An acquittal in the Court of Appeal, for a man who was previously convicted of raping children, has caused strong reactions. Now the lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz speaks about the verdict in “Efter fem” and believes that it is “under all criticism.”
Last fall, a 50-year-old man was convicted in the district court after abusing a ten-year-old girl, and he was sentenced to three years in prison for two counts of child rape. When the verdict was appealed, the man was acquitted by the Court of Appeal and the reason was that there was uncertainty regarding how the word “snip” should be interpreted. This is the background to why the hashtag #jagvetvadensnippaär has been trending in recent days.
Cannot require children to use adult language
When the lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz is a guest on “Efter fem”, she speaks critically of the verdict, which she believes is “under all criticism.” She also highlights the fact that one of the legal judges is different from the other members, and thus opposes the acquittal as she believes that the girl is credible, reliable and that she clearly showed what happened. Massi Fritz believes that this shows how the other members are lacking. “That the children’s perspective, knowledge and experience of how children really talk, we cannot demand that children, a girl in this case who is ten years old, should use adult terms, such as vagina and vagina,” she says in the interview.
Should appeal the verdict
She also criticizes the fact that the word “snip” was looked up in a dictionary as a basis for the verdict. “You could have gone to the trouble of maybe looking at more books, because then you would have come to the conclusion that snippa means female genitalia,” she says. Massi Fritz believes that the prosecutor and the plaintiff’s attorney should appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court, as it is “under all criticism.” She also says that she regrets that the parents and the girl are forced to go through this. “The girl has done exactly the right thing, she has answered, she has told, she has shown,” she says in the program.
