Today’s big topic: She is worried about very young boys with a »very, very limited« sexual experience who get caught up in the consent law.
Frederikke Madsen is both a defense attorney and a mother, and she describes how she is a feminist yet still worried that a generation of very young men will get caught up in the consent law because they have not been properly taught what consent is.
What’s happening?
Frederikke Madsen had never imagined she would end up criticizing a law designed to make it easier to secure rape convictions.
On the contrary, says the 37-year-old defense attorney when we meet her at the Advodan law office in Glostrup.
»Because I’m a woman, a mother, and a feminist«, she says.
Still, she worries about the consequences of the consent law that took effect in 2021 – legislation Frederikke Madsen has dealt with both as a defense lawyer for defendants, typically young men, and as counsel for complainants, typically young women.
»The average Dane who isn’t involved in the criminal justice system may have a hard time understanding the problems with this law. Because consent is, of course, a good thing. In practice, it’s just not that simple«, she says.
She fears that a generation of young men will be sent to prison without having been taught what it actually means to have sex with consent.
When the consent law came into force in 2021, it changed the legal standard for when something counts as rape.
Today, violence, coercion, or threats are no longer required for something to qualify as rape under the law. Lack of consent – physical or verbal – is now punishable as well. The law was described by the justice minister at the time, Nick Hækkerup, as one of »the most important victories for gender equality in Denmark«.
Why it matters!
»Of course sex has to be mutual, and it’s a good idea to strengthen protection for the complainant. But criminal law also demands due process and solid evidence, and we haven’t ensured that those requirements can always be upheld in the way these cases are handled«, Frederikke Madsen says.
The problem, according to Frederikke Madsen, arises in cases where there is no violence, coercion, or a clear no, but where the court must decide whether there was consent in a situation where only two people were present and they have sharply different experiences of what happened. Madsen says she has encountered such cases many times herself.
Unlike a fight in the nightlife, there are rarely witnesses, surveillance footage, or physical injuries on the body that can be used as evidence.
That is why, in her experience, these cases often end up as one person’s word against the other’s.
»It ends up being up to the courts to decide whose account is more credible. That’s difficult, and that’s why the cases often end in acquittals«, she says.
It also often happens that prosecutors do not bring charges at all.
»But even then, the accused has been charged and questioned, and maybe his entire high school knows he’s been accused of rape«, she says.
All in all, it is an intense process for those involved, who, in Frederikke Madsen’s experience, most often did not set out to commit rape. On the contrary, she says, her clients are typically very young boys with a »very, very limited« sexual experience, who come from well-resourced families and differ socially from the defendants she otherwise usually encounters in criminal cases.
»Many never intended to cross another person’s boundaries. What they did doesn’t come from malice, but from inexperience. In those cases, I find it extreme that they risk a sentence of more than a year in unconditional prison«.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
In other news
– Immigrants’ pay keeps pace with Danes’
At first glance, the many thousands of foreigners who have streamed into Denmark seem to work in typical low-wage jobs – as couriers, for example, in hotels, in restaurants, or doing cleaning. But that is far from the whole truth, a new analysis shows – ’Foreign labor follows Danes up the wage ladder’ – from the think tank Kraka and the accounting firm Deloitte. Foreign workers who come to the country may start out in the usual low-wage jobs, but they move up the hierarchy quickly, and their mobility resembles that of Danish employees. According to the analysis, foreign employees have grown from making up about 185,000 people – just under 8 percent of the country’s wage earners – in 2008 to nearly 15 percent in 2023, or around 388,000 people.
– Officer warns: Do you know that your personal information is out there online?
Digital change frustrates Erik Schramm, who has worked in the police since 2004. Today he is a special adviser on prevention with the Southeast Jutland Police, where he gives talks to older people, a group especially vulnerable to fraud, also known as contact scams. But no matter how much Erik Schramm warns, sketches things out, and explains, he can’t keep up with the scammers. They have a digital head start: »If a strange man stops you on the street and asks for your full name, address, and phone number, would you give it to him? Most people say no. But today that information is freely available online to anyone anywhere in the world. Many seniors don’t know that. Maybe it made sense back when we had a printed phone book. But today it’s a gold mine for criminals«, says Erik Schramm, and continues: »These days you have to ask to have your contact information removed. I think it ought to be the other way around: Your information shouldn’t be out there unless you actively say yes. Work has been set in motion to change the telecommunications law, but unfortunately it’s moving slowly«. Erik Schramm would therefore also like to see Facebook and other social media platforms required to restrict users’ profiles so their information is not freely accessible.
– 78-year-old ’Gearless’ shakes his head in the middle of the inlet: »This is deadly serious«
Life needs to be breathed back into Denmark’s inlets, and it can’t happen fast enough, says former diver and engineer Jan Henningsen, also known as ’Gearløs’, who has taken matters into his own hands. »In 2017 there was a nice sandy seabed and plenty of eelgrass and life in the fjord, but that was then«, says Jan Henningsen, who often checks his phone for the boat’s exact coordinates and the water depth. »In a moment you’re going to see a seabed that’s stone-dead«. Breathing life back into Denmark’s inlets has been a central element of the 2024 green tripartite agreement, in which the area around the inlet Isefjord was singled out as one of the places under the greatest strain. The goal is a healthier aquatic environment by taking farmland out of production and converting it into nature so that nitrogen runoff from agricultural fertilizer can be reduced. A new report from Local Government Denmark, however, shows that nationwide, commitments have been made for just five percent of the projects to convert farmland that are needed to improve the aquatic environment.
Talk of town: Aula sees five million parent logins a week – fathers are conspicuously absent
When parents log on to the controversial platform to check schedules, reply to teachers, ask about missing rain boots or arrange a child’s birthday party, three out of four times it is women. That is what previously undisclosed figures show numbers that Politiken asked the municipalities’ I.T. consortium, Kombit, to extract from Aula.
»It is especially women who log on. When you look at your own children’s daily life and the Aula threads, maybe it’s not that surprising, but it wasn’t something we had on our radar at all when we developed and designed the platform«, says Mikkel Hedegaard, Kombit’s director of Aula.
Figures from Skole & Forældre show that mothers also dominate the nation’s school boards. Sixty-two percent of the parent-elected members are women. The same holds for 55 percent of chair positions meaning Jonas Albjerg is in the minority.
In 2018, a study by the Rockwool Foundation found that Danish women, on average, spend an hour more than men each day on family logistics and caregiving.
Jens-Peter Thomsen, a professor (MSO) who studies family patterns and inequality, sees it as a matter of principle – for men and children as well – that women so often become the family’s representative in dealings with schools, institutions and other families.
»Besides placing additional burdens on women, men also cut themselves off from interaction that’s about their children’s lives. The lopsided representation can also mean certain viewpoints become dominant at the expense of others in Aula threads and school board meetings. And children mirror what they experience: It’s Mom you ask, because Dad doesn’t know what’s going on«, says Jens-Peter Thomsen, of VIVE, noting that gender roles are thus reproduced.
The sociologist Maria Ørskov Akselvoll published her Ph.D. dissertation a decade ago on social imbalances in cooperation between schools and families. As part of that work, she found that digital school-home cooperation on Forældreintra – Aula’s predecessor – amplified the demands placed on families and largely became women’s responsibility.
»In reality, it isn’t so much about Aula itself, because these figures simply reflect the big difference in how mothers and fathers divide roles in all kinds of areas. It’s well established that women, in general, are exposed to this invisible cognitive load, which comes with a number of negative consequences«, says Maria Ørskov Akselvoll, pointing to inequality in the labor market as well as rising rates of stress and burnout among women.
Read the full article here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.