Free speech trials and debate shed light on #MeToo in Sweden

Almost five years after it exploded in the United States and spread to much of the world, #MeToo is back on the couch in Sweden. In the European champion of gender equality, the movement that sheds light on cases of sexual harassment and abuse unfolded in debates about the legal system, freedom of expression and journalism.

Last month, an iconic Swedish #MeToo case resurfaced, with the acquittal of an activist in one of two defamation suits brought by the man she accused, in 2011, of raping her five years earlier. The complaint, investigated at the time, was shelved without trial for lack of evidence.

In October 2017, when the wave gained momentum on social media after the American press revealed the sex crimes of film producer Harvey Weinstein, the Swedish actress and writer Cissi Wallin, 37, made a post on Instagram in which she announced that she had been drugged and raped by a journalist from a major local newspaper, revealing her name.

Fredrik Virtnanen denies the crimes and filed a defamation suit against Wallin, who in 2019 was sentenced in the first instance to two years in prison, in addition to a fine of €9,000 (R$ 46,000, at the current exchange rate). The appeal is due to be heard in October.

In the months following the decision, she independently wrote a book detailing the case — without mentioning the name of the alleged rapist. Shortly after the publication of “All that Was Mine: The Story that’s Not Allowed to Be Told” came the news of the second lawsuit, by the same man and for the same reason: defamation.

“I wrote the book especially to talk about the process, about what it’s like to be a rape victim, reveal your story and then end up being the criminal. It was like a Kafkaesque novel,” Wallin tells sheetby telephone, days after the second complaint was rejected by the Justice.

“In the case of the book I went free. Swedish law sees a difference between writing something on Instagram and writing a book, even if you say the same thing.” The case reverberated after an opinion piece published in The New York Times. contacted by sheetVirtanen declined to comment.

The decision is just one of the contradictions surrounding #MeToo in Sweden. Another that draws attention even has its own name, given by civil organizations and academic studies: the “Nordic paradox”. The expression refers to the dissonance between good indicators of gender equality in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden and the high rates of violence against women in these countries.

The report “Time for Change: Justice for Rape Survivors in the Nordic Countries”, released in 2019 by Amnesty International, points out reasons that contribute to the Nordic paradox. “Part of [chamado] The rape myth is to hold women accountable for being subjected to violence and abuse. Victim blaming appears to be particularly tenacious [nesses países]”, says the document.

In October, the organization released another report, focusing on the Swedish situation, in which it says that the failure to prevent sexual violence and ensure justice for rape victims is “a serious challenge to the protection of the human rights of women and girls in Sweden.” “.

In 2018, still in the wake of #MeToo, a law came into force in the country that defines the practice of non-consensual sexual acts as rape, an important step in the fight against abuse. According to Amnesty International, as a result, there has been a 75% increase in convictions for sex crimes – from 190 in 2017 to 333 in 2019.

However, the study recognizes that most cases do not even reach the police, due to the authorities’ unpreparedness to receive reports and investigate them and the legislation on freedom of expression and defamation — the latter illustrated by the case of Wallin, who was prosecuted while the accused did not come to trial.

“Does legislative reform to address sexual violence make a difference when survivors of sexual violence are routinely fired, questioned and, in some cases, criminalized?” asks Caitlin Carroll, a researcher at the University of Texas who studies the Nordic paradox and #MeToo in Sweden.

In an article for the Council for European Studies (CES), she wrote that the country’s legal system, despite recent changes, is still not prepared to deal with the stories of victims of abuse. “We need to talk more about what it means to believe in women, why stories of rape and sexual assault are so routinely dismissed as unfounded by both the criminal justice system and society, and how we can move forward by following #MeToo.”

The word “backlash” (resistance or negative reaction) is often used when talking about the movement in Sweden. “I say with sadness that we are facing a negative response, especially when it comes to public debate,” says Ester Pollack, a professor in the Department of Journalism at Stockholm University.

Despite seeing lasting effects, especially in relation to the awareness that the movement has aroused in work environments, she believes that #MeToo lacked organization to maintain its initial strength, marked by mobilizations of several women’s groups gathered. “This [‘backlash’] occurs when there is a broad social movement. But without leadership, people were organizing in different ways and it became difficult to keep it alive as a movement,” he says.

Cissi Wallin agrees: “In the first few weeks, each sector had its own hashtag: women from the technology industry, from restaurants, etc. But what was seen in other countries, of work stoppages, lawsuits against employers, never happened in Sweden. Here, it stayed on paper and in the hashtag.”

Another side effect, according to Pollack, attracted attention of its own and ended up weakening the Swedish #MeToo: newspaper coverage at the time of the first denunciations, of cases involving well-known and powerful men. “The tabloids turned this structural problem into something very individualized. They demonized private lives, and it became the story of one or two people.”

According to the professor, names of alleged aggressors were exposed in reports based on reports from anonymous sources and without a thorough data check. In a country with a tradition in the figure of the ombudsman and a kind of self-regulation of the media (through a press council), sensationalism in the name of audience made vehicles reveal ethical practices in force until then – such as not publishing the names of criminal suspects before conviction.

“The hustle caused some to forget all about ethics at the time. And that also contributed to the backlash.”