Allt ljus på våldtäktsoffret – En uppsats om målsägandes ansvar i våldtäktsmål

Sammanfattning: Based on the new Consent Act, this essay examines the responsibility placed on plaintiffs in rape cases and compares it with what the responsibility has traditionally looked like. With an approach that is characterized by legal development and gender rights, I try to understand how the role of the plaintiff has been created and continues to be created, and how law and society affect each other in different directions. Based mainly on preparatory work, appeals court cases and literature that describes previous practice, I examine the development. I am particularly interested in the linguistic design of rules and reasoning. The conclusion I’ve reached is that historically, through legal text and practice, a certain type of plaintiff has been constructed who herself bears great responsibility for what has happened (as opposed to the perpetrator, whose responsibility is thus shifted). In the conflict between legal protection and legal security, the plaintiff's legal protection has been beaten. However, since the new Consent Act came into force, I believe I can see a change. Now it is no longer threats and violence that constitute the requirement but voluntariness. In previous practice, despite the fact that threats and violence was the limit set in the legal text, the focus has consistently been on the plaintiff's expression of will instead. Interestingly, this has changed as the plaintiff's will has been included in the legal text. The courts now seem to be more inclined to focus on the defendant's responsibilities and clearly mark the limits of what is allowed. They create space for more types of plaintiffs, instead of one stereotype, and they create a female body that is more demarcated and inviolable than before. Even if the application of law and treatment of plaintiffs is not perfect, I feel that great progress has been made. In the future, one must continue to work actively with these issues and be aware of how law and society affect each other alternately.