Swedish rape legislation from use of force to voluntariness - critical reflections from an everyday life perspective

Abstract

After decades of debate and reforms on the rape legislation, a shift from a use of force-based into a consent-based rape offence (with voluntariness as the decisive criteria) entered into force in Sweden in July 2018. The aim of this article is to review and critically analyse Swedish statutory regulation of rape, starting in the historical development and debates as a backdrop. The authors take their starting point in critique put forward within the field of feminist legal studies and uses an everyday life perspective to examine some of the assessments made in the preparatory work in the decisions made on how to best protect the individual’s right to personal and sexual integrity and sexual self-determination. The analysis shows that a male rationale permeates the preparatory works and points at a need for further research on the criterion of voluntariness and its presumptions on autonomy.

Reinvestigating the Sexual Violence “Justice Gap” in the Swedish Criminal Justice System: Victim-Centered Alternatives to the Criminal Trial

“…In 2018, the Swedish parliament passed a sexual crimes legislative reform, changing the legal standard for the crime of rape to a consent-based one. In previous iterations of Swedish law, the crime of rape required the use of force, coercion, or a “particularly vulnerable state” (Bladini & Svederg Andersson, 2020). Since the 2018 consent law change, convictions for rape have increased, from 190 convictions in 2017 to 333 in 2019 (Holmberg & Lewenhagen, 2020b).…”

Silenced Voices

“…On the other hand, criminal law is emphasised as an important tool in the work against men's violence against women (Niemi-Kiesiläinen 2006;Burman 2010). Examples of reforms that have raised awareness of men's violence against women and significantly increased the reported cases and convictions by the Swedish criminal system are the Women's Peace reform in 1998 (Lindström 2005;Nilsson 2004;Burman 2010) and possibly the consent-based rape offence reform from 2018 (Brottsförebyggande rådet 2020; Bladini and Svedberg Andersson 2020). Having the important arguments for being careful in the use of criminalisation in mind, it is urgent to discuss and evaluate the use of criminal law as one tool, among others, to defeat sexist and sexual abuse online.…”

“…An important aim of legal reforms on sexual offences has been to obtain gender equality. However, a shift can be noted from a position in which sexual crimes were formulated as men's violence against women in 1995 to being mentioned but not at the centre of the problem definition in 2001, to not existing in the last reform proposals (2005, 2013 and 2018) on sexual offences (Wegerstad 2015, 186;Bladini and Svedberg Andersson 2020).…”

Experience of guilt in court hearings—Comparing rape, assault and fraud cases

“…The intension for the legislation is to contribute to changing of values and attitudes towards sexual relations. Although, the consent law has been criticised from a feminist legal standpoint for being made in the ‘male rationale’ (Bladini & Andersson, 2020) and does not fully protect the sexual integrity of victims since there are structural inequalities between women and men. It can be unclear if the consent is voluntary or involuntary (Ehrlich, 2016) since there can be different forms of power imbalances and coercion.…”