Rixstep
 About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Home » Industry Watch

Assange in Sweden: Cliffhanger

'Remember that Marianne Ny never counted on her preliminary investigation leaking to the media.'


Get It

Try It

GOTHENBURG (Rixstep) — Sweden's jurist daily Dagens Juridik reported 1 July on a curious case about a boy and a girl, both 19 years old at the time of their 'incident' (five years ago) and both living at the time with their parents: they'd often slept over, but there'd never been any sex - not until one night, five years ago, when they'd been out hitting the pubs...

The girl's version, according to the Gothenburg district court:

'She woke by feeling the boy having vaginal sex with her. It didn't hurt. She turned around (she'd had her back to him) and asked him what he was doing. He stopped and told her he thought they were having sex. She asked him how he could believe that, as she was hammered. She finds it hard to believe that she would actively have been a part to the sex.

'She reported the incident first in 2014. She'd tried to repress the incident and didn't realise how serious it was until she told her girlfriend and new boyfriend a year earlier. She spoke with a psychologist already in 2012 about the incident.'


The boy admitted to having sex with the girl but insisted he'd not understood she was sleeping. From the court records:

'They started having sex and to him it was consensual. She knew what she was doing, she was awake, and she was very intimate. He was lying behind her when they segued to vaginal sex. He remembers her thrusting back at him.

'He was completely sure the girl was awake because she responded to him as things progressed. He wouldn't have done any of that if he'd not thought she was in on it.'


The boy was acquitted in the district court which concluded that it could not be shown that the boy had intentionally violated the girl. From the court records:

'The boy said that he regarded the girl as awake, that she was responding in a way that made him understand she wanted sex. When the girl objected, he stopped immediately, apologised, and explained that he'd believed they were both in on it. The court cannot find that the boy's testimony is refuted by the investigation, and they cannot disregard his testimony.'

The verdict was appealed to the appeals court for western Sweden who also acquitted the boy.



The appeals court found it established that the boy and girl had sex, and that this could constitute 'unauthorised exploitation' because she, if asleep, would have been in a 'helpless condition'. In other words: the objective prerequisites for considering the case as rape were in place.

However, the boy's testimony - that he'd believed the girl to be awake and keen on having sex - is not so unlikely it can be disregarded.

The situation was such that the boy must have understood there was a risk that the girl was asleep. But to establish intent, it must also be proved that he was indifferent to this possibility - something the court found 'good reason' to doubt.

From the records:

'The sex was stopped immediately the girl woke and objected, whereupon the boy, according to the girl's own testimony, said 'but I thought we were both having sex'. Even the sorrowful and somewhat compliant behaviour that the boy showed after the fact gives the court support in concluding there was no indifference.'

Further:

'It was reasonable for the girl to feel violated as she testified, but this cannot constitute rape, because the boy misunderstood the situation, and would not have conducted himself in such a manner if he'd believed she was asleep.'

Context & Comments

To convict of rape in Sweden, it must be proven that the perpetrator is fully aware that the 'victim' is in a 'helpless condition' (asleep, stone drunk, etc) but proceeds anyway. (This probably goes a long way to explaining the 'wordy' descriptions Marianne Ny gave to the Crown Prosecution Service, which in turn led to the outbursts of laughter in the magistrates court.)

First out of the blocks to comment on the above story:

'The wobbly courts were close to convicting the boy, until they realised they'd need to pass new legislation to install CCTV in all bedrooms and other locations where people could possibly have sex. They also realised that they themselves are only human too, and they too could be victimised by such a law. They realised how ugly things would get if such legislation were curated.

'The girl said she found it hard to believe she'd been 'in on it' because she was asleep. She'd tried to repress the incident and 'she didn't realise how serious it was' until she told her girlfriend and new boyfriend a year earlier. So pressure from her girlfriend and new boyfriend got her to the police, otherwise she didn't feel she'd been raped.

'But our politicians can't accept this, so now they're going to find new ways to transform an acquittal into a conviction for the future, inasmuch as they say openly that their goal is to change legislation so they can reap more convictions. Soon we'll hear 'he didn't realise but he should have realised'. The man felt her thrusting back at him - what else is there to realise?'


Another comment:

'Hahaha, yup obligatory CCTV is something for our future, and whosoever 'thrusts back at the other first', without first getting a signed approval form, can be threatened by several years in prison!'

First commenter replies:

'Germany's foreign ministry published a warning to German tourists when having sex with Swedes in Sweden, the reason being that Swedish girls are keen to report rape afterwards - and they have the courts on their side.

'Yes, we have many things classified as rape here in Sweden. More than in other countries, Klara Hradilova Selin of the Swedish Crime Prevention Council told Swedish radio.'


Another comment:

'It won't be long before we see Madeleine Lejonhufvud and the tabloids' own lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz moaning about this.'

More:

'That bit about Germany: it's amusing, but it's true.

'To even think of filing a complaint five years after the fact... That the prosecution authority and the police even open a preliminary investigation... That the district court didn't toss the nonsense out... This leads to the definition of rape being corrupted, and people who are really raped being treated dismissively because of too many cases like this one.'


First commenter again:

'Yes, it's a bit like when Elisabeth Massi Fritz says that everyone filing a complaint is a 'victim'. That's like saying that everyone trying out for a talent show is a artist.'

I'm so sick of it all. Will it never end? At any rate I want to say the other girl's just as much to blame.
 - Anna Ardin

Apparently Swedish laws are unique. If you have a penis you're half a rapist before you even get through customs.
 - Scott Adams

If I am able to reveal what I know, everyone will realise this is all a charade. If I could tell the British courts, I suspect it would make extradition a moot point.
 - Björn Hurtig

I can tell you that the Swedish prosecution still hasn't provided copies of those SMS texts that have been referred to. Those texts are some of the most powerful exculpatory evidence. In Australia prosecutors have a very grave duty to disclose such evidence to courts when seeking the grave exercise of a court's power against an individual. Yet in Sweden in this case, in the first hearings to obtain an arrest warrant, those texts were not submitted to the Swedish court, which is highly improper.
 - James Catlin

The prosecutor could achieve this broadening of the law during Assange's trial so he can be convicted of a crime that didn't exist at the time he allegedly committed it. She would need to. There is no precedent for this. The Swedes are making it up as they go along.
 - James Catlin

Julian Assange will surely learn that considering what WikiLeaks has published, he's got a few enemies in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House. Sweden began an investigation into rape which was later dismissed. Assange was even denied residence in Sweden. One can only speculate to what extent the security agencies of the US were involved. And considering the obvious interest of the US to silence WikiLeaks, is it likely Assange will have an accident of the 'Boston brakes' kind in the coming years? Or will he be snared with compromising information of the 'honey trap' kind?
 - 'Drozd' at Flashback 23 October 2010

The truth will out, the truth wins out. Let no journalist ever again speculate into what the protocols say. Six months of digging and the people at Flashback have the actual documents. The sleaze printed by rags such as the Daily Mail, Sweden's Aftonbladet and Expressen, and perhaps above all the toxic Nick Davies of the Guardian, can stand no more. Yet more: these documents are an indictment of the 'news organisations' who've printed deliberate inaccuracies all along or even worse: refused to print anything at all. Nick Davies' account of the protocols was maliciously skewed; both Aftonbladet and Expressen had copies early on and printed nothing. Bloggers had copies but arrogantly kept the information to their Smeagol selves.
 - The Assange Police Protocol: Translator's Note

See Also
Justice4Assange.com
Assange Defence Fund
WikiLeaks: Support WikiLeaks
The Police Protocol (Translated)
Rixstep: JA/WL (Assange/WikiLeaks)
Rixstep: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed
Radsoft: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed

About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Copyright © Rixstep. All rights reserved.