How a Small Town in Sweden Let a Rapist Walk Away Because of his Celebrity Status

Our story begins in a small town in Sweden, called Beartown. Once upon a time, this

town was home to one of the best junior league hockey teams in the country. The Beartown A-

Team. What this team lacked in funding, due to the low socioeconomic nature of the town, they

made up for in talent and spirit. In any other town, this may not have been a big deal. But hockey

was all that the citizens of Beartown had. The jobs were leaving the town in droves, and many

people found that hockey was the only thing that could bring them joy.

Enter Kevin Erdahl, a name that hockey fans may find familiar. His start in Beartown is

wrought with controversy, a controversy that officials of the town and members of his family

tried to conceal. And they succeeded. While he was massively talented, Erdahl’s upbringing

would also lead a massively inflated ego and a large sense of entitlement. Erdahl would go on to

become a professional hockey player despite this, his past in Beartown being forgotten after the

A-Team’s failed attempts at winning nationals.

Erdahl was the A-Team’s ace player. They depended on his abilities and his drive to win

the championship. The week before the championship game, however, Erdahl would host a party

at his parent’s home while they were out of town. According to his former teammates, this was

common practice for him after the team won a game. That night, Erdahl would bring a young,

fifteen-year-old girl into his bedroom and rape her. The day of the championship game, police

would come and escort Erdahl from the team bus and inform him of the charges against him, but

these charges would never be brought up in court.

The girl who accused him would prove to have many witnesses to help forward her

claim. Erdahl’s mother would later come forward and assert that she found buttons from the
girl’s blouse strewn across her son’s room as if they had been ripped from the shirt. She will

admit that she visited the girl whom her son had raped and apologize on his and her husband’s

behalf. A former teammate, who wished only to go by the name Amat, would speak out during

the Beartown Hockey Board meeting. He told them everything he saw, that he walked in on

Erdahl raping the girl. There is even evidence that Kevin’s father knew of his son’s crime, since

he reached out to Amat and attempted to bribe him to keep Amat from telling his story.

Why, then, was Erdahl not convicted? Why was he never at least charged? The answer is

simple. Erdahl was protected by his status.

Charles Kurzman defines Celebrity Status as “A new system of social status… born out

of capitalism and mass media.” According to him, these celebrities would come to expect

privileges which aristocratic elites had enjoyed in past centuries. Among these was legal

privileges (Kurzman).

The victim’s claims would be refuted by both the town and the police force investigating

the claims by stating that the victim was merely jealous. She would be ridiculed by her peers and

outcasted by the majority of the town. While the victim had evidence, Erdahl had status, and this

status was enough to prevent the town from seeing the truth that was blatantly in front of them.

As a 2001 study found, celebrity status, combined with race, can have significant influences on

how people form bias. This study would find that white celebrities would be viewed more

positively than white noncelebrities (Knight).

In a small town where the citizens only source of happiness comes from their junior

league hockey teams, a claim of this caliper would have felt like an attack against the town as a

whole. Erdahl would come to embody all of Beartown’s hopes and dreams, making him a local
celebrity and home-town hero. Beartown had created a new caste in their system, one that

entirely consisted of hockey players.

In Beartown’s eyes, Erdahl had done no wrong. The hockey players in the city are the

crème of the crop; they are destined to go out, do great things, and bring honor to their humble

beginnings. The citizens of Beartown were working on the good faith that one day, Erdahl would

go out and become a celebrity outside of their town as well. If they defended him then, perhaps

he would remember them all when he became a big star.

In their 1978 article, Thampi, Mohan, and Eagleton would debate the usage of Marxism

for literary criticism. In this form, Marxism is used to look at the relationship between social and

economic classes (Thampi, Mohan, and Eagleton). If it is assumed that members of the hockey

team are members of an elite social class – one that has celebrity status attached to it – then one

can surmise that those who depend on that class will defend them, no matter what wrong they

have done. If the girl whom Erdahl raped was deemed as having a lower social status than him,

then all she was attempting to do was ruin his good name.

As defined by Milner, a “celebrity” is one who is in the process of being celebrated. One

prerequisite, according to him, is that a celebrity must be visible (Milner). If Erdahl had been a

slumbering powerhouse, who only played for fun and not competitively, then perhaps nobody

would have batted an eye. However, since he was in the public eye, and because the town all but

depended on him, the assertation that he had abused his power was an unwelcome one.

Almost all the evidence was swept under the rug, and anybody who dared to even speak

of the incident was harassed until they stopped. The unfounded belief in Erdahl that the citizens

of Beartown exhibited by not punishing him only hindered them. If they had been able to see
past the faith they had in him, in what he could bring to their community, then they may have

been able to see the truth. The allegations against him did not follow him throughout his life; in

fact he has had quite a comfortable life. Once the charges were dropped, he would be free.

The girl he raped, however? Because she was not of the higher status of a celebrity in

Beartown, she was punished for what Erdahl did to her. Even the act of accusing a celebrity of a

crime was enough to bring down the wrath of the town upon her and those close to her. She

would be ridiculed throughout the rest of her time living in Beartown, and although she had

made a successful life for herself now, it was a trial to get through it. Most of the town would

outcast her, branding her as a traitor to them for the rest of her life. All because her social class

meant that she was unreliable in accordance to him.

Citations
Backman, Fredrik. Beartown. Pocket Books, 2018.

Knight, Jennifer L, et al. “Famous or Infamous? The Influence of Celebrity Status and Race on

Perceptions of Responsibility for Rape.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 23,

no. 3, 2001, pp. 183–190.

Kurzman, Charles, et al. “Celebrity Status.” Sociological Theory, vol. 25, no. 4, 2007, pp. 347–

367.

Milner, Murray. “Is Celebrity a New Kind of Status System?” Society, vol. 47, no. 5, 2010, pp.

379–387

Thampi, Mohan, and Terry Eagleton. “Marxism and Literary Criticism.” Social Scientist, vol. 6,

no. 12, 1978, p. 85