Swedish Appeal Court decidedThat Eritrean citizen convicted of rape of 16-year-old Moya Åberg will not be deported. The explanatory memorandum states that the act, although clearly criminal, was not considered to be ‘particularly serious’, inter alia due to ‘the duration of the event’. So it turns out that you can only rape a little, especially erstwhile you are a higher-class man – an immigrant from the "third world".
According to the court, rape of a teenage girl was besides short. Meya returned home in Skellefte, Sweden, after her shift at McDonald’s, where she was moonlighting as a youth worker. It was then that an immigrant from Eritrea Yazied Mohamed decided to rape her in a pedestrian tunnel.
Although the perpetrator was sentenced to 3 years in prison and obliged to pay compensation, the court found that the conditions for deportation – reserved for the most serious crimes – were not met in this case. The construction of this argument itself creates immense controversy. The public debate began to simplify: "the rape did not last long enough". This conviction – although catchy – is besides an example of a dangerous thought shortcut.
The problem is that in social reception it creates a category of "partial rape". And this category – both morally and legally – simply does not exist. Rape is not a measurable phenomenon sometimes like a telephone call or a football match. Its essence is the violation of human physical integrity and autonomy. The minute of crossing the consent line is the minute where the crime occurs – whether it lasts a minute or an hour.
It is so not only a simplification but a distortion of the sense of legal protection to measure the seriousness of the action. Of course, it is possible to analyse different circumstances of action – brutality, intellectual effects, usage of force – but the duration itself should not be regarded as a determining criterion of its species weight. From the available accounts, the victim struggles with serious intellectual consequences – nightmares, fears and difficulties in returning to average functioning. This emphasizes the fundamental thing: trauma has no watch. It's not measured in minutes.
Therefore, the thesis about "too short rape" is not only morally doubtful but besides logically inconsistent. If adopted consistently, an absurd scale should be created in which the crime gains "seriousness" only after exceeding a certain time. specified construction would lead to grotesque and dangerous conclusions.
In fact, the problem lies elsewhere – in the tension between rules on protection of refugees and deportation policy. The court did not find that rape was ‘smallly significant’ but that it did not meet the statutory criteria ‘exceptionally serious crime’ which would justify expulsion from the country. The rules were clearly bent to defend a black criminal.
Ultimately, it is not just 1 sentence. It's about how we describe force and what limits we put in his assessment. "Partial rape" is simply a concept which has so far been performed only in humorous form. Now it turns out that it may be in legal rhetoric; it serves to defend black and arabian rapists.
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