This article maps and discusses the legal processing of rape cases in Norwegian appellate courts. Drawing on data from a multivariate regression analysis and a qualitative frame analysis, we examine the significance of space, accuser-convict prior relationship, the social context, accuser-convict marital relationship status, and convict racial background for grading of sentences in rape cases. The dataset consists of 176 rape cases that were processed in 2011 and 2012. Excluding acquittals and controlling for the application of relevant legal provisions (i.e. §), we find that sentences are reduced by 30 percent if the rape occurs in a private space as opposed to a public space. If the rape occurs at a party or is committed by a perpetrator who is a member of a racial majority, we find that sentences are reduced by 20 percent. A prior relationship between the victim and the perpetrator 3 reduces sentencing by 18 percent. Results regarding victims of marital rape are inconclusive. The study concludes that sentencing is stratified according to the public/private divide, prior relationship, social context and race. Despite progress made on behalf of victims of domestic violence and a gradual implementation of stricter sentencing in line with legislative intentions, the legal processing of rape cases is permeated by race and gender discrimination.

This article is an auto-ethnography of fieldwork carried out as part of a research project about the legal processing of rape cases in Norway. The author observed 15 rape trials and interviewed ten defense lawyers. During this fieldwork, the author repeatedly experienced the shortcomings of conventional fieldwork methodology as she tried to build rapport with defense lawyers. By examining 'out of place' emotions like embarrassment, shame and isolation, the author seeks to map the social world that is 'filtered' through the relations between researcher and researched. Using a feminist interactionist (Ritzer and Smart 2001) approach to analyzing 'educational moments' in field encounters characterized by participant's resistance or dominance, this article asks how reflection on the researcher's feelings and experiences (emotional reflexivity) can contribute to an understanding of the micro-politics of gender and power in the field.

This paper asks how perpetrators and victims are constructed in legal rape cases, and how these constructions are informed by notions of gender, sexuality, race, and nation. It presents an in-depth frame analysis of two legal cases that were processed by appellate courts in 2012. In so doing, I show how the allocation of shame and sympathy for victims and perpetrators is connected to citizenship through gender and race discrimination. The analysis suggests that whereas the perpetrator with a majority racial background was subject to so called reintegrative shaming, the perpetrator with a minority racial background was subject to stigmatic shaming. The politics of shame in the context of rape thus manifests as attribution of guilt (but to a lesser extent shame and stigmatization) to the majority perpetrator, whereas minority perpetrator was constructed as a deviant outlaw deserving of public shame. Prior relationship with the perpetrator, sexually "risk-taking" behavior and alcohol consumption was associated with negative stereotyping of victims. Moreover, violence committed by the perpetrator from a racial-majority group was considered by the court to be a deviation from the civilized and gender-equal mainstream culture. I therefore argue that geography constitutes a specific element in the legal processing of rape cases. With the prosecution of rape as a medium, the courts produce and reproduce a moral community in which some sexual citizens are admitted a share and others are not, while the legal process simultaneously manages the sexual rights of citizens in different physical and social spaces.

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