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Photo: WENNMAN MAGNUS
The EU MP for the Swedish Democrats Peter Lundgren comes to trial at the Jönköping District Court where he has been charged with sexual harassment
That Swedish Democrat Peter Lundgren was acquitted of sexual harassment is not much to talk about.
Once again, a woman has suffered an equally sudden and unexplained memory loss in the courtroom.
The EU MP was accused of harassing a party member in a hotel room in Nacka Strand in connection with the SD election conference in March 2018.
Lundgren is said to have forced a woman to sit on his lap, put a hand under her shirt along her back, and brought it to her breasts.
Stories of this kind rarely thank a prosecutor. Alcohol is often involved, and in hindsight it all tends to be a mess of faint memories and testimonies stretching out in different directions.
Another complicated dimension is that it was the politicians who were involved in this case. And, as is well known, the main driving force for politicians is not always that the truth should come to light in the first place.
It should be noted, for example, that it was an environmental artist who made the report. It has nothing to do with the final legal assessment, but it cannot be ruled out that the original story was peppered with an exaggeration or two.
It is also conceivable that the author would not lift a finger if it were a prominent representative of his own party who was accused of it.
More complicated than this, however, is that the witness most clearly stating that a nuisance was committed was a Lundgren Swedish Democratic competitor for the coveted seats in the European Parliament.
As the Jönköping District Court states, it cannot be ruled out that the witness had a vested interest in Lundgren’s 2019 EU elections by appearing unfavorably.
Thus, the prosecutor lost his strongest card.
Lundgren and the woman who was allegedly exposed made a joint appearance in a video where parts of the course of events were acknowledged.
But it is above all what is said at the main hearing that the court must decide. And once there, Lundgren had suffered memory loss of a more serious kind.
The woman has not been able to bring clarity to the course of events either.
She denies certain parts of the main witness’s story. She does not want to comment on other details. Still other circumstances, he says he does not remember.
That this may be the case with the desire to participate of women who have been subjected to violence or sexual abuse is not an unknown phenomenon.
One explanation may be that the report was made in anger and that in the sickly paleness of reflection it may seem like a bad idea to call the police.
Another reason may be that the feelings for the accused are so strong that she does not want him to be hurt.
A third reason, and unfortunately probably the most common, is that the woman does not dare to complete. She already knows what man is capable of.
A notable example of the difficulties for the judiciary is when a famous artist more than a decade ago was accused of having abused his girlfriend on a couple of occasions.
The young woman declared in court that everything was made up and that she herself had caused her injuries. But there were witnesses and the man was convicted anyway.
Another case is the murder of Lotta Rudholm in 2016.
She had previously denounced the man who killed her for assault. But that preliminary investigation was dropped, in part because the woman withdrew her story.
Sometimes police and prosecutors succeed despite memory loss and unwillingness to cooperate. Sometimes they fail.
Many researchers are very good and have improved a lot. It is important to act quickly with safe tests and make the vulnerable woman feel safe.
But just because big steps have been taken in the right direction doesn’t mean that everything is fine. There is certainly no room for improvement.
However, I do not see that there are clear reasons to criticize the police or prosecutors for releasing a politician today.
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