Swedish Pedophile Allowed to Adopt Child

An unnamed Swedish man in his 60s will be allowed to adopt a child, even though he was convicted for molesting a five-year-old girl, suspected of raping a teenage girl, and guilty of over 90 crimes, mainly fraud. 

Authorities do not believe he will relapse.

The man will now be able to adopt, after a review by the municipality’s social affairs committee (socialnämnd) found that his risk of relapse was considered low, with all but one of ten members of the committee voting yes to the man’s application to adopt. HD noted, however, that the public servants and the politically appointed board members were not given access to the documents giving details about his alleged sex crime. 

Furthermore, the newspaper noted, the claim that the older man, who is known to chat with young girls on the internet, did not risk a criminal relapse was not in any way explained in the tribunal’s statement. There were no supporting documents to back up the assessment.

He was convicted of molesting his neighbor’s five-year-old daughter in 2004. He was not charged with raping a 14-year-old girl, but the suspicion was strong enough for social services to recommend he be supervised around children. In 2007, he was considered high risk and was told to receive treatment and parental training. 

He married in 2009 and applied to adopt his wife’s ten-year-old son, who has an undisclosed disability. His wife recently passed away, but she did interview with social services when she was alive. The boy’s biological father also consented to the adoption.

But now the head of social services wants to stop the adoption.

“I should have stopped it,” social services head Dinah Åbinger told the TT news agency.

“I can only say that it was a weak investigation. There are questions that aren’t described in depth and the investigation should have been resubmitted to family court even before it reached the committee. Because of that I’m reporting us to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (Inspektionen för vård och omsorg, IVO).”