Sweden OK's rape of transgender women

[Castor_Troy05]

A man who attempted to rape a woman has been cleared of the charges by a Swedish court after it turned out that the woman he tried to rape was actually a man.

“The intended crime never had the possibility of being fulfilled,” explained judge Dan Sjöstedt of the örebro District Court to local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda.

source (http://www.thelocal.se/41822/20120704/)

[nina_lisa]

basically the judge was adding insult to injury, or shall i say salt and pepper to the injury.

[Prospero]

Outrageous! So this judge has never heard of male rape? An attempt to force a sexual encounter on another human - be they male, female or transgendered is still rape.... This is surprising in a place like Sweden with its otherwise rather good record on liberal values. I would be a lot less surprised if this had happened in the UK!

[LibertyHarkness]

in fairness the man commiting the attempted crime still went to prison for 4 years ..they done him on assualt . but yeah abit archiac rules .. but from what it reads the victim wasnt actually raped physically ...but just assaulted ....so he didnt get off scott free ..

shame they just cant execute the person now he has been found guilty and be done with these wastes of space . ...and will no doubt go on to rape a person properly upon release ..

[Prospero]

In view of his inclinations he might prison a happy place - for some inmates might certainly offer him what he was trying to do to this girl. Mind you they say to make such characters especially compliant they kick out their teeth first.

[danthepoetman]

Sweeden have become such a reactionary country. It used to be amazingly progressist. A model of social democraty for the Western World, where people had both well being and pretty equal chances socially. What ever happened to that place ?

[Femboyurge]

First instance Swedish courts are not known to be too bright. It's usually the layman jurors that are idiots, but appearantly that applies to some judges too.

Well, he got four years anyway. That is considered a hard punishment in Sweden. I know of one case where a guy got four years for murdering his own mother, and that was after having done four years (he was convicted to six, but you usually just do 2/3 of the time in Sweden) for murdering his girlfriend!

[bob.chicken]

I'm sure there is more to it then the title suggests.

[joeninety]

Sweden is on some Bs in what it classifies as rape and not rape, it reminds of the freakshow political saga they are trying to put J.Assange through for exposing war crimes, below is a cut and paste of an article detailing the sad but laughable facts of what is basically probably 2 women scorned colluding, where in the Uk would such extensive collusion be deemed as any type of evidence, more like false allegations of nothingness and perversion of justice from quote a "feminist warrior" and a scorned love rival ????

Using a number of sources including leaked police interviews, we can begin to piece together the sequence of events which led to Assange’s liberty being threatened by Stockholm police rather than Washington, where already one U.S. politician has called on him to executed for ‘spying’.
The story began on August 11 this year, when Assange arrived in Stockholm.
He had been invited to be the key speaker at a seminar on ‘war and the role of the media’, organised by the centre-Left Brotherhood Movement.
His point of contact was a female party official, whom we shall refer to as Sarah (her identity must be protected because of the ongoing legal proceedings).
An attractive blonde, Sarah was already a well-known ‘radical feminist’. In her 30s, she had travelled the world following various fashionable causes.
While a research assistant at a local university she had not only been the protegee of a militant feminist academic, but held the post of ‘campus sexual equity officer’. Fighting male discrimination in all forms, including sexual harassment, was her forte.
Sarah and Assange had never met. But in a series of internet and telephone conversations, they agreed that during his visit he could stay at her small apartment in central Stockholm. She said she would be away from the city until the day of the seminar itself.
The prosecution's case has several puzzling flaws, and there is scant public evidence of rape or sexual molestation
What happened over the next few days — while casting an extraordinary light on the values of the two women involved — suggests that even if the WikiLeaks founder is innocent of any charges, he is certainly a man of strong sexual appetites who is not averse to exploiting his fame.
Certainly his stay was always going to be a very social affair, mingling with like-minded and undoubtedly admiring people.
That Thursday, he held court at the Beirut Cafe in Stockholm, dining with fellow ‘open government’ campaigners and an American journalist.
The following afternoon, Sarah returned to Stockholm, 24 hours earlier than planned.
In an interview she later gave to police, she is reported to have said: ‘He (Assange) was there when I came home. We talked a little and decided that he could stay.’
The pair went out for dinner together at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards they returned to her flat and had sex. What is not disputed by either of them is
that a condom broke — an event which, as we shall see, would later take on great significance.
At the time, however, the pair continued to be friendly enough the next day, a Saturday, with Sarah even throwing a party for him at her home in the evening.
That same day, Assange attended his seminar at the Swedish trade union HQ. In the front row of the audience, dressed in an eye-catching pink jumper — you can see her on a YouTube internet clip recorded at the time — was a pretty twentysomething whom we shall call Jessica. She was the woman — who two sources this week told me is a council employee — from Enkoping.
Swedes are calling the whole squalid affair a honeytrap, a plot to bring down the Wikileaks supremo

Jessica would later tell police that she had first seen Assange on television a few weeks before. She had found him ‘interesting, brave and admirable’. As a result, she began to follow the WikiLeaks saga, and when she discovered that he was due to visit Stockholm she contacted the Brotherhood Movement to volunteer to help out at the seminar. Although her offer was not taken up, she decided to attend the seminar anyway and took a large number of photos of Assange during his 90-minute talk.
It is believed that by happenstance Jessica also met Sarah — the woman with whom Assange had spent the night — during the meeting.
Afterwards, she hung around and was still there when Assange — who has a child from a failed relationship around 20 years ago — left with a group of male friends for lunch.
Sources conflict here. One says that she asked to tag along; another that Assange invited her to join them.
Subsequently, one of Assange’s friends recalled that Jessica had been ‘very keen’ to get Assange’s attention.
She was later to tell police that, at the restaurant, Assange put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I was flattered. It was obvious that he was flirting,’ she reportedly said.
The attraction was mutual. After lunch, the pair went to the cinema to see a film called Deep Sea. Jessica’s account suggests that were ‘intimate’ and then went to a park where Assange told her she was ‘attractive’.
But he had to leave to go to a ‘crayfish party’, a traditional, and usually boozy, Swedish summer event.
Jessica asked if they would meet again. ‘Of course,’ said the WikiLeaks supremo. They parted and she took a train back to Enkoping while he took a cab back to his temporary base at Sarah’s flat, where the crayfish party was to be held. You might think it strange that Sarah would want to throw a party in honour of the man about whom she would later make a complaint to police concerning their liaison the night before.
There is scant evidence — in the public domain at least — of rape, sexual molestation or unlawful coercion

This is only one of several puzzling flaws in the prosecution case.
A few hours after that party, Sarah apparently Tweeted: ‘Sitting outside ... nearly freezing, with the world’s coolest people. It’s pretty amazing!’ She was later to try to erase this message.
During the party, Assange apparently phoned Jessica and a few hours later she was boasting to friends about her flirtation with him. At that point, according to police reports, her friends advised her ‘the ball is in your court’.
So it was that on the Monday, Jessica called Assange and they arranged to get together in Stockholm. When they did meet they agreed to go to her home in Enkoping, but he had no money for a train ticket and said he didn’t want to use a credit card because he would be ‘tracked’ (presumably, as he saw it, by the CIA or other agencies).
So Jessica bought both their tickets.
She had snagged perhaps the world’s most famous activist, and after they arrived at her apartment they had sex. According to her testimony to police, Assange wore a condom. The following morning they made love again. This time he used no protection.
Jessica reportedly said later that she was upset that he had refused when she asked him to wear a condom.
Again there is scant evidence — in the public domain at least — of rape, sexual molestation or unlawful coercion.
What’s more, the following morning, on the Tuesday, the pair amicably went out to have breakfast together and, at her prompting, Assange promised to stay in touch. He then returned to Stockholm, with Jessica again paying for his ticket.
It has been suggested that the two women had discussed approaching a tabloid newspaper to maximise Assange’s discomfort

What happened next is difficult to explain. The most likely interpretation of events is that as a result of a one-night stand, one participant came to regret what had happened.
Jessica was worried she could have caught a sexual disease, or even be pregnant: and this is where the story takes an intriguing turn. She then decided to phone Sarah — whom she had met at the seminar, and with whom Assange had been staying — and apparently confided to her that she’d had unprotected sex with him.
At that point, Sarah said that she, too, had slept with him.
As a result of this conversation, Sarah reportedly phoned an acquaintance of Assange and said that she wanted him to leave her apartment. (He refused to do so, and maintains that she only asked him to leave three days later, on the Friday of that week.)
How must Sarah have felt to discover that the man she’d taken to her bed three days before had already taken up with another woman? Furious? Jealous? Out for revenge? Perhaps she merely felt aggrieved for a fellow woman in distress.
Having taken stock of their options for a day or so, on Friday, August 20, Sarah and Jessica took drastic action.
They went together to a Stockholm police station where they said they were seeking advice on how to proceed with a complaint by Jessica against Assange.
According to one source, Jessica wanted to know if it was possible to force Assange to undergo an HIV test. Sarah, the seasoned feminist warrior, said she was there merely to support Jessica. But she also gave police an account of what had happened between herself and Assange a week before.
The female interviewing officer, presumably because of allegations of a sabotaged condom in one case and a refusal to wear one in the second, concluded that both women were victims: that Jessica had been raped, and Sarah subject to sexual molestation.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-night-stands-spark-worldwide-hunt.html#ixzz1zqmwwX9y

[lifeisfiction]

in fairness the man commiting the attempted crime still went to prison for 4 years ..they done him on assualt . but yeah abit archiac rules .. but from what it reads the victim wasnt actually raped physically ...but just assaulted ....so he didnt get off scott free ..

What libby said is correct that he paid for the crime that he attempted. There is a thing in criminal law call mens rea. Its not an easy concept, but to simple put it, mens rea means criminal intent. Each crime has a mens rea (criminal intent) and actus rea (the actual act). Like I said its more complicated.

In this case its looks like as if sweden's legal system applied the criminal intent to the fact that he wanted to rape a woman (meaning he attempted to rape a gg). Since she had a penis, the court is viewing he could not rape her vaginia since she did not have one.

What most likely happen they will expand as the article listed to the idea that rape intended a on party means they sought to carry out a rape regardless of the genitalia issue. If she had a srs it would have been more complicated. I don't know if that helps, but if not ask your local law school professor. They would certainly be more aware and of the legal structure and theory in application to swedens crimianl system.

[Femboyurge]

It's probably a case of mens rea, yes. Didn't think of that before.

For a short period in the 1960's and 70's mens rea was even interpreted thus: if you tried to commit a crime but simply failed, you went free. So if you for example were going to commit arson but was unable to create a fire, you went free.

[lifeisfiction]

It's probably a case of mens rea, yes. Didn't think of that before.

For a short period in the 1960's and 70's mens rea was even interpreted thus: if you tried to commit a crime but simply failed, you went free. So if you for example were going to commit arson but was unable to create a fire, you went free.

Like I said it was complicated. To make things more muddled, arson used to be a burning or charing, of another person's property, of a dwelling at night. Yup, so it wasn't arson if you burned a store during the day, lol. Of course thats not the view of arson today. Like I said mens rea aka criminal intent is not something that makes any sense the first time you hear it. Law is not simple, neither is surgery.

I probably created more confusion then help.

[Femboyurge]

I was wrong about the sentence, btw. He got four months, not years.

[broncofan]

This is what's referred to as "impossibility", perhaps factual impossibility. This refers to a situation where the facts are such that the commission of the crime would be impossible, such as when you shoot a dead body thinking the person is alive. The predicate crime of murder is impossible but the mental culpability and therefore the intent still exists. This is somehow distinguished in law from inherent possibility which I won't go into. Usually factual impossibility does not exculpate.

It's a drawn out, complicated area of criminal law I don't remember, but usually the mens rea issue only occurs in legal impossibility. For instance if someone thinks sugar is illegal, and transports sugar across the border and sells it, there is no crime to charge them with. They did not do anything illegal nor attempt to do anything illegal even if they thought they did. This is to be distinguished from the person who buys sugar but thinks they have bought cocaine, and is in fact guilty of attempt (name narcotics based predicate crime).

I didn't read the actual facts of this case, but it doesn't sound like the judge is making a sound doctrinal argument. The person would only not be guilty of a crime of attempt if they thought they were doing something that is in fact not criminal, but which they mistakenly believed was. Since they thought they were raping a woman, which is apparently illegal, it should make out a crime of attempt. None of this should matter since male rape and female rape should be criminalized. Who knows, but the Swedish legal system may be ass-backwards.

[Femboyurge]

Yes, many people here praise Sweden, and Sweden is great in many respects, like education and medical care etc, but those first instance courts are usually not so great. Sometimes they act like lynch mobs in the Old West or like the Spanish Inquisition, sometimes they do things like this and give a piece of shit like this man 4 months and make him pay 15000 kronor (a little more than US$2000), when he so obviously was attempting to commit rape.

The Swedish jury system is also absurd. The jurors in the first instance courts are laymen, but they are not "ordinary citizens", like in the US, for instance, but politicians on municipal level. That means that a verdict can be "coloured" by the political views of the jurors, although in theory the sentences are thought to be in accordance with the view on justice of the "average Swede".

On third thought I think that mens rea doesn't apply here, since rape is always illegal in Sweden.

[lifeisfiction]

This is what's referred to as "impossibility", perhaps factual impossibility. This refers to a situation where the facts are such that the commission of the crime would be impossible, such as when you shoot a dead body thinking the person is alive. The predicate crime of murder is impossible but the mental culpability and therefore the intent still exists. This is somehow distinguished in law from inherent possibility which I won't go into. Usually factual impossibility does not exculpate.

It's a drawn out, complicated area of criminal law I don't remember, but usually the mens rea issue only occurs in legal impossibility. For instance if someone thinks sugar is illegal, and transports sugar across the border and sells it, there is no crime to charge them with. They did not do anything illegal nor attempt to do anything illegal even if they thought they did. This is to be distinguished from the person who buys sugar but thinks they have bought cocaine, and is in fact guilty of attempt (name narcotics based predicate crime).

I didn't read the actual facts of this case, but it doesn't sound like the judge is making a sound doctrinal argument. The person would only not be guilty of a crime of attempt if they thought they were doing something that is in fact not criminal, but which they mistakenly believed was. Since they thought they were raping a woman, which is apparently illegal, it should make out a crime of attempt. None of this should matter since male rape and female rape should be criminalized. Who knows, but the Swedish legal system may be ass-backwards.


Exactly Bronco, you know where I was heading. I didn't want to start confusing people, I just wanted people to understand their is more going then meets the eye.

The only problem is Sweden has some underlying criminal legal theories that are possibly starkly different than us. For example some countries like ours use the objective theory of contracts. Others use the subjective theory and some countries like Italy use both. Here looking on the facts there is something within their legal theory that makes the impossible doctrine a plausible outcome. I know there has to be a Swedish criminal lawayer who can fill us on the missing gaps behind Sweden's legal theory.

This is a porn board and while you and I could have tons of fun discussing we would certainly bore everyone.

[Helvis2012]

That's fucked up.