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Utopia Talk / Politics / Report on sexual assaults
swordtail
Anarchist Prime
Thu Nov 30 10:34:16

Report on sexual assaults in Arctic rocks Norway



By JAN M. OLSEN


Yesterday

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Generations of native Sami people living in remote northern Norway have been victims of rape and child sex abuse that has gone largely unreported and uninvestigated, police have acknowledged in a report citing deep failings in the way authorities operated there.

A police report covering the period from 1953 to August 2017 documented at least 151 sexual assaults, including 43 rapes, in the Arctic municipality of Tysfjord, which has a population of less than 2,000. Most of the cases were not reported at the time.




The youngest of the 82 victims identified by the police was 4, while the 92 suspected offenders were aged between 10 and 80. Some people appeared on both lists. As well as the rapes, 40 cases dealt with sexual intercourse with underage children.

So far two people have been charged in 10 cases, but many cases have been dropped because the statute of limitations has expired.

The report by the Nordland police, where Tysfjord sits, was commissioned after Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang last year published accounts of 11 men and women who claimed to have been assaulted.

Tone Vangen, head of the Nordland county, apologized after the publication of this week’s report, acknowledging that police “didn’t do a good job.”

Vangen told Norway’s NTB news agency that police had heard “tales from victims that offenders had gotten forgiveness from religious circles and the cases have in a way been settled.” She added that they saw that many had links to a conservative Lutheran revival movement started in Lapland in the middle of the 19th century.

“There is no reason to claim that ethnicity or belief is an explanation for the abuses,” she said. “At the same time there are mechanisms related to the (Sami) environment, which makes it difficult to get to investigate.”

Lars Magne Andreassen, a spokesman for the local Sami community, cited “loyalty, lack of confidence in authorities and the fact that police and health and social services have not had competence to see what has happened” as responsible for the perpetuation of the situation.

“There has been a huge failure in the whole safety net that should have been around the children who have been subjected to abuse in Tysfjord,” added Anne Lindboe, the children’s ombudsman — an advocate for children and young people in Norway.

Verdens Gang reported the case of a woman identified as Liv who said her father was jailed for raping her, but that other men raped or sexually assaulted her over a 10-year-period until she turned 19.




Karl Edvard Urheim, a Sami folk singer who also said he was raped as a child, told the daily that “people there are incredibly good at shutting up, and that makes me angry.”

An estimated 40,000-60,000 Sami live in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia and have their own language. Their situation has been compared to that of American Indians, but rather than establishing reservations for Sami, the region’s governments have sought to absorb them. In 1997, Norway’s King Harald V publicly apologized on behalf of the nation for its treatment of the Sami.

Samis have their own Parliament, and those in Norway are also represented in Norway’s Parliament.

A small number of them are still closely associated to nature and are involved in reindeer herding but also fishing, fur-trapping and hunting. However, their way of living has threatened by mineral mining, wind farms and extensive logging, which are encroaching upon reindeer herding grounds and fishing areas.

http://apnews.com/e3edbbd76edd48c4a1c34df2da3f2728
jergul
large member
Thu Nov 30 10:57:33
Yah, I already posted a link to Guardian picking up the story.

The interesting thing here is the scale of reporting. A lot of uncovered dark numbers.
swordtail
Anarchist Prime
Thu Nov 30 11:11:36
Swede sentenced for 'online' rape of teenagers in Canada, U.K., and U.S.

The Associated Press
Published Thursday, November 30, 2017 9:10AM EST



COPENHAGEN -- A court in Sweden has sentenced a Swedish man to 10 years in prison for coercing teenagers in Canada, Britain and the United States to perform sexual acts in front of webcams by threatening them or their families.

The Uppsala City Court said Thursday that Bjorn Samstrom was guilty of online sexual offences against 27 children between 2015 and early 2017. The 41-year-old had threatened to post photos of his victims on porn sites or kill their relatives unless they performed sexual acts as he watched in Sweden.

It was the first time in Sweden that a person had been convicted of rape when the sexual assaults took place over the internet.

Under Swedish law rape doesn't have to involve intercourse. It can be another act that's considered equally violating.

http://www...n-canada-u-k-and-u-s-1.3700772
hood
Member
Thu Nov 30 11:36:01
Swedish law is stupid if that's rape.

Wildly illegal, but not rape. Wtf Sweden?
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