Sweden sees surge in rape convictions after ‘consent’ law

STOCKHOLM, Sweden: A new Swedish law which qualifies any involuntary sex as rape, even without the use of explicit threats or violence, has led to a sharp increase in rape convictions in Sweden, researchers said on Wednesday.

The law, commonly referred to as "samtyckeslagen" (the consent law), came into force in July 2018 and changed Sweden’s definition of rape to remove any reference to violence, threats, or that the victim’s "particularly vulnerable" situation had been exploited.

The revised law, which was proposed in the wake of the #MeToo movement, also introduced a new offence dubbed "negligent rape," for cases when "someone should be aware of the risk that the other person is not participating voluntarily."

A review by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Bra) found that the number of rape convictions rose by 75 percent to 333 in 2019, compared to 190 in 2017, the last full year before the law changed.

The researchers also found that 76 cases which prosecutors said would not have been prosecuted under the previous law had been brought to trial. In half of those cases the accused had been convicted.

"To summarise, in most cases it seems to have plugged a hole when it comes to sexual misconduct," senior researcher Stina Holmberg told AFP. When it came to the new crime "negligent rape", there were only 12 convictions in 2019, and researchers noted that courts seemed to struggle with where to draw the line between actions that should be considered intentional and those that should be considered negligent.

"Sometimes it’s hard to follow how they (the courts) reached their conclusion, and why they didn’t conclude that it was intentional," Holmberg said. That grey zone, coupled with the often difficult situation of a lack of evidence other than the testimonies of the plaintiff and the accused, could spell trouble for the rights of the accused, according to the researchers.

To remedy the issue Holmberg said more cases would need to go before the country’s top court, to determine legal precedents for lower courts. "It is generally difficult for lawmakers to say exactly how a law should be applied in different cases, so it’s necessary that more of the difficult cases are tried by the Supreme Court," Holmberg said.