Protesters outside the Parliament building in Helsinki last August voicing their concern about paedophiles receiving too light sentences.

A professor of criminal law argues that a gross felony is concealed behind misleading legal terminology.

Child rape should be separately classified in criminal law, argues professor of Criminal Law Terttu Utriainen. Today, child rape is subsumed under the provision on child sexual abuse.

“This amounts to concealing a gross felony behind a provision that belies the seriousness of the crime. Putting it in the same category as child sexual abuse gives entirely the wrong signal,” Utriainen says.

Utriainen asserts that judicial practice in Finland wavers. In the case of teenage victims, the perpetrator is often convicted of both rape and child sexual abuse. When the victim is a small child the perpetrator is often convicted only of sexual abuse.

Very few sentences are given for gross child sexual abuse.

“In my view, we should introduce a set of considerations similar to those applied in Sweden and England, where child rapes have their own category. Both legal codes also depart from the premise that the case is always one of child rape even if the child consented to the act.”

Utriainen, who works at the University of Lapland, has just finished her study on rape crimes. Even very small children have suffered cruel violence.

“For example, children have been tied up and one child was even tied by the neck to a choker and made to swim in a hole in the ice.”

In the course of studying mental examinations Utriainen noticed that only a fifth of the offenders had been diagnosed as paedophiles.

“The word ‘paedophile’ is applied as a general term to all child abusers even though it signifies, in medical terminology, a predilection for pre-adolescent children.”

During her research Utriainen also noticed that criminal law provisions do not actually apply. Many sentences for acts of rape and child sexual abuse could have been judged to be gross felonies.

“This is partly due to the confidential nature of the decisions as well as the fact that sexual crimes are quite rare. Judges operate on a limited scale and the sentences fall in the lower end of the chart.

MARJO SORMUNEN – STT
ALEKSIS TORO – HT