The National Prosecutor (RÅ) is appealing a Court of Appeal judgment on sex crimes against children to the Supreme Court.
A man was charged with a number of sexual offenses against 42 children, mostly girls between the ages of 11 and 15. He had caused the girls to pose sexually and to perform various actions on themselves via the Internet, according to a press release from the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
In the district court, he was convicted of sexual abuse of children and of exploiting children for sexual posing. But in the Court of Appeal, he was only convicted of the latter crime.
Prosecutor General Petra Lundh is now demanding that a number of acts for which the man was acquitted be assessed as gross sexual abuse of children. In addition, a further number of actions must be assessed as gross exploitation of children for sexual posing.
She wants the Supreme Court to examine “where the lower limit is so that, in the case of distance crime, it must be judged that someone has committed a ‘different’ sexual act than such acts that can be equated with sexual intercourse”.
“The District Court considered that what the girls were forced to do were such acts, while the Court of Appeal did not consider it so and therefore acquitted them of the crime of sexual abuse against children. Guiding statements are needed here,” says Petra Lundh in the press release.