Harsher rape penalties

Penalties for rape are generally more lenient in the Faroes than in Denmark.

“On paper, Danish rape sentences are about one year longer than in the Faroes,“ explains Katrin Thorsvig Hansen, the chief prosecutor at the Court of the Faroe Islands.

The reason is that an aggravating provision regarding sexual abuse introduced in Danish criminal law in 2016 does not apply in the Faroes because the provision in question was insufficiently defined in the Faroese law.

But this will now change.

From Wednesday 1 June, this provision will be added to the Faroese criminal law, bringing rape sentences passed in the Faroes on an equal footing with those in Denmark.

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This change forms part of an amendment to Article 216 of the Faroese criminal law, which involves a departure from the so-called coercion-based model towards a consent-based model.

The coercion provision stated that a sexual act must be done by coercion, violence, physical force or threat of violence or physical force for the act to count as rape.

According to the new consent-based provision, there must be a sexual act that did not include mutual consent for the act to qualify as rape.

Rape is punishable by up to eight years in prison. However, in most Faroese rape cases, sentences range between eight months and two-and-a-half years.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.