Ten percent of Norwegian women claim to have been intercourse a b u s e d before the age of 16, according to an alarming new report from the University of Bergen.
One in ten girls s e x u a l l y a b u s e d as teens: report
A quarter of the women selected at random for the study, all aged 18-80, said they had been subjected to intercourse offensive conduct before turning 16, newspaper Dag s a v i s e n reports.
In all, just over half the women in the study and more than a fifth of the men said they had experienced some form of intercourse offensive behavior.
These are alarmingly high figures, said psychologist Iris M. Stein at the University of Bergen.
Intercourse a b u s e is a very serious problem. The high occurrence and the high risk of injury shows there’s a clear need for preventive measures, she told Dag s a v i s e n.
Under Norwegian law, the term unsolicited intercourse relations cover the most serious lovemaking crimes, including rape and intercourse assault.
Some 11.4 percent of women said they had experienced unsolicited intercourse relations before their 16th birthday, while 16.3 percent of female respondents said they first fell victim to serious lovemaking offenses after turning.
24.3 percent of the women surveyed said they had come into contact with intercourse offensive behavior while still under the age of 16. This category included witnessing indecent exposure and being shown adults.
For the study, lovemaking offense, were defined more broadly than in Norwegian law to include several forms of non-physical a b u s e and harassment, a factor that contributed to higher than usual figures for a survey of this kind.
Regardless of this discrepancy, children’s ombudsman Anne L i n d b o e said she was in no way surprised to learn that intercourse a b u s e of all kinds is widespread in Norway.
It’s a major problem. This is something a lot of children fall victim to, and which they carry with them and don’t dare talk about, she said.
A total of 706 people participated in the study, 55 percent of whom were women and 45 percent men.
Why does Norway not have a rape law requiring s e x u a l consent?
Unlike its Scandinavian neighbors, Norway is yet to move towards a reform of intercourse violence laws to make consent rather than violence the basis for determining rape.
Norway’s governing Conservative party says the country is not considering an intercourse consent law at the current time as neighboring Nordic nations press forward with the reform.
In Denmark, the government earlier this week announced changes to its own law's meaning that consent will become the determining factor in rape cases.
Denmark's legal change, which has majority support in parliament, is expected to be adopted by the end of the year. Under the new law, a intercourse partner could express their consent verbally or indirectly according to the circumstances.
A similar law has meanwhile been in place in Sweden since 2018.
Denmark plans rape law requiring intercourse consent
Five things to know about Sweden's intercourse consent law
A proposal to introduce consent to intercourse assault laws in Norway has previously been rejected by the country’s parliament.
In March 2018, a Socialist Left (SV) party proposal to introduce a consent law was voted down by the then-government coalition of the Conservative, Liberal and Progress parties along with the Center Party.
Peter Christian F r o l i c h, a lawmaker with the governing Conservative party and vice-chair of the parliament’s justice committee, told newspaper VG in a written comment that the party was against making explicit consent the basis for rape law.
“A large majority in parliament has said a clear ‘no’ to a consent law. All parties want to fight rape, but it must be done in a good way which follows Norwegian legal tradition,” F r o l i c h said.
“(A legal requirement for consent) is difficult to enforce in practice. It can also work against its intention and place focus on what the victim should have done rather than what the perpetrator actually did,” he added.
That is in stark contrast to the views of the Danish government, whose justice minister Nick H a k k e r u p said on Tuesday that the country was “moving from a system where there had to be coercion and violence for it to be rape, to one where there must be consent”.
In Sweden, a more long-term outcome of the law change can be observed, considering it was passed by the Swedish parliament in 2018.
The number of rape convictions in the country rose by 75 percent to 333 last year.
That is evidence Norway should follow the example of the other two Nordic countries, according to A l b e r t e B e k k h u s, leader of the youth section of Norway’s left-wing Red Party.
“A consent law makes it not just easier (for victims) to report (rape), it can also lead to a change in perception,” B e k k h u s told VG.
“This can be seen in statistics on cases that are shelved in Norway. There are a lot of people who suffer rapes but aren’t able to report them because the chance the investigation will be shelved is so high,” she said.
F r o l i c h rejected comparisons with Sweden, arguing that Norway’s rape laws are “miles ahead” of its neighbor, citing Norwegian laws against negligent rape.
Women's groups have welcomed the planned legal change in Denmark, where the Federation of Danish Women on Tuesday called it a “historic victory for legality and the right to take intercourse decisions”.
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