A young left-wing German politician has admitted that she lied to police about the racial background of the three men who raped her in case it triggered reprisals against refugees in her country

Selin Gören, the national spokeswoman of the left-wing youth movement Solid, was attacked by three men in January 2016 in the city of Mannheim where she works as a refugee activist. The 24-year-old was ambushed late at night in a playground where she said she was forced to perform a sex act on her attackers. After the assault she went straight to the police - but she did not tell them the ethnic make-up of the men, that they were speaking Arabic or Farsi. Selin, aware of the backlash that migrants suffered after the events in Cologne on New Year's Eve - when hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed by marauding gangs of immigrant youths - instead said that she was robbed and said her attackers spoke German. A group called Gesa in Kassel - Active Together Against Sexual Violence - says that sexual assaults by many male migrants have increased.