During the 2015–2016 celebrations of New Year's Eve in several German cities, a large number of sexual assaults occurred. Approximately 1,200 women were reported to have been sexually assaulted, especially in the city of Cologne. In many of the incidents, while these women were in public spaces, they were surrounded and sexually assaulted by large groups of Muslim men of North African and Arab origin. The Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed in July 2016 that 1,200 women had been sexually assaulted on that night.
By 4 January 2016, German media reports stated that, in Cologne, the perpetrators had mostly been described by the victims and witnesses as being "North African", "Arab", "dark-skinned", and "foreign". On 5 January 2016, the German government and the Cologne police speculated that the attacks might have been organized. However, by 21 January, the government of North Rhine-Westphalia declared that there were no indications of premeditated organized attacks, and on 11 February, the new Cologne police chief stated the same. Instead, the Cologne police chief suggested that the perpetrators had come from countries where such sexual assaults by groups of men against women are common. That suggestion was confirmed in a Federal Criminal Police Office report in June 2016, which also identified five more factors contributing to the occurrence of the attacks: group pressure, absence of police intervention, frustrations of migrants, disinhibition caused by alcohol and/or drug use, and disinhibition due to lack of social ties with German society.
By April 2016, statistics recorded by authorities indicated that out of the identified 153 suspects in Cologne who were convicted of sexual offenses and other crimes on New Year's Eve, two-thirds were originally from Morocco or Algeria, 44% were asylum-seekers, another 12% were likely to have been in Germany illegally, and 3% were underaged unaccompanied refugees. By July 2016, the police stated that half of the 120 identified suspects of sexual offenses on New Year's Eve had arrived in Germany during the year 2015, and most of those 120 had come from North Africa, with four suspects having been convicted nationwide. By November 2016, around 200 suspects of the sexual assaults had been identified across Germany.
Sexual assaults were also reported to have occurred in cities in Finland, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland.
Assaults
Cologne
There are conflicting accounts about when reports of sexual assaults during New Year's Night 2015–16 first reached the Cologne police. One high-ranking Cologne police officer reported that in the evening around 22:00 on 31 December 2015, passers-by in the plaza between the Cologne Central Train Station and the Cologne Cathedral informed police officers on the spot about fights, robberies, and sexual assaults on women taking place in and around the train station; The New York Times wrote however that only after midnight did the police hear of the assaults, and the German newspaper Die Welt suggested the same. During the night, three emergency calls concerning harassment or robbery near the railway station and the cathedral had reached Cologne police headquarters.
In a press release on 1 January at 08:57 or 11:45, the Cologne police announced that the night had been "mostly peaceful" ("weitgehend friedlich") – also rendered as: "relaxed" ("entspannt"). At 13:21, the large local newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported: Sexual harassment in the New Year's Eve (...) In the Cologne Central Train Station, several women have been harassed by unknown men". Also the Cologne tabloid Express that day at 21:08 reported the incidents: "New Year's Eve, Central Train Station: Young women sexually harassed". During the rest of 1 January, several more notifications of sexual assaults or robberies reached the Cologne police.
On Saturday, 2 January, at 16:58, the Cologne police reported the harassment incidents in a new press release: nearly 30 criminal notifications of attacks and robberies on women, in some cases indecent touching of women by groups of men with a "north African appearance", according to witnesses. That news was quickly, but selectively, picked up by the prominent newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which reported the sexual attacks but not the ethnic profile of the suspects. Also the national commercial TV channel RTL that day reported the sexual assaults in Cologne in the New Year's Eve.
At a press conference on Monday, 4 January 2016 at 14:00, Cologne's police chief Wolfgang Albers stated that "a very large number of sexual assaults" had been committed on Cologne's New Year's Night by groups of young men "with an appearance largely from the north African or Arab world", with all witnesses having uttered this same racial description.
The Cologne police force had received 60 crime reports at that time, 15 or 20 of which were of sexual assaults, in one case rape in legal terms. With that press conference, publicity about the Cologne sexual attacks started to spread in news media around the world. The German public service TV broadcaster ZDF, though, did not report on the Cologne developments at all in its news bulletin Heute Journal on 4 January 19:00, for the reasons that they could not yet find an eyewitness willing to talk on camera, nor confirmation of the ethnicity of the suspects. The news bulletin Tagesschau at 20:00, from the German public-service TV broadcaster ARD, however, did report on the Cologne events, including the police statement that the offenders, judging by their looks, had come from the Arab or North African regions.
On 5 January 2016, 90 reports of criminal incidents had been received by the Cologne police concerning New Year's Eve,
22 or 23 of which were sexual assaults. Challenged that day by a journalist about his police force's announcement on 1 January that the situation on New Year's Eve had been "relaxed" ("entspannt"), Cologne police chief Albers now said that statement "was wrong". By 6 January 106 reports had been filed about various crimes, three-quarters of them suggesting a sexual component; on 6 or 7 January they appeared to include two alleged rapes.
By 8 January, 170 women had reported various crimes during New Year's Eve in Cologne, including two rapes. By 11 January, the total number of complaints totaled 553, with sexual offences comprising nearly half of the cases. By 15 January, the total number of complaints was 676; 347 of these included sexual offences. On 21 January, the total number of complaints was 821; 359 of them included sexual offences, three of them rape; while some complaints included more than one victim; 1,049 people were affected in total.
By 30 January 2016, the number of complaints and reports of sexual offences concerning last New Year's Eve in Cologne totaled 433. By 15 February, the number of complaints over sexual offences had risen to 467. As of 18 March, the Cologne Public Prosecutor reported 1,139 crime complaints filed concerning New Year's Eve, 485 of them about sexual offences. By 6 April, the total number of reported crimes on Cologne's New Year's Night was 1,529; a total of 1,218 victims were involved, 529 of them victims of sexual offences. In July 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) estimated that around 650 women had been sexually assaulted in Cologne in the New Year's Eve. By 25 November 2016, 509 sexual offences had been reported concerning Cologne's last New Year's Eve, among them 22 rapes.
Stuttgart
The local newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten on its website on 3 January 2016 reported that in the city centre of Stuttgart in the Silvesternacht (New Year's Eve) two 18-year-old women had been sexually assaulted by a group of around fifteen men about 30–40 years of age, who had the appearance of black-haired "southern people" with "Arab" looks.
On 5 January, the same website reported that a handful of further purported victims had made reports themselves, not specifying how many of them had purportedly been sexually assaulted. These Stuttgart incidents were briefly mentioned in international news media as of 5 January in the slipstream of their reporting on the Cologne sexual assaults. By 17 January 2016, the number of complaints of sexual offences in Stuttgart totaled 17.
Hamburg
During New Year's Eve 2015–16, only one telephone call concerning sexual harassment, at 03:00, reached the Hamburg police. On New Year's Day, 14 people have reported to the Hamburg police to have been sexually assaulted on New Year's Eve, but those earliest reports were then lost in the police records, to be rediscovered around 20 January.
On 5 January 2016, the Hamburg police were aware of 13 women reported to have been sexually assaulted on New Year's Eve, and that day – possibly incited by the news from Cologne the previous day, as a political scientist suggested – a spokesman of the Hamburg police announced that in Hamburg's pleasure quarter of St. Pauli, women between 18 and 24 years old had been sexually harassed and robbed, "in some cases simultaneously by several men in groups of different sizes with southern or Arab looks", possibly in groups of "between 20 and 40 persons". That same day, these Hamburg incidents were briefly mentioned in international news media, in their reporting on the Cologne sexual assaults. On 6 January, the number of complaints of sexual harassment in Hamburg had increased to 39, not counting the 14 cases reported on 1 January that would not be reviewed until around 20 January.
The number of complaints about either sexual harassment or robbery on New Year's Eve in Hamburg rose further: 53 complaints on 5 January, 70 complaints on 8 January, 108 complaints on 10 January, 153 complaints on 11 January, 195 complaints on 14 January.
On 14 January, the weekly paper Die Zeit reported over 150 complaints in Hamburg strictly concerning sexual attacks. On 15 January, 205 complaints had been registered in Hamburg, most of them about sexual harassment, involving 306 victims. On 21 January, there were 218 complaints regarding 351 victims, and on 4 February, there were 236 complaints, including two for rape, involving 400 women reportedly being sexually harassed. The Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police) in July 2016 confirmed that in Hamburg over 400 women reported being victims of sexual violence on New Year's Eve.
Frankfurt
In the afternoon of 5 January 2016, several women reported to the police in Frankfurt am Main that they had been sexually assaulted on New Year's Eve, in one case by a group of ten "North African" men speaking poor English with Arabic accents.
This was reported in German news media on 6 January, and briefly reported in international news media as of 7 January 2016 in their reporting on the Cologne sexual assaults.
By 8 January, the Frankfurt police had counted fifteen reported sexual attacks by groups of "Arab" or "North African" men. By 11 January 2016, the police had counted 22 reported sexual attacks by such groups on New Year's Eve. In September 2016, in response to a question from a newspaper, the Staatsanwaltschaft (state attorney) declared that 60 reports of sexual harassment of women on New Year's Eve in Frankfurt, mostly perpetrated by groups, had been brought before them.
Dortmund
On 5 January 2016, two complaints of sexual assault on New Year's Eve in Dortmund, by groups of men addressing the women in broken German or English, have been reported to the police.
That news was reported on 6 January in the local newspaper Ruhr Nachrichten.
By 14 January 2016, according to a report of the Minister of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia, five suspicions of sexual assaults in Dortmund in the New Year's Eve had been registered. By 18 January, four sexual offences in Dortmund in the New Year's Eve, involving seven victims, were being investigated.
Bielefeld
On 6 January 2016, the local Bielefelder newspaper Neue Westfälische and national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that on New Year's Eve, in the amusement area around the Boulevard of Bielefeld, at least five young women had been sexually assaulted, mostly by groups of non-German-speaking men, whom the local police described as "immigrants" and as "Algerian and Moroccan Antanzdiebe ['charmer-thieves', 'waltzers']".
The Bielefeld police stated on 6 January that two complaints had been filed by women about physical harassment on New Year's Eve.
On 9 January 2016, Die Welt wrote that "several complaints" had been filed concerning sexual assaults in New Year's Eve in Bielefeld.
On 16 January, the police stated that six women had filed complaints of sexual harassment; most of those reports only came after calls in the local news media. By 18 January, the Bielefeld police were investigating five sexual offences on New Year's Eve. In November 2016, a news source reported twenty offences in Bielefeld concerning last New Year's Eve, not specifying how many of them were sexual offences.
Düsseldorf
After the breaking of the news of the mass sexual assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne, on 4 January 2016, similar reports started to reach the police in Düsseldorf. Between 4 and 6 January, around 20 reports of women having been sexually harassed were recorded; by 8 January, the number had increased to 41.
On 7 January, international news media reported the sexual assaults in Düsseldorf were committed by men of north African or Arab appearance. On 14 January 48 sexual attacks on women on New Year's Eve in Düsseldorf had been registered.
On 18 January, the police in Düsseldorf counted 69 complaints of sexual offences on New Year's Eve. By 21 January, the police mentioned 57 cases of sexual harassment, and 13 cases of insults based on sex or gender. By November 2016, 103 complaints over sexual offences in Düsseldorf on New Year's Eve had been registered by the police or public prosecutor.
Additional cities
On 14 January 2016, the WDR citing a report of the Minister of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia reported about the last New Year's Eve: