Last year, only a single case of sexual abuse was reported at Gröna Lund amusement park in Stockholm. This year, four notifications have already been received, despite the fact that the park only just opened in late April.
"All the cases have been reported to the police. It's about teenage girls who've been exposed," security chief Fredrik Gemzell told the newspaper.
In order to prevent a surge of sex-related abuse, Gröna Lund has established a security center for visitors to refer to. Additional security personnel have also been placed on the site. According to Frederik Gemzell, it is completely unacceptable for their visitors to feel insecure, which is why any abuse should be reported to the police.
During the Summerburst festival in Stockholm, an 18-year-girl was raped in the middle of a crowd, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported. At the same festival, three other cases of sexual abuse were reported.
"Our government calls itself feminist. At the time they are in charge of a country where every third woman feels insecure, where every tenth woman dares not go out in the evening because of insecurity and where two out of five women aged 20 to 24 are worried about being attacked or beaten. This cannot continue," a group of Conservatives wrote in a joint article, published by the Swedish portal Nyheter24. "No woman should ever abstain from visiting a festival, seeing her favorite artist or having a jogging tour," they continued.
To add insult to injury, a care center for victims of rape in Stockholm, which received about 140 women annually, will be shut down. Instead, care will only be provided to immigrants suffering from torture memories or post-traumatic stress disorder.
"This is a group expanding owing to major migration flows, and we want the clinic to be able to help more people from that group in the future," Maria Hägerstrand of Stockholm County Council told Swedish national broadcaster SVT.
While a common reaction among parents may be to stop young people from attending festivals, this is not the right thing to do, according to psychologist Moa Mannheimer.
"When you try to ban things, it's likely that the youngsters will be doing it anyway. However, we do not stop taking the train just because there are more petty thieves at the Central Station," Moa Mannheimer told the Swedish daily Göteborgs-Posten.
According to her fellow psychologist Anna Norlén, it's also a bad idea to dress more conservatively in order to avoid trouble.
"Surely you can wear short skirts if you want to. Advising modest dress is tantamount to blaming the potential victim for what can happen, and this should never be done," Anna Norlén told Göteborgs-Posten.
