Women’s Mobility and the Situational Context of Rape: The case of Stockholm, Sweden

• In Event: Crime and Place: A Micro-Macro Perspective

Abstract

A third of all rapes in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, take place outdoors. Little is known about the situational context of this type of sexual offence and less is known about events that precede the rape. An improved understanding may yield opportunities for prevention. The objective of this study is to understand the nature of rape’s situational conditions over time as well as the importance of individual risk factors to rape vulnerability. The analysis is based on medical records of women victimised by rape (outpatients) gathered by the Department of Rape Victim Centre, at Karolinska Institute in 2012 and 2013. These records provide an account of the location and nature of women’s activities on the day of the rape as well information about these patients. Women’s mobility was broken down into time blocks representing seven phases of the day, including their actions, socialisation and places visited pre-event, event, and post event. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and conditional logistic regression. Results show that a third of all rapes happen in transportation settings, particularly in cars (private cars, taxis) and subway and train stations. Parks and forested areas constitute the places where the third of rape cases take place whilst the last third happen in streets/alleys/roads as well as in other outdoor environments, such as stairs, ditches and schoolyards. Victims are young women, about half of them had a history of sexual violence, forty percent declared previous addiction problems and at the time the rape occurred, many had used alcohol after a night out. Surprisingly, only a minority of the sample were alone shortly before the event, they were often approached by the stranger shortly before the rape. On top of these individual factors, findings are indicative of the importance of women’s mobility and socialisation over time and space to explain the variation of rape victimisation.

Authors

• Vania Ceccato, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

• Douglas Wiebe, University of Pennsylvania

• Bita Eshraghi, Department of Rape Victim Centre, Karolinska Institute, Sweden