Women’s Mobility and the Situational Conditions of Rape: Cases Reported to Hospitals

Vania Ceccato, Douglas J. Wiebe, Bita Eshraghi, Katerina Vrotsou

A third of all rapes in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, take place in public outdoor places. Yet, little is known about the events that precede this type of sexual offence and less about the situational context of rape. This study aims to improve the understanding of the nature of situational conditions that immediately precede events of rape. Using medical records of 147 rape victims during 2012 and 2013, we constructed time- and place-specific records of the places women traveled through or spent time at, the activities they engaged in, and the people they interacted with sequentially over the course of the day when they were raped. The analysis uses visualization tools (VISUAL-TimePAcTS), Geographical Information Systems, and conditional logistic regression to identify place-, context-, and social interaction-related factors associated with the onset of rape. Results for this sample of cases reported to hospitals show that being outdoors was not necessarily riskier for women when compared with indoor public settings; some outdoor environments were actually protective, such as streets. Being in a risky social context and engaging in a risky activity before the event was associated with an increased risk of rape, and the risk escalated over the day. Among those women who never drank alcohol, the results were similar to what was observed in the overall sample, which suggests that risky social interaction and risky activity made independent contributions to the risk of rape. The article finishes with suggestions for rape prevention.