have German citizenship. This potentially means that the impact of immigration on the issue may be greater still, given that the police did not record circumstances in which suspects were migrants who became naturalised as German citizens.
On the other side of the coin, 80 per cent of gang rape victims were German citizens. According to the figures, there were 772 alleged victims of gang rape last year, including 693 women and 79 men.
The most cases were recorded in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s most populous state, with 161 cases. This was followed by 118 in Berlin, 113 in Lower Saxony, and 91 in Bavaria.
The figures did show a slight decline in the number of gang rapes over recent years, falling from 788 in 2024, 761 in 2023, and 789 in 2022. However, it remains significantly higher than in 2015 — prior to the European Migrant Crisis — when around 500 were recorded.
The figures also demonstrated a significant disparity in the per capita rate of migrants compared to German citizens, with foreign nationals making up around 17 per cent of the total population, while accounting for 53 per cent of gang rape suspects.
Meanwhile, the statistics also showed that in 72 per cent of gang rape cases, the suspect was already known to police.
AfD lawmaker Stephan Brandner remarked: “This demonstrates a blatant failure of the justice system, security authorities, and politicians. What’s needed here is consistent prosecution, faster trials, harsher sanctions, and – in the case of foreign perpetrators – the consistent termination of their residency. Only in this way can women be effectively protected from such crimes.”
“Although the issue has been on the political agenda for years, there is clearly a lack of effective political and legal measures to prevent these crimes,” he added.