A man who needs to be told rape is wrong should not be allowed in Britain, writes James Hanson

Or not to have sex with a child? Or not to beat up your wife? You’d hope this would all go without saying, but it’s spelled out in black and white in the Home Office’s new advice booklet for asylum seekers. The official nine-page document also tells migrants not to make sexual remarks about someone “even if you think it is a compliment” and that women are allowed to “make their own decisions about their lives”.

The government claims the guidance is required because some migrants have “different cultures” and need to “understand the expectations and the consequences if they break the law”. But doesn’t it raise a pretty fundamental question? If Labour believes there is an increased risk of asylum seekers committing violent sexual crimes, why are we letting them into the country before we’ve had a chance to establish their identity and immigration status?

Let’s be clear about this: the majority of asylum seekers are respectful and law-abiding. We shouldn’t stigmatise an entire group of people based on the actions of a few.

However, we also need to confront an uncomfortable truth. Every year we are welcoming tens of thousands of undocumented migrants, largely young men, from countries whose attitudes towards women are alarmingly backwards. To pretend that doesn’t pose an increased risk of serious sexual offences is to deny reality.

Don’t just take my word for it. Although the Ministry of Justice does not record offences by immigration status - why not? - academic research has produced some alarming results. Madeleine Sumption from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory calculates that Afghan nationals are 14.5 times more likely to commit sexual offences than British nationals. Afghanistan, along with other war-torn countries like Sudan, Iran and Syria, accounts for thousands of small boat arrivals each year.

But it doesn’t take Oxford academics to reveal the problem. There have simply been too many cases of undocumented migrants committing heinous sexual offences to pretend there isn’t an issue. Earlier this year, three men - all asylum seekers - were found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman on Brighton beach. After the attack, the men took a bus back to their asylum hotel and had a barbecue. One of them, 20-year-old Karin Al-Danasurt, is a convicted murderer who fled Egypt because he was facing the death penalty. His chosen means of escape? Travelling through Europe and then arriving in Britain on a small boat.

It is far from the only example. In January, an asylum seeker from Sudan was jailed for life for murdering a woman who worked at his asylum hotel in Walsall. He stabbed his victim, Rhiannon Whyte, 23 times with a screwdriver. CCTV footage later showed him dancing and laughing in the hotel car park. He had arrived here on a small boat.

In February, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan was found guilty of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton. He videoed his crime and laughed at his victim while attacking her. He, too, had arrived here on a small boat.

Last December, two asylum seekers from Afghanistan were sentenced for raping a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. Surprise surprise, they had arrived here on a small boat. Or there’s the case of Hadush Kebatu from Ethiopia, who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping, while living in an asylum hotel. Once again, he’d arrived here on a small boat.

Or there’s the asylum seeker of unknown nationality who was convicted of raping a 20-year-old woman in a churchyard in Oxford. Or the Sudanese national, who was staying in an asylum hotel, who strangled and tried to rape a woman in a nightclub toilet in Wakefield. Or the Eritrean national jailed for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old. Or the Pakistani national who raped an 18-year-old woman in a park in Nottinghamshire. I could go on, but you get the point.

Given it appears even the Home Office now accepts there’s a problem here, isn’t it time we look again at third-country processing of asylum seekers?

The issue isn’t that all asylum seekers are potential rapists. The issue is that we are welcoming thousands of undocumented men from misogynistic cultures, housing them at the taxpayers' expense, and allowing them to roam free in our communities before we’ve even established who they are.

Once again, the government is badly behind public opinion and needs to catch up - fast.

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Listen to James Hanson on LBC every weekend between 4 and 7am.

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