The Rhetoric of Rape Justice: Unveiling the Cultural Meanings of Rape Narratives in Spanish Judicial Sentences

Abstract: Narratives play a crucial role both in people’s lives and in various areas of the social, cultural and political realms. This thesis, drawing from an understanding of judicial sentences as a type of narrative, explores the complex domain of rape justice within the Spanish legal system. The aim is to discover the underpinning cultural meanings and constructions of rape in court sentences, by conducting a comprehensive narrative analysis that explores the characteristics of stories about rape evoked during rape cases in Spain; as well as how judges construct and use narratives around rape in their sentencing. The findings show that courts use different stereotypes and elements of master narratives related to rape and combine them as a narrative glue (Brooks, 1996: 18; 2005: 417) to produce different types of stories that validate or negate rape. This thesis contributes to the exploration of social and narrative constructions of rape in Spain, highlighting not only the use of harmful discourses about rape in judicial sentences, but how they are used narratively to construct the assessment narratives in the courts.