Katarina Wennstam – The girl and the guilt

The most horrible, horrifying book I’ve ever read. Katarina is a crime reporter who has written a formidable book on the enraging way that rape trials and investigations are conducted and the way rape victims are treated. The examples are many and gut-wrenching. Everyone should read this book, because the illusion of living in a civilised country with a justice system that works gets properly disbanded. I hate the men who rape. But I hate also the system that puts the victim on trial, that makes excuses for the perpetrator and all this for the worst crime imaginable. Or even, the most un-imaginable crime, because all through the book I find myself detached, separated from this reality by my own inability to imagine these crimes as a part of my world.
A more subtle tone in the book, a recurring chorus, hums a dark and sinister tune of how there still, in spite of, or aided by, the sexual liberation, exists a distorted and dangerous image of women and the female sexuality that can nurture the growing abuser and sway the judgement of our courts.