A Swedish court of appeal has acquitted a man convicted of raping a ten-year-old girl because the girl used a childish term for vagina during her testimony, claiming the meaning of the word was unclear.
Many have expressed outrage over the court’s ruling, which took place last weekend and saw the Court of Appeal acquit the 50-year-old man in the case after he had been found guilty of raping the ten-year-old girl in 2022 by the Halmstad District Court and sentenced to a paltry three years in prison.
The Court of Appeal noted that the ten-year-old used the term “snippa” in her testimony, a slang term for the female genitalia among children, suggesting it was unclear if the girl meant she was talking about her genitals or not, SVT reports.
Prosecutor Eva-Lotta Swahn expressed outrage over the appeal court ruling, saying she was upset by the verdict, while Agneta Carlquist, who served as the victim’s counsel, stated: “It shouldn’t be a guessing game. It has serious consequences when the child is not allowed to explain themselves. There are judgments in the past where the word snippa is used and accepted.”
Former chief prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem also spoke out on the ruling, saying the case should be taken to a high court: ” I think it would be extremely valuable and almost necessary for the prosecutor general to try to get the case to the Supreme Court.”
But Court of Appeal judge Åke Thimfors, who was one of the judges in the appeal case, defended the ruling, saying: “It wasn’t possible for us to ask her any follow-up questions about what she had experienced.”
Thimfors was also questioned on whether he understood the outrage over the verdict, but sneered that the court has “careful deliberations.”
“We go through the evidence so carefully. We understand that it is important, not only for the victim but also for the perpetrator. There is a lot at stake,” he claimed.
Oisín Cantwell, a columnist for the newspaper Aftonbladet, called the entire process strange, saying that it was the most bizarre verdict he had ever read and questioning why the court had consulted a dictionary rather than asking the victim what the word meant.
He claimed that perhaps because the word “snippa” as a term for female genitalia is relatively new and that the average age of the judges was over 60, they may have not known its meaning, but added that other testimony made it more clear the child had been raped.