Feature: Clash of sexual cultures undermines efforts to acclimatize immigrants in Finland

A 30-year-old Finnish mother of two daughters winced when she talked about the hasty installation of a refugee center no more than one kilometer from her house in Helsinki suburb.

"I have discussed with my husband. Maybe we shall move to a new place," she said while choosing Christmas goods for her family members in a downtown department store.

"I heard that there will be some 50 asylum seekers coming. Most of them are young men under 19 years old," she added.

As the refugees continue to pour into this tiny Nordic country, harassment of teenage women by male asylum seekers has made the headlines in Finnish media in recent days.

In Kempele, northern Finland, the police were investigating a case in which a 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped last Monday night by a 17-year-old asylum seeker.

One day later, a similar case happened in Raisio, southern Finland. The victim was also a 14-year-old girl, and the suspect was a 19-year-old asylum seeker.

The two cases were the only covered in media, and the Police admitted on Friday that actually 10 such incidents were under investigation.

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila uncommonly gave a public statement condemning the crime in northern Finland, where his hometown is located. But he assured to accommodate more refugees in his old house as scheduled.

The incident in Kempele triggered a local protest on Saturday, and the police had to evacuate the local refugee center for security reason.

A heated public debate could be seen on television and the internet. The discussion mainly concerned the relative light sentences on rape by Finnish courts, the limitations imposed on the police to tell about cases and the need to inform the asylum seekers about Finnish values, including sexual behavior.

The different sexual cultures have been seen as a key problem.

In Finland, a woman trusts that her explicit "no" will be respected in any situation -- even after a joint cab drive to a private home, said Finnish expert Paivi Kari-Zein.

Kari-Zein told Finnish national broadcaster Yle that a Finnish woman thinks she can cut off the game at any stage "even quite late", and believes her word will be respected, but an asylum seeker may find it hard to accept.

Kari-Zein also warned that the fairly exposing clothing of girls may be baffling to the arrivals. They may not be used to seeing women alone in restaurants or even in public places.

Some 25 percent of persons convicted of rape In Finland in recent years are of foreign extraction. The problem thus existed before the current influx of asylum seekers.

Marko Forss, a police officer known as the "internet cop" in Finland, wrote in his blog that the police should be given more freedom in informing what has happened.

"The police do not want to instigate violence or hatred against asylum seekers, but through concealing the crimes they have done we only make the situation worse. Openness would work best also in this situation," Forss wrote.

As an EU country, Finland has assumed the responsibility of taking in thousands of refugees this year, but the question remains how the five million citizens get along well with the new arrivals.

"Almost every day we hear about more suspected cases and even actual court sentences of rape by foreigners that have taken place in the cities and around the refugee centers," a netizen named "An utterly tired Finn" said in an internet posting on Friday.

The posting claimed that only two percent of the asylum seekers are real refugees and the rest are "fit males in their 20s" looking for better living standard.

While the true figures could not be found in any official statistics, the Finnish authority has lately adopted new techniques in processing asylum applications, including DNA tests. Endit