Couldn’t go to school or the dentist • Put GPS transmitters on government cars
Three scantily clad and muddy girls knocked on a house in Mellerud in the middle of the night on April 7 last year. The children stated that they had run away from their parents and ran through the woods to get help.
It was the beginning of an extensive investigation that the prosecutor calls unusual and special.
The case grew rapidly. The girls turned out to belong to a Roma family of a total of eleven children – all of whom were wanted by the authorities after being kept away by their parents.
– It is special that you can live so separately from society and withhold children from the authorities for such a long time, said prosecutor Oscar Johansson in connection with the prosecution.
Today, the verdict was handed down against a man and a woman who are the guardians of ten of the children. A third woman, described as the man’s mistress, is responsible for the eleventh child.
The children had difficulty eating
The father was sentenced by the Gothenburg District Court to three years in prison for eleven cases of arbitrariness with children, ten of which are assessed as serious crimes, seven cases of fraud, three cases of assault and two cases of breach of child protection. The mother was completely freed.
The mistress was convicted of a case of indecent assault with children and placed on probation.
The eleven children were prevented from going to school, BVC care and seeing a doctor. Among other things, some of them have had such big problems with their teeth that they had difficulty eating.
– It has been in fear that they would come into contact with the authorities, says Oscar Johansson.
Tracked the children and social services staff
The children had been taken into care by social services in the municipalities of Karlstad, Alvesta and Växjö and placed in various LVU accommodation. But they have repeatedly disappeared from the placements. According to the police investigation, so-called airtags, a kind of tracking device, had been sewn into the children’s clothes. In addition, GPS transmitters have been found on social service cars.
The prosecutor has argued during the investigation that the motives for the crimes were honor and that the parents did not agree with the authorities’ LVU decision.
“The district court considers that the investigation shows that a certain element of honor context occurred in the family, but that it has not been proven that this was one of the motives for the acts,” the court writes in the judgment.