A must-read piece about intimate partner violence and rape.
Sexual violence against women in Scandinavia shares characteristics seen in more unequal societies: It is all too common and rarely reported, and those who commit it are even more rarely convicted. Ancient prejudices about male prerogative and modern assumptions about female emancipation conspire to create a thick wall of silence, shame and legal ambiguity.
One in 10 Norwegian women over the age of 15 has been raped, according to the country’s largest shelter organization, the Secretariat of the Shelter Movement. But at least 80 percent of these cases are never brought to official attention and only 10 percent of those that are end in a conviction, the Justice Ministry says.
Nowhere is this taboo more stubborn than in the family home, long considered off-limits for law enforcement and the state.
“The statistics tell us that the safest place for women is outside, on the street — most rapes happen at home,” said Tove Smaadahl, general manager of the Shelter Movement. In a 2005 survey by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 9 percent of female respondents in a relationship reported experiencing sexual assault.
“No, we don’t have equality between men and women,” Ms. Smaadahl said, “not until we have addressed the issue of relationship rape.”