Oslo Has Six Times the Number of Rapes as New York City?

According to this blog article, that is supposedly the case. I’m doubtful for one simple reason,

Two out of three charged with rape in Norway’s capital are immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study.

Okay, to highlight the problem lets put some actual numbers to this (note that the numbers are actually made up, but are being used to highlight the problem with the claim). Suppose that New York City has 100 rapes, and thus Oslo has 600 rapes. Further, lets assume it is true that 2/3rds of the rapes are by “non-western immigrants”. What does this mean? It means that 400 of the 600 rapes are by these “non-western immigrants” this means that the non-immigrant whites in Olso are raping twice as many women as the males in New York City. Now maybe this is true, but it strikes me as a rather dubious claim. In fact, I’d even go so far as to assert that the 6x claim is also dubious.

But what is even more disgusting is the following from the Norwegian academic, Unni Wikan,

Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, in 2001 said that “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor’s conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”

Translation, “if you got raped, you slut, you probably asked for it.” This kind of blame the victim mentality makes me wonder…maybe the white males in Oslo are raping twice as many women as males in New York City.

FILED UNDER: Blogosphere, Europe, Science & Technology, World Politics, , , ,
Steve Verdon
About Steve Verdon
Steve has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and attended graduate school at The George Washington University, leaving school shortly before staring work on his dissertation when his first child was born. He works in the energy industry and prior to that worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Division of Price Index and Number Research. He joined the staff at OTB in November 2004.

Comments

  1. Gollum says:

    Steve – I’ll say up front I’m not a numbers guy – – Maybe one possible explanation for the large variance in multiples is the relatively small population of Oslo – – only 500,000 in the city proper, or 1.5 million if you count all the suburbs. That’s 1/16 to 1/6 the size of NYC. I thought one of the articles said Oslo had 111 rapes last year. Seems to me that with numbers that low, even minor variations attributable to a very few people could significantly skew the percentages or the per capita occurrence rates.

    The Wikan quote is genuinely disgusting and disturbingly common.

  2. Ahrimahn says:

    maybe the white males in Oslo are raping twice as many women as males in New York City

    Please tell me that you are being sarcastic. You just have to look at the status of women in the non-white world to see the barbarism that non-whites are capable of perpetrating.

  3. MikeT says:

    Why is it hard for you to believe that there are a significant number of rapes committed by non-white immigrants? Rape is a very serious problem for women in their home countries, and things like this are not uncommon. You sound like a typical multiculturalist who wants to stick his fingers in his ears and chant “lalalalala no culture is more prone to debauchery and violence than another!” Christian women, for example, are routinely kidnapped and raped for days on end until they sign a conversion paper in countries like Egypt.

    If women already carry a low standing in their culture, infidel women are going to be seen as disposable trash.

  4. MikeT says:

    I hit the wrong button there. I mean to say that things like that are more visible, public versions of what women face there everyday.

  5. Steve Verdon says:

    Gollum,

    My reading of this is that the number of rapes, not the rate, is what is 6x larger in Oslo. That is if the number of rapes in NYC is N, then the number of rapes in Oslo is 6N. That is what is so shocking, since as you point out NYC is so much larger in terms of population.

    Please tell me that you are being sarcastic. You just have to look at the status of women in the non-white world to see the barbarism that non-whites are capable of perpetrating.

    Ahrimahn, let me clue you in to something, the natives of Norway, they are white. And Unni Wikan, she is white too. And if you take out the non-western immigrant committed rapes you are left with a number of rapes that is 2x that of NYC. Since it the non-westerns are not in that sub-population that leaves mostly whites.

    So while I’m being a bit sarcastic, it is based on the facts as presented in the various links.

    Why is it hard for you to believe that there are a significant number of rapes committed by non-white immigrants? Rape is a very serious problem for women in their home countries, and things like this are not uncommon.

    Okay, I’ll go slow here for those with special needs.

    1. The number of rapes, not the rate of rapes, the per capita rape, etc., but the actual absolute number of rapes in Oslo is 6x the number of rapes in New York City…a much bigger city in terms of population. Hence the skepticism meter should be dinging.

    2. The number of rapes committed by the locals and Western immigrants (i.e. taking out the rapes committed by non-western immigrants) is still 2x the number of rapes in NYC. Given the vast size differences between Oslo and New York City (1.5 million to 8 million if Gollum’s numbers are accurate) suggests that the rate of rapes by locals and Western Immigrants is something like 10 times that of New York City! At this point the skepticism meter should be broken.

    These two things indicate bogus numbers here. One possibility is that the journalists got rates and absolute numbers confused, but still a if rapes are occuring at a rate that is 6x that of NYC it is still very, very high and all of it cannot be pinned on non-Western immigrants.

    You sound like a typical multiculturalist who wants to stick his fingers in his ears and chant “lalalalala no culture is more prone to debauchery and violence than another!” Christian women, for example, are routinely kidnapped and raped for days on end until they sign a conversion paper in countries like Egypt.

    And you sound like a moron. My point is that the numbers just don’t make sense. While it might be the case that non-Western immigrant males are more likely to commit rape, the break down of the numbers indicates that in Oslo, white males are also fairly enthusiastic about rape too.

  6. MikeT says:

    In all of your blog post you never once suggested why these numbers don’t make sense or are dubious other than they seem out of whack with your sensibilities. I’m not saying that I buy into the numbers exactly, since women in America often lie about rape. However, I cannot say that I would be surprised if these numbers were close to accurate or actually were accurate, knowing how Muslim men often treat their women.

    I at least pointed out the fact that the more extreme Muslims are known to be wildly violent toward women. You provide… exactly… what? Your own view that it’s not possible that a society as screwed up as Norway might have its own native rape problems compounded by what the immigrants bring to the table?

  7. Steve Verdon says:

    Apparently I didn’t go slow enough.

    In all of your blog post you never once suggested why these numbers don’t make sense or are dubious other than they seem out of whack with your sensibilities.

    You don’t think that a city that his less than a fourth the size of NYC yet has 6x the number of rapes is suspicious? And on top of that if we remove the non-Western immigrants the Western immigrants and locals are committin 2x the number of rapes in NYC. That doesn’t strike you as a moment when you go…wait a minute, that sounds awfully high once we consider that the population of Oslo is so much less than NYC? It isn’t simply my sensibilities, it is just a very large number that should send up a warning flag with anybody.

    However, I cannot say that I would be surprised if these numbers were close to accurate or actually were accurate, knowing how Muslim men often treat their women.

    But you keep skipping the part that once we remove rapes committed by Muslim men, we are still left with an extrordinary number of rapes. The non-Muslim men are comitting 2x the number of rapes in NYC. That is another red flag.

    I at least pointed out the fact that the more extreme Muslims are known to be wildly violent toward women.

    Hello, nitwit. The rapes by non-Western immigrants (Muslim men) don’t explain the difference between NYC and Oslo. That is part of the problem that you are ignoring. If it number of rapes by Western immigrants and locals is suspicious, then it casts doubt on the number of rapes by non-Western immigrants. This doesn’t mean that non-Western immigrants don’t have serious problems with regards to how they treat women of their own faith and those of other faiths, but This doesn’t mean the above numbers are true.

    The point is we shouldn’t believe (or more accurately put less weight on the veracity of these numbers) the above numbers since when we start looking at them they seem quite out of step with what we could reasonable expect.

  8. Gollum says:

    Steve –

    Respectfully, I think you read it wrong. Here’s what I read:

    Norway’s Minister of Justice from 2001 to 2005, Odd Einar Dorum, mentioned the problem in 2001 but has later gone quiet about the issue. The reported number of rapes in Oslo is now six — 6! — times as high per capita as in New York City, yet the media keeps warning against Islamophobia.

    Ironically, this simply validates your skepticism, so it all works out in the end.

  9. Steve Verdon says:

    Gollum,

    Still that means that non-western immigrants and locals are quite enthusiastic about raping women in Oslo. So I still have my doubts about the validity of the statistics. This doesn’t mean that non-western immigrants are the source for most of the rapes in Oslo, but I think one should take a skeptical attitude towards this data. For example, one possibility is that non-western immigrants are treated somewhat like blacks in the Jim Crow south, where simply smiling at the wrong white woman could lead to trumped up charges of rape.