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VOICES

Sweden's negligence in prosecuting rape shows up politics behind Assange arrest

The author of the Beauty Myth and The End of America argues that the pretext of using the rape charges against Assange is a pimping of feminism and an insult to rape victims.

GUESS WHAT? SWEDEN has HIGHER rates of rape than other comparable countries — including higher than the US and Britain, higher than Denmark and Finland. The same Swedish authorities going after Julian Assange do a worse job prosecuting reported rapes than do police and the judiciary in any comparable country. And these are flat-out, unambiguous reported rape cases, not the ‘sex by surprise’ Assange charges involving situations that began consensually.

Indeed, the Swedish authorities — who are now being depicted as global feminist sex-crime-avenger superheroes in blue capes — were shamed by a 2008 Amnesty International report, Case Closed, as being far more dismissive of rape, and far more insulting to rape victims who can be portrayed as ‘asking for it’ by drinking or any kind of sexual ambiguity — than any other country in their comparison group. As Amnesty International put it in a blistering attack: “Swedish Rapists Get Impunity.”

The same Swedish prosecutors who are now claiming custody of Julian Assange are, indeed, so shamefully negligent in prosecuting Swedish rapists who did not happen to embarrass the United States government, that a woman who has been raped in Sweden is ten times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than she is of getting any kind of legal proceeding on her behalf undertaken by Swedish prosecutors.

Read the full article by Naomi Wolf at the Huffington Post >