Barn blir inte trodda på, eller är det verkligen så? : En kvalitativ studie om hur flickors röster blir trodda på i tingsrätten

Sammanfattning: Every year, children are subjected to sexual and/or physical abuse or rape, by relatives and/or strangers. We know that it happens in society but due to a large number of unreported cases nobody knows the exact number. Once the children report sexual crimes, professionals argue about the child's credibility. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the district court's (tingsrättens) arguments in order to understand how girls' credibility is presented in relation to other evidence, after they are suspected of having been subjected to sexual abuse. The material we used was twenty-five court cases from district courts in Sweden, where children under the age of fifteen where suspected of having been subjected to sexual abuse. This essay is based on a qualitative method. The collected material has then been analyzed based on Hällgren Graneheim, Lindgren and Lundman's (2023) qualitative content analysis. We have also used Christie's (2001) theory of the Ideal Victim to analyze the children's role as victims. The result showed that most of the children in the court cases were considered credible by the district court. In contrast, the results showed that the defendants who did not receive a conviction lacked corroborating evidence, such as DNA-evidence, witnesses to corroborate their story, messages, photos or video clips. At last, the result showed that when the defendants admitted to the crime, the district court did not argue in quite as much detail about the plaintiff's credibility as in the other court cases.