A Swedish mother who filmed her children in the bath in an attempt to prove that they had been abused by their father, has been arrested on child pornography charges and ordered to hand the two youngsters over to her ex. The woman, who separated from the children’s father in 2008, says she first suspected him of abuse when their four-year-old son and five-year-old daughter started acting in a sexually suggestive manner last year.
The woman told police of her concerns but the case was dropped due to a lack of evidence. “That’s when my lawyer advised me to film the children, in order to show the police how they were behaving,” she told Aftonbladet newspaper.
After showing the video to both the police and social services, the woman was arrested on suspicion of child pornography and spent a day in jail. A district court has also since stripped her of her shared custody rights, handing the children over to their father for full-time care.
Social services argued that the mother exposed her children to abuse herself while filming their antics. “It hasn’t been confirmed that the children have been sexually abused by their father, but to let the children continue with what they were doing in the tub is abuse,” the investigators claimed.
Former police officer Monica Dahlstrom-Lannes, who specialised in crimes against children, believes however that the allegations against the father need to be investigated further. “The mother is of course very upset,” said Dahlstrom-Lannes in a report by The Local. “I’ve been working with cases like this for 25 years and it’s just getting worse. It’s like the social welfare services have stopped listening to the children. It’s really upsetting.”