I'd say it's worse than you thought. Not only is it very easy to file a rape charge in Sweden, they lead Europe by a
wide margin in reported rapes double that of the nearest countries and of all these states listed are second only to Botswana. They also have a per capita
rape conviction rate three-four times the European average. So not only do they have an unholy number of reports, they also have an incredible number of convictions.
Funny that you quoted part of the reason that it is believed that Sweden has a high complaint level, and not the rest. Funny that you also forgot to add the part of the quote that stated that Sweden's rape rate isn't different to other countries.
in Sweden a lot of effort is made to register all cases that can be suspected to be rape. As this is done at a very early stage of the process, cases are included that later turn out to be some other sex crime, or even no crime at all. In addition to this, all individual acts are registered — not just the latest occasion or the main crime. In many other countries cases like these are filtered out and do not show up in the statistics.
I have no idea why you linked to Nigel Hawkes article to try and prove that Sweden had a high conviction rate of three to four times the European Average as he never states that in the article, all he says is that the UK's is lower than Sweden's.
What seems to distress some people is all the ones that don't get prosecuted make for a low prosecution rate, and I suspect they are the sort who wouldn't dare consider that might be because a lot of those are bogus accusations like this one.
It is well known that rape is notoriously hard to prosecute because 90% of the time it is merely a "He says, She says" case with very little physical evidence. Just because the police fail to prosecute or even when a defendant is found Not Guilty doesn't mean no crime was committed and that the complaint was bogus, it means there wasn't enough evidence to convict. Now that's not saying that all complaints are true either, just that a complaint can be true, but for reasons of evidence it may never get a conviction.
As to this particular case, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I firmly believe that starting sexual intercourse with a sleeping person you are not in a long term relationship with and have no reason to believe that the person would consent if awake, and every reason to know that they would not, is a criminal action that most legal states call rape. You clearly don't. I guess at that point we are at an impasse. It would appear from this case and others that the laws agrees with me however.
Being as the five years previous to this event saw the number of reported rapes increase by 50%, either males in Sweden have been acting like Europe hasn't seen since the Red Army conquered eastern Germany, or it has become quite trendy in Sweden to accuse men of rape on specious grounds as false accusations are seldom prosecuted. I find the former explanation unlikely and the latter fitting quite nicely with Anna's 'legal revenge' blog.
This is what we call a false dichotomy.
Despite the dramatic retelling, that was consensual sex by her own admission and with a condom. Her own
account also notes that she checked more than once that a condom was installed and found that it was. Her assumption that the pool could only have materialized because he deliberately broke the condom for
whatever reason is ludicrous.
Anything she, or Sofia below, says about their state of mind, or their opinion of what he was thinking is
meaningless as he can't read their minds and well after the fact when they're pissed about him for other reasons.
No one is claiming that the sex in the case of AA wasn't consensual sex, in fact as you point out she herself says it was. This is why the accusations in the case of AA are not Rape, they are 1. Unlawful coercion, and 2. Sexual molestation. Neither of these require that the sex was non-consensual, so you are throwing in red herrings there. The accusations relate to his alleged holding her down and preventing her from moving while she struggled against him, and the alleged deliberate breaking of the condom.
Which occurred in the context of him being invited to stay with her, having sex with her, and sleeping in her bed. She rebuffed the approach and like all others when she wasn't interested, he demurred. That's not what one would expect of a rapist.
Yes he demurred by allegedly stripping off and rubbing himself against her, an action that left her upset and made her left the property and request him to be gone, something he failed to do for another three days. I'm not sure what world you live in, but the idea that after having had sex with someone once, you are entitled to behave like that towards them is more than creepy to me. By the way, sharing a house and even a bed is NOT a open invitation to having sex, even if the person has had sex with you previously. In fact even being in a sexual relationship with another person is not an open invitation to having sex whenever you want it as most countries have conceded by the introduction of spousal rape laws.
However the
context of this one is a marathon sex session where he first disappointed her and fell asleep
If you consider two perhaps three times to be a "marathon sex session".
then they twice awoke to having sex
Blatantly incorrect. on the previous occasions she stated that they awoke and had sex, not that they were awoken by having sex.
regardless of who initiated the encounters (as she doesn't say) it establishes that wasn't beyond the bounds of their sexual relationship, because she then calls in sick to work to continue having sex with him and goes out to get him breakfast.
Again incorrect in details. She called in sick after Assange had left. Going and getting breakfast (which according to her he ordered her to do and wasn't happy about) is not an open invitation to sex.
They have sex again and then she awakes to find him starting again and inquires as to the condom and he tells her the truth and she says 'you better not have HIV' and he replies 'of course not,' and she does not object and afterward she even laughs and jokes about having a baby after finding he'd been recently tested. This is her own story.
That's not rape.
I highlighted the important part for you. Whether you like it or not, previously having has sex does not give you cart blanche to keep having sex whenever you like, even if that sex was earlier in the day. Secondly, starting to have sex with someone who is asleep is a potentially a criminal offence because they are not in a condition to give their consent to such an action. The issue for if it is or isn't for me is would the person have given consent to the action had they been awake? In this case the answer is quite clear. Since she had demanded the use of condoms previously, in fact in her own words "She'd been nagging about condoms all night long," she would not have consented to having unprotected sex with Assange had she been awake when the act had commenced.
To me the actions taken afterward are irrelevant to whether consent was given for two reasons. 1) I find it very hard to accept the post dating of consent. Consent needs to be given before the action, not after. If consent is not gained before an action, then by definition that action is non-consensual. And no, consent can't just be assumed by previous actions. 2) In many cases, and it appears this is one, once the action has been started, the infringed party merely accepts that action based on the fact it is already being done. This is not consent but rather resignation to the action after the fact.
As a matter of fact unlike Anna, there's no
absolute insistence of a condom with this one either, merely a preference for them and nagging, which he complied with. When he wanted not to use one she didn't object, and it was an issue of mirth until she got to talking to others, finding things out about Assange she didn't like from the one who'd blogged about legal revenge tactics, of which one in Sweden involves condom use...
This boils down to the whole "Victims must act in the specific way I demand or they can't be victims" mentality. I fail to agree with you here. People act in entirely different ways to things, and most of the time that won't be the way you demand that they do. Also, to the whole "no
absolute insistence of a condom" the only time she failed to insist on one was when he started when she was sleep. Assange was fully aware that on the previous occasions she had indeed insisted on his using them and so had absolutely no excuse for claiming not to have known it in the final case. The allowing it to continue was not an acceptance of not having one, but rather a resignation to what was being done to her because it was too late to change it.
"She felt it was too late. He was already inside her and she let him continue. She couldn't be bothered telling him again. She'd been nagging about condoms all night long."
This is a classic response to a feeling of powerlessness and resignation to allow a form of abuse to continue. It doesn't make a person any less a victim. When a spouse is being beaten, they don't stop being a victim because they give up and just accept the beatings without complaint.
Nothing like that happened here though, and there's also an expectation of consent, which happens when two people are willingly in bed naked together.
Wow. Sorry but being in bed naked with someone in no way shape or form implies consent to having sex.
If the slavering brute tries something mild and not out of the ordinary (for a sexual relationship) but something the other doesn't like, then she says something like 'no, don't do that,' and at that point if he fails to comply then the question of withdrawn consent arises. Otherwise we're going to need contracts and pre-choreographed sex!
We're not talking about trying "something mild and not out of the ordinary (for the relationship they had)" we are talking about a man starting sexual intercourse in a manner that he knew, after being told repeatedly, was unacceptable at a point in time that he also knew the woman would be unable to object to his doing so. No contracts and choreography needed, just some descent human manners and being able to do what the woman wanted after being told multiple times, rather than forcing his own will onto her.
That's where the word 'No' comes in handy. Her regaling of her state of mind much later is pretty much irrelevant and after indications from her own story she wasn't very distressed about it until she found out he was sleeping with another woman who just happened to know legal revenge strategies.
Again untrue to her statement. It states that she learned that "she understood she was the victim of a crime" after talking with her friends later. It doesn't state, and there is no evidence that this discussion happened after she had spoken with AA and found out he'd slept with her. If anything she was likely under the impression given to her by Assange that AA was only into girls at the time she spoke to her friends.
Uh, huh, uh huh.
Yes amazing isn't it, some people may not know that they have been offended against until it's explained to them by someone else that actually knows the law. Funny thing, I didn't know I had been illegally dismissed from a job back in 1998 when I was forced to resign, until I had it explained to me a couple of months ago. I was in the dark about being the victim of an employment crime for 14 years! I was also involved in a case of sexual harassment (as a victim) where I didn't recognise what it was for well two years until I attended a seminar on sexual harassment in the workplace and went, OMG that was me. All I knew what that the person in question made me highly uncomfortable in her actions towards me. By that stage I had already left the company, and so has she. The fact of the matter is that in the clear light of day, and with a number of years to reflect on what occurred, you still seem to be unwilling to accept that it might have been a crime, so to point the finger and say she should have known immediately and responded to it as such, or it wasn't one, certainly is a double standard.
Whether or not it's even illegal in Sweden has yet to be established, but what she may have found out is she can get the brute punished by at least being arrested, humiliated and thrown in jail, and there was little chance of consequences for her.
Or she might have found out that commencing sexual intercourse when a person in unable to consent and doing so in a manner they would not have consented to is called non-consensual sex, or if you want a non technical term for it, rape.
I'm not going to bother responding to the last part of the post as it really is just more mudslinging that has been repeatedly dealt with in this thread.
ETA: Actually I will add one more thing. If these two were really out to get Assange, I suspect that they would have done a far better job. Instead of saying that he held her down AA could have come up with a far better attempted rape story I am sure by just embellishing the statement she gave a little more. Adding in how she told him she wanted him to use a condom and he refused and tried to push her legs apart anyway saying he wasn't going to use one, and that it was only after she got out from under him and he convinced her he was sorry and would use one that they had sex. For SW she could have stated that on waking and finding he wasn't using one she told him to get off and he refused and held her down to finish. These stories would have been very easy to concoct and use, not that far from what they did tell so as to be seen as suspicious, but would have been far, far stronger as accusations. The fact they didn't make them stronger is to me one of the major signals that the tales are true.
