In a case reminiscent of the virtual sex scene from the 1993 Hollywood movie “Demolition Man,” a city court in Uppsala ruled that even though Bjorn Samstrom never met his victims in person he was guilty of rape, because Swedish law does not require penetrative intercourse to be considered “rape.”
Samstrom was also convicted of child pornography possession and ordered to pay an equivalent of just over $131,000 to victims in Canada, Britain and the US, who were all under age 15 between 2015 and early 2017.
During the 20-day trial the prosecution requested a 10-year jail sentence for Samstrom – Sweden’s stiffest sentence for sexual offences.
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The conviction, the first of its kind in Sweden and possibly anywhere else in the world, could hopefully encourage other countries to rethink the way they define rape in legislation.
