Mick Hartley

Julie Bindel in the Telegraph – This woman challenged Sweden’s lax paedophile laws. Now she’s the one being prosecuted:

In September last year, a middle-aged man was filmed approaching a woman in a shopping centre. He was wearing a big smile, and she a wig that she removed as a third party behind her filmed the encounter. It was a sting. The man had expected to meet a woman he had been chatting to online who was offering up her three young children to be abused. But she was, in fact, a paedophile hunter – a decoy. He ran, and was captured on film looking back over his shoulder, panic clearly visible on his face.

The decoy was part of a media organisation known as Dumpen (literally, “the dump”), set up in 2021 to highlight the terrible shortcomings of Sweden’s laws on child abuse and defamation by exposing predators.

As with every sting executed by Dumpen, both the film of the man being confronted and the numerous messages between him and the decoy were uploaded to its website. This particular individual was given the moniker “Mr Grey”. Dumpen never reveals the full name, address or social security number of the “pike” (as the men are known), but a local woman who had been alerted to the fact that a sexual predator was in their midst decided to take action.

“I received a text message from a neighbour, with the direct link to the Dumpen site,” says Angeliqa (who asked that we don’t use her full name, to protect her children) when we meet for dinner. “She was telling me that this Grey lives in our area, but we had to investigate to discover his full name and exactly where he lived.” Within a few hours, her group of mothers had discovered that he lived close to many families with small children. “I was determined to warn all the parents – which is why I posted his full name, and what he had done, on Facebook.”

She wrote on the social network: “He is everywhere, in playgrounds, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. We’re sharing this information so that the public knows about it.”

Weeks after posting on Facebook, Angeliqa received a letter from the police, telling her to present herself at a station across the city for questioning. “It was one of those that has a jail attached,” she says. “I took a lawyer with me, and was interrogated about my victimisation of this man. The state then decided to prosecute. I was horrified.”

This is how Angeliqa – whom I am meeting on the eve of her trial – found herself in court, on a charge of defamation against Grey….

She is now one of a few people in Sweden to have been prosecuted for defamation, and is campaigning for a change to the law. Defamation cases are usually a matter of one individual bringing a civil case against another. However, in Sweden, if a case is considered particularly serious, the state steps in and conducts a criminal prosecution, representing the “injured” party. This might be because the information in question has been widely disseminated, or where the sharing of information could have had serious consequences for the plaintiff.

Crucially, truth alone is not a defence: a statement can be defamatory under Swedish law even if it is accurate. Further, an archaic clause grants precedence to a person’s dignity and honour – even if that person has been convicted of child abuse – over someone else’s right to name them as a sexual predator of children….

“If I am convicted of defaming this man, that record will come up every time I apply for a job. But he has got nothing against him. It’s unbelievable,” says Angeliqa. “In Sweden, we defend their honour, and their reputation, while punishing those that try to expose how dangerous they are towards children. It’s outrageous.”