There are some fairly low-key policing measures that could be taken that could vastly reduce the risk of something like this happening again, at least on such a scale / in such a prolonged manner.
For this and a few other reasons, I firmly believe that it would be quite possible to have social consequences that are positive in the end, eventually. I'm not predicting thats what will actually happen because there are obviously various negative things that have been set in motion too.
But I even think its possible we could get something positive from the '1000 perpetrators' bullshit and sloppy journalism that I was complaining about yesterday - if a distorted version of this story ends up happening to enable elements of society to talk more openly about, for example, sexual abuse in other contexts, by shocking people, then that is some consolation to weigh against the original distortion.
Some shocking stories from India involving sexual violence were I'm sure met with horror and condemnation, but also anger at the status quo and the hope of some improvement to the situation. I see no reason why the same cannot be the case with this German stuff.
All of this is aside from the other potentially unleashed shit that comes from this case - e.g. attitudes towards immigration, refugees etc. I'm not trying to pretend none of that is happening here. I'm not talking about that at all in this post, just the idea that I don't believe the balance of preventative measures will be negative for society, if done right.