Major study on immigrant rapes darkened in the media – the result extremely uncomfortable
Published 9 December 2025 at 12.43

Domestic. A new study from Lund University shows very severely increased rape propensity among immigrants – even after the researchers adjusted for socioeconomics, addiction, mental illness and previous crime. Despite its scope and explosive power in the result, the study is met with striking silence in the Swedish media.
What will the escape be now? Wonders the media critic and former SVT employee Joakim Lamotte.

The recent scientific article, published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, is based on national records and includes just over 4,000 convicted of rape or rape attempts against adult women between the years 2000 and 2020.

The researchers find that no less than 63 percent of the convicted rapists had immigrant backgrounds.

According to the study's most advanced statistical model, men who immigrated at the age of 15 or later just over six times are more likely to be convicted of rape compared to Swedish-born men without an immigrant background. People who have lived less than five years in Sweden show similar levels – they are close to seven times more likely to be judged.

The researchers note that the over-representation also consists after extensive adjustments for social, medical and crime history factors.

Journalist Joakim Lamotte, who previously worked at SVT, reacts strongly to the study's results now being darkened in the Swedish media.

"This should be a novelty that dominates the public debate, something that is discussed in morning sofas, leadership pages and party leadership debates," he wrote in an article on his website.

Lamotte states that the Swedish media prioritizes the subject. He notes that the editorial boards instead "seem to have round-the-clock coverage at Joakim Lundell and his dysfunctional relatives."

The SVT veteran highlights in particular that the study's results remain even after all established explanatory models have been tested.

"After the researchers adjusted for exactly everything that has been used for years as an excuse (socioeconomic factors, mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse and previous criminality), there still remains a sharp over-representation of people with immigrant backgrounds among the people convicted of rape," Lamotte wrote.

He believes that for years the debate stuck in "socioeconomic" reasoning and those who criticized these ideological notions that crime would be due to poverty have been harassed and frozen out.

"When I wrote about this more than a decade ago, criticism was never about the matter. Instead, I and many others were singled out as racists by people who did not dare to take on the subject."

“What will the evasion be now?” Asks Joakim Lamotte. For him, the study is about something bigger than numbers.

"For if the problem can no longer be explained away with socioeconomics, then something even more uncomfortable remains. Namely, that norms, values, women's vision and how irresponsible migration policies can have deadly consequences."

Lamotte concludes with a call to Swedish publicity:

"Even though I know it's not going to happen, it should now be fitting that the politicians and the media who have denied reality go out and apologize, once and for all."
You can find the full report here (https://journals.sagepub.com/d....oi/10.1177/088626052