Sexual assaults on board passenger ferries equally common in Finland and Sweden

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Some 20 per cent of all rape incidents reported to the Turku Police Department have taken place on ferries.
      In 2006, a total of eight cases of sexual assault were reported to the Turku police from the Silja and Viking ferries sailing to Turku, while the total number of all rape cases being simultaneously investigated by the police was 39.
     
The number of sexual offences has dropped since then, as in 2007 the figure was only three and in 2008 one. However, the rate has picked up in the current year, as already four cases have been reported to the police so far in 2009.
      The Stockholm Police have estimated that out of all reports relating to sex offences some 20 per cent come from passenger ferries.
     
Detective Inspector Veikko Koiranen from the Turku Police says that without any official statistics to lean on he would estimate that these rapes have been committed by Finns rather than by Swedes.
      Koiranen does not recall any case involving an older woman suspected of forcing an underage boy to have sexual intercourse with her.
      ”On the other hand, if a 15-year-old boy decides to do such things to a woman in her 40s, it is a rape as well. The age is not decisive, but the act itself is”, Koiranen notes.
      Pekka Viljanen, Professor in criminal law and procedural law at the University of Turku, says that rapes are difficult cases as often there is one person’s word against another, and it is certain that sometimes unjustified decisions are made.
      The use of alcohol is not relevant, but it makes investigations more difficult, Viljanen says.
     
Last weekend, five Swedish men were arrested on suspicion of gang rape on the Birka Paradise.
      Another rape suspicion was reported from Viking LIne’s Cinderella. A woman reported that two 15-year-old boys from Stockholm had raped her.
      Also Silja Galaxy reported an incident involving rape.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Amnesty International criticises Finnish rape legislation (17.9.2008)

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