I saw two news articles mention a recent criminal case in Sweden and they both were written in a way that was extremely misleading, intentionally or otherwise. So i thought it would be good if someone explained why the court ruled the way it did and how the relevant laws work.
Here's the two articles i saw, one from The Local and one from Jezebel:
http://ift.tt/19jOado
http://ift.tt/18Kpw4m
In both the headlines and text body from both articles one could, as a legally naive and ignorant person, easily get the impression that the accused was accused of raping a 13 year old girl and was then deemed not guilty because she was "well-developed" enough to be mistaken for someone who was 15 years old or older. From the Local we read:
So here's the real situation: the plaintiff was actually not "raped" but rather she actually "consented" to the sex as determined by the court.
Despite that, it's still a crime to have sex with someone that's under 15 years of age, whether or not they consent, unless the plaintiff and accused are both of "comparable age" and "mental maturity". However for one to be actually sentenced one needs to either have the intention of having sex with someone who is underage (they knew that they were under 15, for example) or have reasonable grounds to believe that they were underage (one acted negligently by not asking a really young looking person what their age was, for example). The court found that, because she was so "well developed" for her age, the accused had no reasonable cause to suspect they were under 15 years of age.
The root cause for the misleading articles is probably the fact that the crime of having sex with someone who is underage is actually covered by two different crime labels, one is called "Rape of a child" and the other "sexual exploitation of a child" with the former carrying a minimal sentence of two years in prison and the latter having no lower bound (i.e. one could be sentenced to anything between a suspended sentence/fine/community service and up to four years in prison). Prosecutors often decided to charge people with the more serious crime despite the fact that, upon appeal, they often get sentenced for the less serious crime instead if it was consensual, non-exploitative and abusive.
In general, my opinion is that the law should try and protect children and teenagers from being sexually exploited and abused. Instead the law places undue weight on whether or not the youth has achieved some arbitrary age at which they are deemed "mature enough" to be given the freedom of "sexual self-determination". As a result one could be sentenced to prison for having mutually loving and consensual sex with a 14 year old while one could bother a 15 year old or 17 year old, who ran way from her foster home, to have sex. That i find extremely unreasonable.
Here's the two articles i saw, one from The Local and one from Jezebel:
http://ift.tt/19jOado
http://ift.tt/18Kpw4m
In both the headlines and text body from both articles one could, as a legally naive and ignorant person, easily get the impression that the accused was accused of raping a 13 year old girl and was then deemed not guilty because she was "well-developed" enough to be mistaken for someone who was 15 years old or older. From the Local we read:
Quote:
A Swedish girl who says she was raped by a 27-year-old man when she was just 13 has lost her appeal against his acquittal after a court ruled that the man could not have known she was under age because of her “well-developed” body. |
So here's the real situation: the plaintiff was actually not "raped" but rather she actually "consented" to the sex as determined by the court.
Despite that, it's still a crime to have sex with someone that's under 15 years of age, whether or not they consent, unless the plaintiff and accused are both of "comparable age" and "mental maturity". However for one to be actually sentenced one needs to either have the intention of having sex with someone who is underage (they knew that they were under 15, for example) or have reasonable grounds to believe that they were underage (one acted negligently by not asking a really young looking person what their age was, for example). The court found that, because she was so "well developed" for her age, the accused had no reasonable cause to suspect they were under 15 years of age.
The root cause for the misleading articles is probably the fact that the crime of having sex with someone who is underage is actually covered by two different crime labels, one is called "Rape of a child" and the other "sexual exploitation of a child" with the former carrying a minimal sentence of two years in prison and the latter having no lower bound (i.e. one could be sentenced to anything between a suspended sentence/fine/community service and up to four years in prison). Prosecutors often decided to charge people with the more serious crime despite the fact that, upon appeal, they often get sentenced for the less serious crime instead if it was consensual, non-exploitative and abusive.
In general, my opinion is that the law should try and protect children and teenagers from being sexually exploited and abused. Instead the law places undue weight on whether or not the youth has achieved some arbitrary age at which they are deemed "mature enough" to be given the freedom of "sexual self-determination". As a result one could be sentenced to prison for having mutually loving and consensual sex with a 14 year old while one could bother a 15 year old or 17 year old, who ran way from her foster home, to have sex. That i find extremely unreasonable.
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