Ninety women complained of groping and harassment at Cologne's New Year's Eve event, with at least one woman saying she had been raped, according to the BBC.
Due to the origin of the suspects, a public debate into Germany's acceptance of migrants ensued, and Mayor Henriette Reker's comments at a Tuesday conference weren't any help.
Cologne's mayor, Henriette Reker, is now under fire after giving advice to women for the organized sexual assault attacks by 1,000 men at the city's main train station. The thing is, women didn't like her advice.
According to the German mayor, women and girls must follow a certain "code of conduct" in order to avoid "such" incidents. She also suggested staying "one arm's length" away from strangers.
See Mayor Henriette Reker's advice here.
This first public comment from Reker Tuesday evening was quickly followed by a wave of livid comments on social media from concerned individuals. The furious commenters used the trending hashtag #einearmlaenge (an arm's length).
See furious comments here and here.
Other pieces of advice she gave were that women should always go in groups at public events and that bystanders should be asked for help in emergencies.
Reker addressed the issue and justified her statements by saying that the media simply distorted them. She added that people of other cultures should be informed that the "jolly and frisky attitude during our Carnival is not a sign of sexual openness."
By Wednesday, German police have conducted an investigation into the New Year's Eve sexual assaults at Cologne. However, more outrage ensued as victims claimed the suspects are of "Arab or North African" appearance.
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 of the perpetrators who were suspected to be from North Africa were also connected to organized theft crimes since 2014, according to a Duesseldorf City police spokesman.
The sexual assaults during New Year's Eve in Cologne could have reportedly been used to divert the revellers' attention so that the perpetrators could steal their devices at hand.
At the same day in Hamburg, there had been 38 sexual assaults and 14 thefts reported, while in Stuttgart, two women were robbed of their mobile phones. The women said they had been robbed by men who appeared Arabic as well.
The number of crimes has continued rising, and now Cologne police still couldn't determine the total number of reported crimes at the event. A quarter of the complaints were related to a quarter of the complaints, according to CNN.