The convictions of several men jailed for repeatedly raping a mentally incapacitated woman over a three-year period have been overturned by Finland’s Court of Appeal after the court ruled the woman’s disability did not mean she could not consent.
Seven men, including Samir Jasin Kadir, Alaa Kamil Al-Saadi, Sami Al-Mosawi, and Mohammed Ali Mohammed Mohammed, were handed sentences ranging between 10 months and 2.5 years by the District Court of Pirkanmaa back in May 2022.
The defendants, aged between 23 and 52, were found to have sexually abused the disabled woman multiple times between December 2017 and February 2020 when she was often led by the hand to the defendants’ respective houses and raped.
The case turned on the legal argument of whether the victim’s intellectual disability was obvious enough to be detectable regardless of nationality and cultural background, and whether the defendants, therefore, should have known the victim could not give informed consent.
The lower court upon conviction held that the victim’s disability placed her in parallel with a minor in her inability to consent to sexual intercourse.
It found that the victim’s intellectual disability had been a key factor in the defendants’ desire to have sexual intercourse with the victim due to the ease with which she could be manipulated, thus constituting rape.
The convictions were appealed to the higher court in Turku, which this week quashed all sentences and revoked the compensation order awarded to the victim of €16,000 payable by the defendants.
The Court of Appeal accepted the appellants’ argument that they could not reasonably have been expected to detect the intellectual disability of the woman, ruling that people’s sexual behaviors are unique and diverse.
“Criminal law regulation is therefore not justified in aiming to maintain or achieve, for example, decency or uniform gender behavior. It must also be taken into account that different people’s sexual lives can be very different,” the Court of Appeal explained.
A medical report provided by the woman’s doctor to the court detailed how she was at an increased risk of being abused and was hypersensitive to situations where others could influence her actions almost entirely; however, the appellate court ruled that intellectual disability alone does not mean that a person is incapable of giving consent to sexual intercourse.
In its judgment, the court said the victim’s medical evaluation could “only be given a small weight when evaluating helplessness or unwillingness due to a helpless state.”
The verdict can still be appealed to the higher Supreme Court before Aug. 27.
