The newspaper’s review shows that several different community agencies and a private person on at least four occasions raised the alarm to the social services in the municipality of Skåne.
Medical staff felt “a concern about a lack of care” in September 2022, according to documents. Three months later, in December, it was Folktandvården’s turn to raise the alarm, as the girl had not been there since January 2019.
The girl’s preschool contacted social services already in 2018, without any concern being reported.
“It was a feeling”
When the girl only showed up four times to her preschool class in the fall of 2022, no report was made, even though several members of the staff wanted it.
“They had nothing to go on, but it was a feeling, they wanted to make a report of concern,” says a teacher in police interrogation, according to HD and Sydsvenskan.
A report of concern has also been made by a former colleague of the father, in January 2023.
They do not want to answer how the municipality followed up the series of reports of concern. The municipality’s head of children and education refers to confidentiality and writes in an email to HD and Sydsvenskan that they have done what is expected “according to laws and regulations”.
According to the indictment, the suffering the girl was subjected to includes, among other things, that she was allegedly forced to drink large amounts of vinegar, was kept tied up in a laundry room for several weeks and subjected to starvation.
When she, then six years old, came into the emergency room in Lund on the night of Christmas Eve 2022, she was in a life-threatening condition. The body temperature was 34 degrees and the stomach was so corroded by vinegar that it had to be surgically removed.
The parents, aged 42 and 34, deny all counts. The trial begins on Monday.