A man in his 50s who was sentenced to three years in prison for the rape of a ten-year-old girl has been acquitted in the Court of Appeal, due to the girl’s choice of words for the female genital organ snipe, which the judges were puzzled by.
“However, the plaintiff has not then explained in more detail, either in words or otherwise, what she meant by ‘the snip,'” says the judgment of the Court of Appeal, from February 23.
– They have not listened to what the girl has described, they have stuck to the word snippa, says Johanna Björkman, legal expert.
Join the same congregation
It was during the summer of two years ago that the man put his hand under the girl’s panties in a fan room, in a congregation that both belong to.
“By putting his hand inside the plaintiff’s shorts and panties, holding his hand on the plaintiff’s neck and having a finger inside the neck, xxx has performed a sexual act with NN5, who was 10 years old,” says the district court’s verdict from 2022.
But the Court of Appeal considered that it was unclear what the girl meant by “snip”. The Court of Appeal therefore looked up the word in the Swedish Academy’s dictionary, which defines it as the woman’s external genitalia and not the vagina.
“Very strange”
The Court of Appeal therefore considered that it is not possible to prove that a rape was completed and the previous sentence was overturned.
– We can prove that he touched her genitals, but nothing else. If she had been clearer in her interrogations, the assessment might have been made differently, says Åke Thimfors, appellate lawyer at Västra Götaland’s Court of Appeal.
– I think what she chooses to call the area is of less importance than what she tells about the course of events. They have simply deviated from the lived story and gone to an academic use of definition which I find very strange, says Johanna Björkman, legal expert.
The girl’s plaintiff’s attorney tells TV4 Nyheterna that the family is devastated and is awaiting the prosecutor’s decision on whether the case should be taken to the Supreme Court.
The case has sparked enormous engagement on social media. The hashtag #JagVetVadEnSnippaÄr is shared as a digital protest against the Court of Appeal’s ruling.
See Johanna Björkman’s analysis in the player above.