An alleged rape victim, a 15 year old girl, have committed suicide in Sweden. Now the suspected rapist will walk free since the entire case was based on the girl’s story. When you read the different blogs and even the news articles you get the impression that it was an open and shut case, all this girl had to do was to show up and this rapist a-hole would go to jail. Also you get the impression that this girl took her life because of the pressure from this trial. But little of this seems to be true in reality.
First of all this girl seems to have had several problems, doing drugs, self mutilations and such and certainly the extra pressure might have made her take this drastic measure, but from what I can read that connection is not completely valid. Secondly as said, it was only her words that she got raped. If there was any further evidence the trial might go on. There are several bad video recordings and part transcripts of the interrogation of this girl and the man in question has admitted having sex with her and there is also some suspicions of other girls and apparently one other girl were supposed to have testified, so one might think this as ground enough to prosecute, but the prosecuting attorney is convinced he cannot win and consequently dropped the charges, which he should do according to Swedish praxis. If there is no evidence and only someone’s word against someone else, that is never a good point to start from when going to trial. It all comes down to credibility. And this guy is going to be trialed for drugs and another case of alleged rape.
Whatever is true in these rape charges, the ones who really should be blamed are the social authorities and different social workers that seemingly have done nothing despite her families constant plies for help. The thing that is supposed to help and is paid by the tax payers to do exactly these kinds of work, failed miserably. Based on the information at hand, this alleged rapist should walk, that is in all likelihood the correct decision, but I do hope this girl’s family and others don’t let the social services get away from not doing their jobs, they should not be able to walk away from this.
Had you known her, you would not have doubted that she took her life because of this. Sure, she had troubles, anyone who met her could see that (I was her neighbour, and in school we used to be friends), but what tipped her of the scale was this man and what he did to her. She was not feeling well, but she probably would not have commited suicide had she not been raped and had to go through the trial.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone thinks anyone can fabricate lies of this sort and go through a trial, then think again. And the fact that she commited suicide should speak for itself.
He should be prosecuted for manslaughter. May he get what he deserves for what he did to her.
Actually those sorts of things happens all the time, there is a lot of women and men that accuse people for something they haven’t done. I have myself seen it and even if you are sure about this, you shouldn’t be, people can lie. And even if you are right, which you might be, a trial still needs to be about evidence and facts, not feelings or what someone says.
ReplyDeleteWas it a classical "rape" or just sexual intercourse with her when she was underaged (below 15), the girl was maintaining? Generally I think it is a very bad sign of our time, when comparing physical contact (if even sexual) with murder. That also creates murder
ReplyDeleteor suicide, as we see here...
Actually it isn’t really clear, but from what you can read in the newspapers, it was “real” rape we are talking about, not the fact that she was 14y old (which she apparently was at the time). Since this happened several times, over a period of time, it is probably why it is important that she were to testify together with the fact that she gave not very clear statements to the police.
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