The public prosecutor appeals the rape verdict

Published 8 October 2024 at 12.24

Domestic. The public prosecutor has appealed an acquittal of rape to the Supreme Court and demanded that a man be sentenced to at least six years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a woman with, among other things, an intellectual disability.

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A man was charged with rape because, over a period of just over a year, he carried out a large number of vaginal and oral intercourse with a woman who lived in an LSS accommodation where the man worked. The man was employed as a carer for the woman, and especially at night when, as a result of her disabilities, the woman was in great need of help and support.

According to the indictment, the man caused the woman to participate in the sexual acts by seriously abusing her dependent position on him as carer. Due to her functional impairments, she was, according to the indictment, also in a particularly vulnerable situation.

The District Court convicted of rape, while the Court of Appeal acquitted. According to the Court of Appeal, it was clear that the woman was dependent on the man, but that it was not proven that the man forced the woman to participate by seriously abusing her dependence on him or that she was in a particularly vulnerable situation due to her disability.< /p>

The appeal states, among other things:

“The questions which, in my opinion, are of interest from a precedent point of view are under what circumstances a person suffering from an intellectual disability should be considered to be in a particularly vulnerable situation and/or in a dependent position in relation to the perpetrator in the sense referred to in 6 ch. 1 § first paragraph 2 and 3 of the criminal code and what is required for the perpetrator to be considered to have caused the plaintiff to participate by seriously abusing the plaintiff's dependent position and/or improperly exploiting the fact that the plaintiff was in a particularly vulnerable situation.”

– I mean that you have to be able to weigh together the fact that the woman was both in a particularly vulnerable situation and in a dependent position in relation to this particular carer. This in turn must mean that, as long as he worked at the LSS accommodation and was a carer for her, she could never participate voluntarily in sexual acts with him, which he must have realized, says tf. Deputy Attorney General Lennart Guné in a statement.