The purpose of this paper is to examine the early 1900s approach to women who have been raped in Karlstad and how you looked at rape during this period. I have used criminal case files from the Karlstad criminal police to examine. The actual study is set up in that way that I have tried to answer my questions through case studies that have been categorized in three type’s perpetrators and three types of victims. The three types of offenders who I am using are the "the naughty young man," "the violent worker" and "the drunken man". The three types victims I have used are "the innocent girl", "the gullible young woman" and "heroine".

A read thread in the survey is to investigate whether the women in rape cases are seen as subjects or not. This means that the focus lays on how the women have acted in the assault.

Some conclusions I come to is that the perception of rape in Karlstad during the years 1900-1943 are consistent with previous research in the sense that women are seen as the subject of rape and the focus lies on the women morality. You can see this because neither of the cases went on to the court. The women’s description of the assault is more often very specific, more so then the men’s description. The woman often needs to describe and defend why they were alone or why they were on that place at that time and what they did before the assault.