Swedish police kept secret records over thousands of abused women

The Police of the Stockholm district of Södertörn have, over a period of 10years, kept secret records of thousands of women subjected to violence and domestic abuse. In the records, the police have collected sensitive and personal information on everything from physical and psychiatric diagnoses, drinking habits and personal details about their children and other close family members.

The Stockholm police registered women who contacted the police to report that they had been beaten and/or threatened. The secret records are full of sensitive data and offensive wording about the women.

Some say that ‘maybe the police had good intentions of putting the data in the register’, maybe they wanted to help the women ‘.
But what’s the point? Why keep records of women in this way – and outside of the regular police record keeping? And why these ‘home-made’ diagnoses and wording like ‘myth maniac’, ‘she is a tricky person’, religious affiliation, alcohol habits and other extremely private details?

Swedish National Radio report that police have dismissed criticism of the controversial records and said that they have been kept as a database to identify the perpetrators.
This despite the fact that the records focus entirely on women’s characteristics, psychiatric diagnoses and background. No corresponding records of the men exist at all.

The women in these records are violated twice  – they are violated once, and when seeking help, they are then violated again – by the authorities – the very thing supposed to support and help them.

The old, outdated idea and attitude of women in vulnerable situations is obvious in the way these records have been kept.
This is so terribly prejudiced and based on attitudes which should be a thing of the past – the attitude that the solution to violence against women lies with women themselves, not the man who beats.

It is completely the wrong focus – violence against women is about men who beat, and we must not forget that 16 women (in Sweden) are murdered every year by their spouse/other close relative, and thousands of women are living under, many times, lifelong threats and abuse – records like these won’t help these women the slightest.

One cannot but be concerned and worries over the fact that records like these may deter women living under threats and violence to report to the police.
This is not the kind of society that we want – women should not have to be exposed to, and subjected to even more and continued ‘punching’ (physically, mentally, emotionally) when they – many times in life-threatening situations – are seeking help from the authorities and from the police.

This story broke last week in Swedish media and there is an absolute outcry among Swedish citizens about the way these thousands of women have been treated.
The secret records and the story were uncovered by two investigative reporters and journalists at Swedish National Radio, Bo-Göran Bodin and Alexander Gagliano.

The image shows Swedish National Radio journalists Bo-Göran Bodin and Alexander Gagliano during their research work of the records that had been kept over a period of 10 years by Swedish police over women who had been subjected to domestic violence and abuse.
Photo: Pablo Dalence, Swedish National Radio.

Swedish ‘social experiment’ shows people ignoring domestic abuse in a lift

A Swedish organisation has posted a distressing video showing women being abused physically and verbally – yet only one person reacts.

A Swedish “social experiment” has shown only one person of 53 reacting to what seemed like a scene of domestic abuse in a lift.

The video was posted by an organisation called STHLM Panda, which describes itself as “doing social experiments, joking with people and documenting the society we live in”. Their most recent posts include a Halloween prank and another prank in an elevator.

But their latest video takes on a more serious tone. They set up a hidden camera in a lift while members of the group played an abusive boyfriend and his victim. The male actors swore at the women and physically assaulted them while members of the public were in the lift.
Click the image below to watch the video on YouTube. (Once there, click the subtitles icon on the bottom right of the bar for English subtitles).

One shouted, while pinning the woman to the wall: “You are not worth anything, I hope you get that! You’re not worth anything!”

Most of the lift’s passengers ignored the abuse, with one woman saying: “I’m here too. Please let me get off first.”

Only one intervened. “I’m gonna call the police if you touch her again,” she said.

STHLM Panda said she was the only one to react out of 53 people who got into the lift while they were running the social experiment.

Konrad Ydhage, who runs the channel with Olle Öberg and appears in the video playing one of the abusive partners, told the Guardian: “We made this video to test domestic violence and violence in close relations and to see if people react when they really need to.”

He added that they did not expect so few people to react. “We were expecting that about 50% would intervene. I was prepared to take a hit by the bigger lads who entered the lift. But sadly enough they walked out on the girl.”

Photo: STHLM Panda/YouTube.