ABSTRACT
Until recently, the increase in sex crimes during and after the Second World War in Denmark has been attributed to moral panic towards homosexual prostitution and waves of public alarm towards violent paedophile sex crime cases. A detailed review of national and local crime statistics reveals that the increase in reported incidents of and convictions for incest and sexual abuse of children was the gradual effect of a new penal code inaugurated in 1933 and consolidated during the war. In contrast, moral panic was directed towards the sexual liberation and reproduction control—exercised by women—resulting in an exploding number of convictions for criminal abortion and the transmission of venereal diseases. Yet an increasing number of incidents of women being raped and indecency and violent behaviour of women can be attributed to a brutalisation caused by the disturbances of war.
