In recent years, Dumpen, a site where adults who seek sexual contact with children are confronted and publicly exposed, has attracted a lot of attention and debate. Now a new app with a similar purpose has arrived.
The new service launched this week and has thousands of downloads so far. By entering an address, the user gets a map showing where people convicted of sexual crimes against children live.
In addition, the service retrieves information from the rewritten site Dumpen, which hangs out people who have sex-chatted with made-up children. People who are singled out as perpetrators even though they have not been convicted of a crime. Making this information available in this way is illegal, according to Ängla Pändel, a lawyer at the Institute for Law and the Internet.
– We have Swedish legislation which today actually does not allow this type of service. However legitimate the person who produced it may think it is, she says.
“Our purpose is not to hang people out”
Jonas Salminen, among others, is behind the new app. He brushes off the criticism.
– Our purpose is not to hang people but to protect the children. We want to be able to keep the children away from people like this, the benefit is greater than the harm.
The app costs SEK 49 to download, why isn’t it free in that case?
– It obviously costs a lot to develop an app. We have put thousands of hours of work into this, says Jonas Salminen.
Their database is based on judgments from 2007 onwards. In total, it is about thousands of people who have now been placed on a map with name, social security number, address and sentence.
– We believe that sex offenders such as vulnerable children are difficult to rehabilitate, so it doesn’t matter if it was ten years ago. If you have committed a crime like this, it should remain with you for the rest of your life, says Jonas Salminen.
“Something that is not right”
At Dumpen, it’s not always about people who have been convicted of crimes, what do you think there?
– It is true that many there are not convicted or even reported, but if you send dickpics to a 12-year-old and there are chat logs as evidence, then there is something wrong.
According to Jonas Salminen, they have no cooperation with the people behind Dumpen.
So far, they have not received any notification of defamation against them, but he expects that will come shortly.
Hear the lawyer Ängla Eklund develop the criticism in the clip above.