Berlin sets up New Years Eve safe zone for women amid sexual assault concerns
As thousands celebrate New Year's Eve at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate on Sunday night, a team of medical professionals in a white tent only yards away will be standing by, waiting for possible victims of sexual assault and harassment to seek their help.
After mass sexual assaults occurred on New Year's Eve in several German cities two years ago, Berlin officials now work on the assumption that prevention efforts alone may no longer be sufficient at such large-scale events. Women will be able to speak to psychologists immediately after being assaulted or harassed in a “safe zone” at the Berlin New Year's Eve event.
On New Year's Eve 2015, about 1,200 women became victims of sexual assault in several major German cities, with more than 600 women attacked in Cologne and about 400 victims in the northern German city of Hamburg. Prosecutors established that more than 2,000 men were involved in the assaults, but only a tiny fraction — about half of them foreign nationals who at the time had only recently arrived in the country — had been identified a year later.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/30/berlin-sets-up-new-years-eve-safe-zone-for-women-amid-sexual-assault-concerns/?utm_term=.b474bada0009
