Two major cases involving multiple counts of sexual assault against children were getting underway in courtrooms in both Northern and Southern Norway this week. One involves a serial sex offender in and around the Oslo area, while the other involves assaults on 17 children at a day care center in Tromsø.
The Oslo-area assaults are being heard in a courtroom in Gjøvik, Oppland County, because the defendant is a Norwegian man who lives in the Oppland district of Hadeland. He’s under indictment after police investigators finally were able to find DNA links among 10 assaults extending from 2004 to 2014 in Oslo, Hakadal, Nittedal, Romerike and Hadeland.
In addition to being charged with sexual assault and rape of teenagers and children, including his own baby daughter, the 48-year-old man was found in possession of at least 60,000 photos and more than 2,000 films of sexual assaults on children. He has confessed to portions of the indictment and faces Norway’s strongest sentence of 21 years in custody that can be extended to protect the public. Local attorneys in Gran in Hadeland told local newspaper Hadeland that the case was especially difficult in such a small community.
Farther north, in Tromsø, a 30-year-old Norwegian man will be on trial on charges of assaulting small children at a day care center where he’d been working since 2008. He also faces a 21-year sentence that can be extended to protect children, after he claimed he is a pedophile and asked to be held in isolation himself.
“There is a danger of him being a repeat offender,” prosecutor Gøril Lund told news bureau NTB. Court-appointed psychiatrists who have evaluated the defendant will be testifying at his trial.
newsinenglish.no staff
