How Sweden’s Demographic Winter Turned It Into Europe’s Rape Capital

Sweden has spent the past month debating a court ruling that has unsettled even a nation accustomed to difficult conversations about immigration. In October 2025, the Court of Appeal for Upper Norrland upheld the conviction of Yazied Mohamed, an eighteen-year-old Eritrean refugee who raped 16-year-old Meya Åberg in a pedestrian underpass. The details were clear, the evidence immediate, the conviction uncontested. What stunned the country — and was reported across Aftonbladet, Expressen, SVT, and internationally by GB News — was the court’s conclusion that Mohamed could not be deported. The rape, the judges wrote, “did not last long enough” to qualify as “exceptionally serious,” the threshold required to override his protected refugee status. (RELATED: Europe’s Urban Decline Exposed)
That phrase has become a kind of national mirror. For some Swedes, it reflects an immigration system applying humanitarian law long after the conditions that justified it have changed. For others, it symbolises a deeper institutional discomfort with defending the country’s own moral boundaries. But almost everyone agrees on one point: the ruling arrived at the worst possible moment. (RELATED: Asylum to Austerity: Germany Leads Europe’s Retreat From Open-Ended Migration)
Sweden reported more than 10,167 rapes in 2024, according to the Swedish Ministry of Justice. That is an extraordinary figure in a country of 10 million people. Earlier this year, The Telegraph published research showing that 63 percent of those convicted of rape in Sweden are foreign-born or the children of immigrants. The number does not implicate entire populations. But it does undermine the long-standing political claim that Sweden’s demographic transformation has no bearing on its public-safety landscape. (RELATED: The Outbreak of Migrant-Related Crime and Rape in the EU)
Several recent cases illustrate the connection. In Frölunda, a girl under 15 was picked up by four young men — two Swedish, two foreign nationals —...