Warning: shocking content:
The BBC's Sofia Bettiza just published a piece that should be required reading for every politician who still parrots the line that "Europe is a continent of refuge." Her story follows Esther from Lagos and Nina from Kosovo — two women among a fast-rising tide of single females gambling everything on the Mediterranean and Balkan routes. Their testimonies are brutal: locked in Libyan brothels, gang-raped in Balkan forests, forced to pay smugglers with their bodies, screaming in the dark while male migrants and traffickers rape them. Esther fled Nigeria in 2016 dreaming of the UK. Nine years, three asylum rejections, and countless assaults later, she lives in Italy and openly wonders why she ever came.
The numbers behind the anecdotes are even more damning.
2024 saw a 250 % surge in lone adult women arriving in Italy via the Balkan route (International Rescue Committee).
70 % of irregular migrants are still men — which means the women who do come are surrounded by thousands of military-age males with no vetting, no shared language, and no accountability.
The deadliest year on record for migrant deaths (3,419 in 2023) is now being eclipsed in 2025, and sexual violence is the silent multiplier for female travellers.
Smugglers openly demand "sex instead of cash." This is not "refuge." This is state-sanctioned exposure to serial sexual predation.
The Balkan Forests Have Become Open-Air Rape Camps
Listen to Nina from Kosovo:
"Even though we were up in the mountains, in the dark, you could hear the screams. The men would come up to us with a torch, shine it in our faces, pick who they wanted, and take them further into the forest. At night, I could hear my sister crying, begging for help."
That is not an isolated horror story. Charities in Trieste, Lampedusa, and Lesbos report the same pattern: women travelling in all-female groups are still hunted at night by male migrants and traffickers. The "jungle" outside Calais, the forests along the Serbia-Croatia border, the abandoned buildings in Bosnia — all are now notorious no-go zones for unaccompanied women after sunset.
Yet European leaders keep the pipeline wide open while doing precisely nothing to separate or protect the minority of female travellers. The result is predictable: more victims, more trauma, more lifelong damage.
Europe's Own Women Aren't Safe Either
The tragedy is compounded by the fact that Europe is increasingly unsafe for its native daughters too.
Cologne New Year's Eve 2015–16: 1,200 German women assaulted in a single night by gangs of mostly North African and Arab men.
Sweden 2024: 63 % of convicted rapists since 2015 have a foreign background (Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention).
UK grooming-gang scandals: thousands of working-class British girls trafficked for years while police and councils looked away for fear of "racism" accusations.
France 2025: "no-go zones" in Paris suburbs where even ambulance crews need police escorts.
The continent that once prided itself on women's rights now leads the developed world in sexual violence in many cities — and the correlation with uncontrolled mass migration is no longer deniable, even if the BBC still couches it in euphemism.
The Cruellest Irony: Gender-Based Asylum is a Legal Right — On Paper Only
The 2011 Istanbul Convention and a 2024 EU Court of Justice ruling explicitly state that women fleeing domestic violence, forced marriage, FGM, or honour-based persecution qualify for asylum. Reality on the ground:
Male asylum officers, poorly trained, dismiss FGM survivors.
Sexual violence leaves no visible scars, so claims are routinely rejected as "unsubstantiated."
Women are rushed through interviews and too ashamed to disclose rape to a stranger.
Result? Thousands of genuine female persecution cases are refused while the system remains overwhelmed by economic migrants gaming it.
The Bottom Line: Europe is Manufacturing Victims on an Industrial Scale
Every policy choice compounds the danger:
Open routes + zero segregation on the journey = guaranteed predation.
"Controlled compassion" (Rakib Ehsan's phrase) is exactly what is missing: fast-track asylum for verifiable high-risk women and girls, simultaneous hard borders for everyone else.
Pretending that importing millions more military-age males from patriarchal cultures will not further erode women's safety is delusional.
Esther's final words should haunt every Brussels bureaucrat and every open-borders activist:
"I don't even know the reason why I came to this place."
Europe is no longer a safe destination for the world's most vulnerable women. It has become a continent that lures them with false promises, exposes them to serial rape and exploitation, then shrugs when the trauma is complete.
Until leaders admit that reality — and act on it — every new boat, every new forest scream, is on their conscience.
Europe is not saving these women. It is breaking them. And, London too scares me; as a woman I do not feel safe even in the day, thanks to mass immigration.