Forced to Live With Migrants to Increase Integration

Terrified Dutch students were forced to live side by side with 125 migrants to facilitate their “integration.” The whole arrangement resulted in years of sexual assaults and violence.

Stek Oost, located in the Watergraafsmeer district of Amsterdam, was presented to the public as the dream solution for the housing and migrant crisis. 125 students and 125 migrants would live side by side and were even encouraged to “work together” so that the migrants could adapt to life in the Netherlands more quickly.

However, students have described to the media a very different reality than the idealistic scenario, with repeated sexual assaults, harassment, violence, stalking, and even a gang rape.

One woman says she regularly saw “fights in the hallway and then again in the common living room.” A man recounts that a migrant threatened him with a 20 cm-long kitchen knife. Both claim they were ignored despite having submitted several reports to the authorities.

In another case, a former resident recounts that a Syrian man raped her after inviting her to his room to watch a film and then refusing to let her leave.

“He wanted to learn Dutch, get an education. I wanted to help him,” she says.

She describes how he repeatedly asked her to come to his room. She eventually agreed and went to watch a film with him. But he soon made her uncomfortable, and she asked to leave, only for him to trap her in his room and sexually assault her.

Despite filing a police report after the incident in 2019, the case was dropped by the police due to lack of evidence.

Impossible to Evict

Only six months later, another woman living in Stek Oost raised the alarm about the Syrian man and informed the housing company running the complex that she was concerned for her own and other women’s safety.

But the local government, who set up the arrangement, claimed that it was impossible to evict the man. It wasn’t until he was formally arrested in March 2022 that he left the complex. He was later convicted of raping two students and sentenced to only three years in prison in 2024.

Municipality Refused to Close Down

In another reported case, Stadgenoot, the company running the complex, suspected that a gang rape took place in one of their apartments in the summer of 2023. Police told the media that even though they were not aware of any gang rape taking place in the area, they had received seven reports of sexual assault.

Since its opening in 2018, Stek Oost has faced several similar accusations. In 2022, TV channel AT5 reported that a migrant had been accused of six sexual assaults between 2018 and 2021. Stadgenoot wanted to close the complex already in 2023 but the municipality refused.