22/06/2011 Session
“Preparing for a sexual offence against a child is a serious crime, particularly when the preparation has gone so far that the offender has scheduled a meeting with the child and the purpose of the meeting is that the offender will abuse the child sexually,” Ulrika Rogland, public prosecutor in Malmö (Sweden) said today in Strasbourg on the occasion of the 3rd meeting of the Network of Contact Parliamentarians to stop sexual violence against children. “The solicitation of children through the Internet for sexual purposes (‘grooming’), implies that the perpetrator creates some kind of relationship with the victim in order to prevent the victim telling anybody about the abuse,” she explained.
She reported on the first major “grooming” case in Sweden which she had handled from 2005-2007, the so-called “Alexandra case”, which involved a man who, pretending to be a woman, contacted a large number of young girls on the Internet. After convincing some of them to meet him, he then sexually abused them. This case, explained Ms Rogland, received significant media attention and led to a change in the Swedish law in 2009.
She added, however, that this law has had little impact and that there have only been a few convictions. Ms Rogland believed the reason for this is the difficulty in proving that the perpetrator had contact with the child, the purpose of the contact and where meetings had been arranged, the purpose of the meeting. There is therefore little chance to detect “grooming” crimes. “Grooming” is a crime that normally should lead to imprisonment and the possibility to impose heavier penalties than those currently available,” she concluded.