Quote Originally Posted by Kralizec View Post
The articles I've read about it are vague, but my impression is that 1,000 refers to all the young men gathered in the street and not the perpetrators. The reports say that large groups of men preyed on lone victims, "large groups" possibly meaning 20 or more, but the idea of 1,000 sexual predators gathering in one place to cause trouble seems ridiculous.

And yes, of course that is still bad, and it probably has more than a little to do with the background of the perpetrators. One would hope it's not necessary to explicitly say so after a post like this one, but you know, internets

+1 Internets for stating what should be obvious, but isn't.

A back of the envelope figure for you -

90 reported sexual assaults, lets assume groups of three women and make an allowance for unreported assaults, say 35 separate instances of gang attacks - reports of groups of 20-30 men , average 25.

So - 25*35=875.

That assumes the number of unreported offences is quite low and each group of men only attacked a single group of women. I would say the latter assumption was relatively sound, as I can't really see groups forming, assaulting girls and then moving on to assault more girls. That kind of mob action tends to be a one off thing rather than something you repeat throughout the night.

In any case, 1,000 suspects is clearly not an improbable estimate.