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– It was a threat: “if you don’t do this and this, a YouTube video will be broadcast to you,” says Amanda.
The man was several years old Previously, he began threatening girls to send nude photos or, as in the case of Amanda, also to get to know him.
He was convicted as early as 2009 for raping Amanda and for a series of harassments against other children. But when he served his prison sentence, it was only a few months before he started threatening Amanda again.
Although the police had seized and confiscated, among other things, the man’s computer and hard drive, in fact had managed to withhold sexual images of Amanda. Images that now several years later threatened to spread online.
– I knew how much I had and what it could do to me, but I couldn’t get help. No one could stop him. So you were completely helpless, says Amanda.
The prosecutor of the case says the man had likely saved Amanda’s photos to a so-called cloud service, and that they couldn’t verify it during the investigation.
A problem that Emelie Källfelt recognizes well, from countless criminal investigations. He is a lead prosecutor specializing in, among other things, Internet-related sexual offenses against children.
– In practice it would often have been quite easy for us to access it, but we are not allowed to do it the way the law is seen in Sweden today, says Emelie Källfelt.
Police can seize the computer of a suspect, but even if the suspect is logged into, for example, his email account or a cloud service, the investigators basically cannot access the accounts because the information contained there is stored in another place, and not locally on the computer.
The legislation has not tailored to technical developments, according to several experts Ekot spoke with.
– Today, it’s at least as common to have data elsewhere than on your own machine, so from that point of view, the legislation is absolutely out of date, says Anders Ahlqvist, a former operations specialist at the national crime center. computer scientists of the police.
The echo also has in a number of previous reviews they have shown significant shortcomings in Internet-related investigative measures. Sometimes these are researchers lacking evidence that is completely open online. But it is also possible to find many examples of when legislation in this area puts an end to it.
Investigators may, for example, suspect that there is child pornography on a cloud service, but they may not yet access the account to obtain the evidence, says prosecutor Emelie Källfelt.
– Yes, ultimately it will be the victims who are affected. Failure to identify a child will of course have fatal consequences. Or that we are unable to fully substantiate a prosecution. So the big losers are the victims, says Emelie Källfelt.
Various experts say that this limits the possibility of the perpetrators being convicted, that one does not identify the plaintiffs because they do not have access to all the material, and that it also makes it easier for the perpetrators to retain abusive material.
In Amanda’s case, the man posted the images online. Since then, he has been convicted of both that and more sex crimes against children. The latest verdict is from 2019. The man has denied the crimes.
– It feels like the technology has been before the police, and that meant he could hurt me again. This is not how it should be, says Amanda.
Amanda is actually called something else.
If you need help, you can turn here, for example:
- In case of danger of death: call the emergency number 112
- Bris: bris.se – children’s phone 116 11, adult phone 077 150 50 50
- Human companion on duty: jourhavande-medmanniska.se – phone 08 702 16 80
