Can someone from the other side provide an alternate point of view? It looks bad but this discussion is rather slanted. One woman on the BBC said we needed to view these as individual instances so maybe that's it...? Or is it, as CrabCake said, just the same old patriarchy?
Dislocated bored young men in groups => never a great thing. (compare this to armies arriving in port cities and doing their dirty deeds; or indeed a particularly boorish group of male adolescents [that crude note earlier posted struck me as something that could be replicated by groups of thick male teens worldwide]) Perhaps a more equal gender ratio is something that should be strived for in refugee acceptance. It's not the Titanic - I don't think we need to revive the Birkenhead Drill for Syria or anything - but an unequal gender ratio can lead to some pretty messed up stuff, especially as these are typically teens and twentysomethings.
It's why I've increasingly come to think that Europe etc. should keep accepting migrants but process and fly them in from migrant camps, and announce that after a certain point these refugees will be favoured over those who "jump the queue". At least then you can control the ratios, focus on bringing families and the vulnerable, and - to quote the departed Mr Abbott - Stop teh Boats.
I still am curious as the extent organised crime has in all this as well. Not like it's a very sophisticated affair, but there does seem to be a certain amount of Fagins that have taken advantage of chaotic scenes to build little yob gangs.
