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It's placid Sweden's dark side. Between 2004 and 2007, Fokus reports, the number of reported rapes has increased 81% to reach a rate of 46 per 100,000 inhabitants. Far ahead of England and Wales, where the rate of 23 per 100,000 inhabitants is Europe's second highest. The weekly explains that since 2005 it suffices that the victim is in a state of helplessness (loss of consciousness, drunkeness, sleep) for the sexual act to be constituted as rape.
But legislation itself can't explain this increase, says the weekly. According to Eva Diesen, one of the author's of the European report that has published these figures, women are considered sexually available when they don't resist. "It's like being stuck between Scylla and Charybdis," Fokus explains. "For a half century, Sweden has been renowned for its loose sexual mores and its free and easy women. It's now number one in the rape league."
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