Henriette Reker, Mayor of Cologne, Germany

Why would Henriette Reker, the mayor of Cologne, Germany, blame women for being sexually assaulted?

You’ve probably heard about Cologne’s New Year’s Eve celebration, where groups of men — maybe more than 1,000 of them — surrounded individual women, groped them and stole their belongings. There were at least two rape accusations.

Yet the mayor merely told women to keep more than an arm’s length away from men? That’s hard to do in a congested square, where people are pushing to get in.

Or, maybe women should just avoid crowded festivities altogether? Read the rest of this entry →