The claim: Many young male migrants arrived in Sweden over the past few years, when the country accepted unprecedented numbers of refugees, and there has been a huge rise in sexual crime in Sweden especially in the southern port city of Malmo.
Reality Check verdict: Malmo, along with other urban centres in Sweden, has one of the highest levels of reported rapes in proportion to population in the EU, mainly due to the strictness of Swedish laws and how rape is recorded in the country.
The rate of reported rapes in Malmo has not dramatically risen in recent years and has in fact declined from its peak in 2010, before the recent large increases in refugees.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage made this claim on LBC radio on Monday 20 February, when he discussed the recent comments by US President Donald Trump about terrorism in Sweden. Mr Farage said there had been no specific terrorist attacks in Sweden since large numbers of refugees arrived there, but, instead, he claimed Sweden had seen a dramatic rise in sexual crime and its southern port city of Malmo - the third largest city in the country - had become Europe's and possibly the world's "rape capital".
So, has there been a big rise in sexual crime in Sweden and have the numbers of rapes increased in Malmo since Sweden took in an unprecedented numbers of refugees?
The first thing to say is that the part of the claim referring to the number of refugees is certainly true.
Sweden has been one of the biggest recipients of refugees in the EU in recent years.
According to Eurostat, the agency that collects statistical data from all EU countries, in 2015 Sweden had over 162,000 asylum applications or 1,667 asylum seekers for every 100,000 citizens.
A large majority of the 2015 asylum seekers - 114,470 - were male, 45,790 of them between 18 and 34 years of age.
What about an international comparison?It is very hard to compare sex-related offences and rape across the world.
Police procedures and legal definitions vary widely around the world, making an international comparison meaningless.
The 2012 UN international rape rate comparison showed Sweden to have the highest rate of rape in Europe and the second highest in the world, but the report did not contain data for a total of 63 countries that did not submit any statistics, including, for example, South Africa, where other earlier surveys indicated a very high rape rate.
The most recent Eurostat data for the 28 EU countries also puts Sweden in the top spot.
There has also been a public debate in Sweden over the past two decades to raise awareness and encourage women to go to the police if they have been attacked.
Post time 19-10-2017 12:24 PM
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