Today is back-to-work day after the week-long Easter holiday here. As per usual, because I’m disorganized and a serious procrastinator, I didn’t get nearly enough done during my break and wish I had another week to finish a few things. Ahh well.

The weather has been absolutely fabulous, so Husband and I spent a lot of time working in the garden. We went on a couple of nice bicycle rides, ate a few good dinners, and met some friends out for Indian food and drinks Saturday night. That was a super night, lots of fun, with lots of interesting conversation all in Norwegian, which is great for me because I really need the practice.

We talked about news we’d read in the papers lately and I expressed my horror at the number of rapes that have been reported in Oslo during April, especially the FIVE that occurred in one night on April 4. That shocking story captured headlines throughout the country, leaving people shaken by the feeling that Norway is no longer the safe country it has been for such a very long time. The blame is placed squarely, directly, and loudly on immigrants, particularly men from Africa and the Middle East. Even though none of the six of us out on Saturday night come from those places, four of us are foreigners and we cringed a little bit at talk that immigrants bring crime.

Sadly, though, evidence proves that this is, indeed, correct. Bands of criminals from Eastern Europe do run organized burglary rings in Norway. Street prostitutes in Oslo are predominately African and East European. And, most depressing and terrible, statistics show that 9 of 10 reported rapes in Oslo over the last 3 years were committed by immigrant men.

I recently heard a debate on the radio about this. One guest, a female psychologist from Oslo, said that a clash of cultures is definitely one contributing factor to the rise in the number of rapes in Norway. Norwegian women, she said, have an expectation that they can wear what they want to wear, drink alcohol if they want to, and be able to walk alone if they want to do so. These freedoms enjoyed by Norwegian women can be a problem for some immigrants who come to Norway from cultures that have very different standards for and expectations of women’s behavior.

The other guest on the program, a leader in an Oslo organization against racism, said it is extremely important to remember that the men who commit these crimes are not a fair representation of the immigrant population. These men often have very troubled pasts, have drug and/or alcohol problems, and probably come from war-torn countries where they have witnessed and/or been victims of horrendous crimes. Sometimes they come from tribal areas in, for example, Pakistan, where rape is actually an accepted punishment in the “justice” system. The solution, he said, is to work with immigrant communities, have various outreach programs and other systems in place to identify and help these men before they commit crime.

I have read that this approach is being used successfully in Stavanger, a Norwegian city on the southwest coast that used to have a very high rate of violent crime, including rape; in the last couple of years, that rate has come down considerably.

Maybe that will work in Oslo, too, but it will take time. In the meantime, women are going to bear the brunt of the changes that immigration is bringing to this country, and that is an excruciating truth. They’re going to have to learn to be more careful, plan their routes with safety in mind, spend more money on taxis, and look out for each other more than they’ve ever done before. I've heard that some are starting to carry pepper spray when they go outside, even though it's illegal to possess in Norway. It’s a terrible thing to realize you can’t be out by yourself at night, but it’s probably something we’re all going to have to get used to now.

I thought about that as Husband and I rode our bikes home from the pub that night. It made me sad.