The body and the deed. Places of rape in Swedish court narratives

Abstract

A fundamental starting point for this article is that place in a broad sense is a crucial, yet forgotten, dimension in the legal analysis of rape. Therefore, in this study I ask what role place has in the adjudication of rape; in the interpretation of rape law as well as in the evaluation of evidence. I analyze three Swedish rape cases, two from the Supreme Court, marking out the sexual act of rape, and one case from an appellate court, applying this rule. The latter is closely related to the Swedish #metoo movement and extremely high-profiled. I take a closer look at how the act of rape is linked to place in these judgements. Concretely, I study the narration and classification of the crimes, including the legal labelling and the positioning and portrayal of the complainant and the defendant. My main conclusion is that place is quite absent in the courts’ legal narratives of rape. In my view, notwithstanding obvious place-related events. Apart from stressing the place of the body, in the first case, place was absent in the legal narratives in all instances. The court did not touch upon the question of whether the complainant should be able to feel safe in her own home and not have to fear violence and abuse. Nor did it touch upon similar aspects in the third case where the occupational and the public character of the place and shame, according to the victim’s own story, hindered her from reacting loudly. In the second case, the appellate court invoked place by implicitly stressing home and belonging when noting that the young man was far from home, thus being particularly vulnerable. Later the Supreme Court declared that sexual vulnerability should not be related to place at all and decided not to label the event as rape.