Attitudes among adolescents in a Swedish city toward some sexual crimes

Using data from a representative sample of adolescents in grade ten in Uppsala, the fourth largest city in Sweden, attitudes toward a number of (criminal) sexual acts are studied. These data are contrasted with those from a sample of patients at a school gynecological clinic. It is found that for both samples, only a very limited number of the eight discussed acts are considered to be criminal by the adolescents. Although at least seven or eight acts are criminal in Swedish law, only two acts are considered criminal by about half of the respondents. These acts are pedophilia and rape after petting. The same questions were used by Kutchinsky in 1969 when on behalf of the U.S. Congress Commission on Obscenity and Pornography he studied inhabitants in Copenhagen, Denmark. When comparing data from Uppsala Sweden 1978 with data from Copenhagen, Denmark 1969 we find that Swedish adolescents in the late seventies, on the whole are much less likely to call the discussed acts criminal. The only exception is rape after petting, which in Copenhagen in the late sixties was the act least often seen as criminal but in the Uppsala study in the late seventies it was one of the two acts most often claimed to be criminal. Finally, the effects of coital experience and the effect of sexual knowledge on the percieved criminality of the acts are considered.