The Supreme Court takes up child rape

A limited number of cases reach the Supreme Court, only 20 a year. About half are criminal cases. One case is a man in his 30s who was sentenced to eleven years in prison in Kristianstad's District Court. He was found guilty of about a hundred counts of rapes against a girl. The Court of Appeal reduced the sentence to nine years in prison.

But both the prosecutor and the defence think that there is no established legal practice in the area. It is unclear what punishment should apply when someone is convicted of many counts of aggravated rape against children. That's why the Supreme Court is taking the case.

The minimum sentence for an aggravated rape against a child is four years in prison. The Prosecutor General, Petra Lundh, is calling for 14 years in prison.

The man's defence lawyer, Björn Attnarsson, thinks that the sentence should be reduced to seven years in prison.

”14 years of imprisonment is a higher penal value than the minimum penalty for murder. We consider murder to be of worse calibre,” he says.