TROMSØ (Dagbladet): The case against the Troms man in his 20s who is accused of abusing 14 girls under the age of 18 started in North Troms and Senja District Court on Wednesday. He pleads guilty to all but three of the assaults, including a 17-year-old Ukrainian war refugee.
The youngest of the abused girls was 12 years old when the alleged abuse took place.
Interrogate
A facilitated interrogation of a girl the man is accused of having raped on two occasions before she was 14 years old was played in court. Both rapes are said to have taken place after they had driven together in the defendant’s car.
The two got in touch via Snapchat, and it is clear that they drove together in the defendant’s car.
During the interrogation, the offended girl explained that he had said that he would drive her home, but that he had instead driven home to himself.
There he is said to have taken her to the room where they had intercourse against her will.
Two rapes
The accused man, for his part, claimed that he had run out of fuel in his car when they were driving, and that he had to go home to his parents to ask for more money for this.
The accused admitted sexual intercourse with the girl on one occasion, but denied having had intercourse with her as stated in the indictment and as the girl has explained.
Co-actor in the case, police attorney Lise Marie Ellingsen, asked the accused what he thought about the girl’s young age.
– I did not think about her age, the accused replied.
The girl’s assistance lawyer, Helen Annie Jenssen, tells Dagbladet that her young age is the element in the case.
– She was paralyzed by fear, and could not make a fuss. She was too young to handle such a situation. This case is a clear example of why we need a sexual minimum age, says Jenssen.
AFRAID: Assistance lawyer for the girl, Helen Annie Jenssen, points out that the girl was paralyzed by fear when the rape allegedly took place. Photo: Ivar Benjamin Østebø
sea view
Large fittings
The investigation against the man in his 20s has been extensive. Among other things, the police have gone through large amounts of photos and videos on his phone.
Prosecutor in the case, public prosecutor Trude Kvanli, stated in her introductory speech on Wednesday that the police have reviewed almost 27,000 photos and videos in the investigation.
– A large part of it was sexual content, the public prosecutor said.
To Dagbladet, she emphasizes that not all the sexual content was necessarily criminal material.
– It says more about the scope of the investigation than the criminal case itself.
Therefore, he was released from custody in 2020
Great job
The police have done a great job of identifying the victims in the case. When the man was first arrested in the summer of 2020, it led to the identification of four of the victims.
He is accused of having produced abusive material on several occasions, either by filming minors in sexual situations or by taking screenshots from sexualized videos.
On one occasion, he filmed himself having sex with one of the girls, who was 14 years old at the time. He has pleaded guilty to this.
He has pleaded guilty to the majority of the assaults, but not all.
He defends Håvard Utstøl Jakobsen does not want to comment on the indictment against his client to Dagbladet.
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