A failed asylum seeker from western Africa has been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault but the prosecutor has said the alleged crimes are not serious enough to call for his deportation.
The alleged assaults took place at a disco in a church in Västra Götaland and saw the asylum seeker, who is in his 20s, sexually harass several teenage girls by touching their breasts and buttocks, Nyheter Idag reports.
“We all noticed a guy in the room, he was very nice to everyone and we tried to keep him away. Then he began to touch us,” one of the girls allegedly assaulted by the migrant said.
The behaviour of the man spread around the event with several girls making complaints to the police, though it is not known whether any of those who made the complaints had been assaulted by the migrant themselves.
The man now faces four counts of sexual harassment, but according to prosecutor Joanna Larsen, the crimes are not serious enough to push for his deportation.
The African came to Sweden in 2015 and applied for asylum but was rejected in 2017. Since then, he has appealed the decision but has not yet received a new ruling and is allowed to remain in the country until then.
'Nobody Told Me it Was Illegal!' – Claim of Migrant Accused of Child Rape https://t.co/yGTNIRaanL
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 23, 2019
The case comes only days after another migrant was accused of raping and sexually abusing a young girl, with the suspect claiming he had committed no crime because no one had told him that it was an illegal act in Sweden.
Earlier this month, Swedish police announced that they would be hiring hundreds of new officers to tackle sexual abuse cases, particularly those involving especially vulnerable victims such as children.
The police, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Crime Prevention Council all claim that the number of sexual offences where children are victims is on the rise with only half of the reported cases being resolved.
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