Refugees get classes on sexual consent

BERLIN - The students watch a video of a man and woman meeting in a nightclub. The two drink, laugh, dance and kiss.

The tone in the room and on the screen quickly changes when the man takes the woman home, locks the door and, when she attempts to leave, rapes her.

When the grim video ends, seven men in their thirties, refugees who have come to Berlin from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, are invited to react and comment.

"She has had too much to drink. They are sleeping together," says one, convinced the man in the video took advantage of the young woman's drunkenness to abuse her.

"He knew very well what he wanted," says another.

At this point, the workshop's moderator, Carola Pietrusky-Niane, jumps in to explain that "it happens frequently in Berlin. Young people drink a lot, take drugs", and in certain cases, this type of aggressive crime can happen.

The participants in the four-hour course titled Together for Security, currently only held in Berlin, have joined the class voluntarily.

Germany's Integration Commissioner Annette Widmann-Mauz has called for such sex education classes to be more widely offered to refugees, following a gang rape case last year in Freiburg, in which 10 of 11 suspects were refugees.

Several high-profile rape crimes committed by migrants have stoked a backlash against the mass influx of a million asylum seekers to Germany since 2015.

Mass assaults by recent migrants in Cologne on New Year's Eve of 2015-16, and a rape-murder in 2016 by an Afghan refugee, have been seized on by far-right activists in their push against Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to let in the newcomers.

In Germany, there was a 15-percent rise in sex crimes committed by foreigners in 2018: 6,046 offenses compared to 5,258 in 2017, according to federal statistics.

The increase is largely due to stricter legislation since 2016, which made it easier to prosecute perpetrators of sex-related crimes.

But the cases also underline the challenge of integrating large numbers of migrants, a big proportion of whom are young, single men from countries which view Western norms as surprisingly liberal.

"These are difficult themes. Speak freely," Pietrusky-Niane tells the group, as they discuss the video in a mix of German and Arabic.

The session, attended by the seven single men, some of whom are fathers, was organized by the Norwegian group Hero, which manages several hostels for migrants in Germany.

The topics in the workshop are broad with questions like: How do you know whether a woman is willing? And, how do you react if she isn't?

Advice is given to refugees from countries where displays of affection are banned in public, boys and girls often attend separate schools and rape within marriage is not considered a crime.

Agence France - Presse