Trovärdighet i tingsrätten - en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av våldtäktsdomar

Sammanfattning: The purpose of the study was to examine how the district court describes the plaintiff in rape convictions in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the district court reasons about the plaintiff’s credibility. The material used for the study consisted of ten district court verdicts from one bigger and one smaller city in Sweden where the verdict was given in 2015 and 2016. The material was analyzed with a qualitative content analysis method. The theories that have been used are social constructivism and a gender perspective. The results show that recurrent categories in the district court verdicts are about the woman’s intake of alcohol and drugs, her resistance during the rape, her behavior afterwards and if the woman has had reason or not to lie about being raped. An overarching theme that was found was about the woman’s credibility. The conclusion of this study was that the district court reasoned different from case to case regarding the different categories. Therefore, it was not possible within this study to draw conclusions to why some women were considered credible to the district court and others not.