Police in Cologne received 22 complaints of sexual assault on the first day of the German city’s annual street carnival – double the number at the same time a year ago.
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Security has been beefed up in the city, after many women suffered sexual assaults and robberies there on New Year’s Eve.
“It was at that moment that one of the three men around me touched my breasts, ‘ she said”.
“Then a hand landed on my breast”, the RTBF reporter added. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!'”
“At first they were just making faces behind me”.
The three men did not seem to understand why she was angry, and walked off without a word.
Many women said they were groped and robbed in a mob of mostly North African and Arab men during the festivities to welcome in 2016.
‘When the news editor called me to see if I wanted to come home I was confused to begin with, ‘ she said.
As well as the string of sexual assaults, there were also 30 thefts reported as well as 143 reports of bodily harm, while 11 police officers were reported to be injured defending themselves.
Dorothee Goebel said “the way people file criminal complaints has changed since New Year’s Eve, and that’s good”.
“I have worked in Afghanistan and North Africa too, and nothing untoward ever happened to me as a white, female journalist”, she said Friday after the news of the attack.
It is thought that one of the people being held in custody is there in connection with the reported rape.
However, Labye told the London-based Daily Mail that she knew her attackers were German, stressing that she lived in an ethnically mixed district of Brussels where she had never experienced any problems with men from immigrant backgrounds. “I don’t think there should be any no-go areas for women journalists”. We should be able to work anywhere, without being humiliated’.
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Nearly 1.1 million migrants and refugees reached Germany in 2015, and nearly 91,000 asylum seekers arrived in Germany last month.
