Man on trial for raping girls over internet
A man is on trial in Sweden charged with a novel crime: raping girls in Canada and two other foreign countries entirely over the internet, with no physical contact between him and the alleged victims.
Experts here call it a unique prosecution, one that challenges the definition of sexual assault and underscores how global connectivity has led to previously unheard-of crimes.
Bjorn Samstrom, a 41-year-old man from near Uppsala, Sweden, allegedly threatened to kill the girls he met over social networks or post photos of them on pornography sites, unless they performed sexual acts, including bestiality, in front of webcams as he watched.
Samstrom is charged with “gross rape” and other offences related to 27 victims in Canada, the U.S. and Britain.
Among them were one girl each in Ontario and Alberta, both aged 13 when they were victimized in late 2015, said Annika Wennerström, one of the prosecutors involved in the case.
No one in Sweden has ever been convicted of rape for deeds that occurred over the internet — let alone on another continent — but prosecutors are hoping to set a precedent, she said.
“We’re really challenging the court now with this case,” admitted Wennerström in an interview from Stockholm.
“It’s only the sexual predator’s imagination that sets the limits. The technology knows no limits. So we have to adapt our mindset to, ‘What can a rape be?’ We say a rape can be different things. You don’t always have to have the textbook case of a physical attack or physical coercion.”
Under Swedish law, rape is the most serious form of sexual crime; it does not have to involve intercourse, but does require an act deemed to be as serious a violation of sexual integrity as intercourse.
David Matas, a lawyer and spokesman for Beyond Borders, a Canadian group that fights sexual exploitation of children, said he is aware of no attempt here to charge an internet-only predator with sexual assault, Canada’s equivalent of rape.
But he suggested prosecutors consider doing so, or that the law be changed to make it possible.
“I would have to say it’s an imaginative use of the law,” said Matas. “We have to adapt to the internet world in which we live, and to me the Swedish prosecutors are doing just that.
Perhaps the closest parallel in Canada was the Kingston, Ont., case of Mark Bedford, convicted in 2008 of blackmailing several girls into performing sex acts on camera.
He was found guilty of several offences, including child-pornography-related crimes, extortion and inciting a child to perform bestiality, earning a three-year prison sentence. But Bedford was not charged with sexual assault or sexual interference, a similar offence often used when the victims are minors.
Lawyer Monique St. Germain, general counsel for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said such crimes could possibly be prosecuted under this country’s “invitation to sexual touching” law or even sexual interference. The latter makes reference to touching “directly or indirectly,” she noted.
Canadian criminal law does now address internet sexual predators in various ways, but it might make sense to include acts like those alleged in Sweden under the heading of sexual assault, too, said St. Germain.
“It would have to be a courageous prosecutor and a courageous judge to find that, and I suspect it would wind it’s way up to the Supreme Court of Canada before it became a fait accompli,” she said.
The Swedish case came to light when police investigated Samstrom for another alleged sex crime and discovered he had video recordings of the young foreigners, said Wennerström.
The victims in Canada were tracked down by the “super-professional” RCMP, who interviewed them on behalf of the Swedes. In the trial now underway, the court agreed to let prosecutors present video of those interviews to save the victims having to appear in court, said the prosecutor.
Samstrom is charged with meeting girls through online social networks, then threatening to post their profile photos on pornography sites, or simply to kill the young women and their families.
“They were very scared,” said Wennerström. “The ones that we interviewed, they described that they had no choice. They did as they were told.”
The girls were made to take off their clothes and penetrate themselves with fingers or objects. Though not in the Canadian cases, some were forced to involve other children or pets.