Sexualbrott mot barn – en rättskritisk studie av regleringen och tillämpningen av 6 kap 13 § BrB

Sammanfattning: The object for this essay is the regulation in chapter 6 article 13 BrB, which says that the requirement for premeditation in relation to the age of the child when it comes to sexual crimes against children has been removed. Instead, the rule says that even the one that did not realise, but had reasonable grounds to assume that the child was under aged, should be sentenced for the crime. The purpose of this essay is to, with a legal certainty perspective, examine how much and what kind of guidance for the interpretation and implementation of the rule that has been given by the legislator. In addition to this, the purpose of the essay is also to, in a critical way, examine the courts’ interpretation and implementation of chapter 6 article 13 BrB. This is to see if the application of the law is uniform and fulfills the criteria of predictability. To answer the questions of the essay, both the legaslative history of the rule, and several judgements from the courts have been analysed. The judgements have been studied in order to analyse how the courts in specific cases have interpreted and implemented the rule of chapter 6 article 13 BrB, and not in order to determine what the established law is. What is shown in the essay is that the legislator hardly has given any guidance in the legislative history about the practical implementation of the rule in chapter 6 article 13 BrB. Almost no comment on what circumstances should be taken into account in the adjudication has been made. Instead, almost the entire interpretation of the rule has been left to the courts to do. In the analysis of the different judgements it is shown that the courts have not developed any common guidelines for the application of the rule and that the adjudication is not very uniform or predictable. In the courts’ judgements of the children’s body development several courts seem to have misinterpreted the legislators comment on how the body development should affect the judgement of the defendant’s carelessness in relation to the age of the children. The protection for children against sexual abuse is not completely satisfied in the practical implementation of the law.