Man guilty of rape ... without being in room with the victim
Swedish courts that found a man guilty of sex crimes against young girls in Canada and around the world based solely on the nature of his online interactions with them have set a bold new precedent by upgrading more than a dozen of his convictions to rape, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Annika Wennerstrom said Bjorn Samstrom, 41, had previously been convicted of 59 sex charges for offences committed against children in three countries, including a teen in Ontario and one in Alberta.
Those verdicts included five convictions of aggravated rape of a child or rape, marking one of the first known times someone had been found guilty of the offence without being physically in the room with the victim.
After appeals from both the defence and prosecution, however, Wennerstrom said the courts not only upheld Samstrom’s original rape convictions, but added several new ones by upgrading previous charges.
The court’s decision sends a clear signal that sexual acts performed under threats of violence issued online can be every bit as serious and traumatic as physical attacks, Wennerstrom said.
“We can see very, very clearly what it takes for a physical act that a girl performs on her own body to be regarded as that violating,” she said in a telephone interview. “We can use this in future cases, and that is exactly what we hoped for.”
Wennerstrom said 15 convictions of aggravated sexual assault or sexual coercion have now been converted to rape of a child or rape, depending on whether the victim was younger or older than 15.
Despite the fact that he has now been convicted of 20 rape charges, the 10-year prison sentence Samstrom was handed in November remains unchanged.
The case against Samstrom involved allegations of sexual coercion against 27 victims in Canada, the United States and Scotland.
Court heard that Samstrom would threaten to post photos of the victims on pornography sites or to kill their relatives unless they performed sex acts as he watched from Sweden.
Wennerstrom said Samstrom would approach his victims by searching websites that offered people chances to connect on the basis of shared interests, such as music or leisure activities.
She said Samstrom would search those sites to find girls in specific age brackets, then send them private messages threatening violence if they did not respond.
The sexual demands would begin as soon as the frightened children replied, Wennerstrom said, adding Samstrom made no attempt to charm or groom his victims.
Samstrom admitted coercing the teens — all under age 15 at the time — but denied his actions constituted rape.
The original convictions against Samstrom were the first of their kind in Sweden, which defines rape as an act that does not necessarily have to include intercourse so long as it is deemed equally violating.