Vänskapens kunskap och kraft. En rättsvetenskaplig studie av vänskapen omkring unga målsägande i sexualbrottmål.

Abstract

This thesis delves into the theoretical and practical legal aspects of friends and friendships among young victims of child sexual abuse. The study examines these friendships and their impact on victims of sexual abuse, focusing both their temporal and causal contexts in relation to subsequent legal investigations. Through a systematic analysis of transcripts from police interviews conducted with young victims and their friends, this study demonstrates how these friendships can be valuable, or has the potentialiality for value, by enriching the testimonies of the victims, both before and during the legal proceedings. Consequently, this thesis aims to illustrate the investigative value of these testimonies by shedding light on the conversations and interactions among young friends in the aftermath of a sexual assault, as well as the time before a legal trial, thereby demonstrating how the relational embeddedness condition these children as legal subjects. This is particularly relevant in conceptualizing how and why the responses and actions of young victims, following a sexual assault, are influenced by the relationships in which they are immersed. The primary contribution to the field of jurisprudence lies in the study’s methodologies. Drawing on archival and literary studies, the methodology employed in this thesis has been designed to identify and address the lived experiences that precede and are subjected to judicial processed. This approach is especially well-suited for examining lived experiences that, as is the case with the young friendships in this study, may be considered peripheral but nevertheless appear in the documentation generated by the criminal justice process.