If you have an agenda, you don’t always have to be explicit about it. It’s frequently easy enough just to point towards something concerning in a vague enough manner, then let the baying mob do your work for you. Sadly, the same may apply if you don’t have an agenda, but you’re too lazy / incompetent / understaffed (delete as appropriate) to do anything other than just point at the concerning thing. Somewhat ironically, the mob will not discriminate between either of those scenarios, so to bay or not to bay is rarely the question.
The latest (possibly) unintentional fan to the flames comes from reporting of 2025 Scottish crime statistics from STV News. The article’s headline is genuinely shocking: “Scotland sees 10% rise in sexual crimes in a year”. Two of the key points are a 12% increase in rape and attempted rape, and a 25% increase in domestic violence. The author of the article does very little to put any of the statistics into context, or to delve into potential reasons for the numbers. In fact, it looks very much as if the majority of it was copied and pasted from the Scottish Government page on recorded crimes for 2025, despite the lack of any links to this data in the article.
So, with what is essentially a page of numbers free of any real insight that even a half-hearted prompt on ChatGPT could have provided, STV News tipped it out of their chum bucket into the murky waters of social media to prompt the inevitable feeding frenzy of ignorance and bigotry. At the time of writing, the Facebook post has over 1200 comments, and 136 shares. In context, this is orders of magnitude more engagement than their Facebook posts normally get. The overwhelming theme of the ‘discourse’ is that it’s all because of immigrants. We get everything from the nudge-nudge wink-wink approach of “We all know why”, and “Wonder what other metric has increased these past few years… Surely no connection there lol”, all the way to the much more explicit “Get rid of the illegal immigrants then it will stop”, “Dirty third world illegals” and the ever-present “Stop the boats”.
Do they have a point though? Is immigration the cause? Or at least, a contributing factor? The simple fact is that we don’t know. In Scotland the published crime statistics don’t include any breakdown in terms of nationality, immigration status, or ethnicity of perpetrators.
When we break down the numbers a little though, we can see that the majority (around 70%) of reported rapes and attempted rapes are of women and girls over the age of 16, so the persistent anti-immigration rhetoric of protecting our women from the foreign invaders is clearly brought into play. Their implication is clear: if there is an influx of people from cultures which are perceived to respect women less than we do here in Scotland, then there will be an inevitable knock-on effect in terms of sexual crimes committed against women.
The motivated reasoning of those who subscribe to that simplistic conclusion will naturally jump on any concerning trend and point towards ‘the illegals’ as the cause. For those who actually care about the truth though, it’s worthwhile pointing our attention to other factors that we do know about.
Reporting numbers and policy changes
The sad but undeniable fact is that the majority of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported. The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2019-2020 showed that only 22% of victims/survivors of rape reported it to the police. This means that any statistics we do have represent the tip of a horrific iceberg. Any increases we see in reporting to the Police may simply be representative of how much of that iceberg is now appearing above the water. It’s unlikely that there’s any accurate way of quantifying that, but perhaps we can look to some procedural and societal changes that may be having an impact on the proportion of reports.
High profile cases such as that of Gisèle Pelicot, and the many survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have been cited as inspirational to victims, and may help tip the balance more in favour of believing women when they come forward with such claims (a persistent problem). The #MeToo movement has also been pivotal in showing just how widespread sexual assault is, and has encouraged many to come forward with their stories. The world can change for the better when we look honestly at the worst.
Furthermore, there have been a number of procedural reviews resulting in changes which are geared towards making reporting an incident less traumatic for the victims. A 2021 report prompted the establishment of a governance group with the express purpose of improving the management of sexual offence cases. Resulting legislation is the recently passed Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill.
During the intervening years Police Scotland launched the “That Guy” and “That Guy2” campaigns to address rape myths and challenge male sexual entitlement, implemented trauma-informed training for Sexual Offences Liaison Officers, and entered into collaboration with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Victim Support Scotland, and Rape Crisis Scotland. All of these changes undoubtedly have had some kind of impact on the reporting of such crimes, and should be taken into consideration when viewing larger trends.
Perpetrators
The terrifying narrative of the boat-stoppers is that ‘the illegals’ who are coming over here represent a new and increasing threat to women. Their desire to stem immigration is therefore a noble fight to protect our society generally, and our women specifically. What they entirely miss however is the stark reality about rape.
It only takes a short but traumatic read of the Rape Crisis statistics page to get a much more realistic picture of where the danger really lies, and it’s much closer to home: six in seven rapes against women are carried out by someone they know. Two in five are carried out by their partner or ex-partner. Two in five adult survivors of rape experience it in their own home.
With that in mind, worrying about ‘small boat people’ is really only rational if your partner is a member of the local rowing club.
The bigger picture
While we may never know whether real numbers are actually increasing, or if it’s just the knock-on effect of more victims coming forward, it’s worthwhile extending our considerations beyond glib finger-pointing at immigrants and thinking about other potential contributing factors.
If you’re not already depressed enough, then go take a look at any woman or girl with any kind of online presence. You won’t have to scroll too far down the comments before you find demeaning remarks about their appearance, and worse. It gets more extreme in their DMs as well (see Alison Bender’s story as an example).
The rise of the manosphere, with toxic influencers such as Andrew Tate industrialising the objectification and subjugation of women, surely has an effect. The internet has allowed for the fomenting of misogyny and provides unprecedented means for amplifying those voices to gather vast hordes of incels and their ilk. It’s certainly no surprise that over a quarter of sexual crimes in Scotland are cyber-crimes, and no great leap of logic to think those attitudes may spill over to the real world.
Finally, there’s a direct line that can be drawn from poverty to sexual violence against women, so in a post-Brexit cost of living crisis with ever-increasing wealth inequality it would not be surprising to see an increase in sexual crime statistics.
To be very clear: the numbers are horrific, and there absolutely should be outrage. That outrage however is meaningless if there is no genuine desire to objectively discover the causal factors behind the statistics, and to shape policies to address them. A failure from media outlets to responsibly report on issues like this will inevitably play into the hands of bigots and other bad actors.
There are plenty of things that can and should be done to help protect women. Believing victims in the first place is a good start, and painting roundabouts is unlikely to solve anything.
