TEHRAN – Statistics reveal a high rate of rape and sexual assault against women and girls in Western societies.

Rape is a serious crime that affects the lives of millions of people, mainly women and girls, around the world; Based on available data, it is estimated that approximately 35% of women around the world have experienced sexual harassment in their lives.

The presence of European countries among the mentioned countries is worthy of consideration in the study of countries with high rape statistics.

Statistics show that the sex trade in Europe is associated with low risk and high profit. European governments do not have the power or the will to fight the trafficking of girls, women, and children for sexual services.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in a speech on October 20, 2009, said, “There has always been a wrong outlook towards women. Today, the same wrong outlook exists in the West. Of course, a number of women may become outstanding, honorable, and modest personalities in Western systems. This holds true for men too. But the general outlook towards women, which has become firmly established in Western culture, is an objectifying and insulting outlook… It [the West] wants women to entertain men's eyes and it wants to use them in an illegitimate way. It wants women to have a special appearance in society. This is the greatest insult to women. Of course, they cover it up with certain beautiful words and give it different names. Respecting women means giving them the opportunity to develop, at different levels,..”

Governments have allocated very little funding to combat this issue and have provided few penalties and convictions for human traffickers in Europe. Even many policemen in European countries, sexually abuse victims of sex trafficking, instead of arresting them and returning them to their country. These victims are also abused by some doctors and lawyers who should support them.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking has become the second fastest-growing criminal industry — just behind drug trafficking — with children accounting for roughly half of all victims.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has identified the Washington, DC area as one of the 14 major sex trafficking centers in the U.S. More than 100,000 American children are exploited through the commercial sex industry each year. The average age of entry into CSEC is 12 to 14 years old.

“They are the ones who must justify why they have used women as an object of promiscuity. Yesterday, I was given the figures for domestic violence - these figures were reported a week earlier - which said that two-thirds of the women throughout the world are beaten up by their husbands! I believe this is pitiful. It moves one to tears. This violence occurs mostly in developed Western countries, and result from sexual harassment and sexual demand that men have of women. This slandering is about the issue of women,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. (April 21, 2010)

While rape and widespread violence against women in Western societies is carried out on a large scale, Western governments as claimants of defending women's rights present their country as a model of an ideal society.

Statistics show that most Western women are victims of the decline of moral values and promiscuity in Western societies.

“Describing the Western attitude towards women as "freedom" is a deception: it has nothing to do with freedom. The cornerstone of Western culture is that women should be socially presented as a product, an object that men can benefit from; for instance, promoting immodest clothing is a step in this direction. Over the past 100 years, or more, violence against women in the West has been on the rise: there has been no decrease in violence in this regard. Sexual freedom and unprincipled sexual behaviors in the West have not curbed sexual desires, which are natural and instinctive. In the past, they used to promote the idea that men and women should be allowed to have free relationships with one another to diminish their sexual desires; later on, clearly, quite the opposite happened. The more that they allowed men and women to have free sexual relationships with one another, the more the resulting situation of sexual desires increased. Today, Westerners feel no shame in promoting homosexuality as a moral value: this makes any dignified human embarrassed, but Westerners have no shame. The Western view of women is perverted, flawed, misleading, and simply wrong,” the Leader of the Islamic Revolution noted. (July 11, 2012)