According to an investigation by the Swedish public broadcasting company SVT, the man’s behavior was warned ten years ago.
A Swedish man who worked as a physical education teacher at a top school in central Sweden is accused in court of stealing more than a hundred girls, says Swedish public broadcasting company SVT.
According to SVT’s own report, the actual number of victims may be significantly higher than this.
The crime story began to be revealed in the summer of 2022, when two people who worked at the same school as the physical education teacher noticed that the suspect was filming girls getting dressed at the swimming pool during an excursion day.
The suspect’s colleagues took pictures of the man’s actions, which they later presented to the school principal. A day later, the police searched the physical education teacher’s home. On the man’s hard drives, the police found several folders named after different places, dates and girls’ names.
SVT: The man was said to have snuck in years before
SVT has interviewed former students and colleagues of the suspect for its story. According to reports, a warning was given about the man’s behavior ten years ago. In 2014, the man worked at a school in Haningen municipality. Already at that time, several students had found the man’s behavior unpleasant, and he had been forbidden to enter the girls’ locker room “even in the event of a fire”.
When the man did not obey the order, he was transferred to another school in the same municipality.
At the new school, the man’s colleagues quickly questioned the way he touched children during physical education lessons. A man was caught slipping his phone under a girl’s skirt, SVT reports.
The principal of the school told the elementary school director of the area about the incident, who told SVT that he had been in contact with the police about it. However, the actual criminal report was never filed. Instead, he was made to leave his job by paying the man 500,000 kroner (EUR 43,000 at the current exchange rate) in 2016.
Despite the children’s numerous complaints, the school transfer and the contract being bought out, the man managed to get a job in central Sweden in 2018. At the new school, according to SVT, the man was even allowed to supervise that the children took a shower at the end of the physical education classes.
The man managed to work at the school for four years before the police searched his home.
In court, the former physical education teacher is accused of a gross crime of child pornography, sexual harassment and embezzlement.
The trial of the case ended yesterday, Wednesday. The verdict is scheduled to be announced on May 10.