Investigation of grooming suspects is growing - 30 cases are being investigated

The crimes must have been committed during the past year. The man, who is in his 40s, should contact several girls via the Snapchat app.

- It's about him forcing them to show up easily dressed and naked. In some cases it has gone longer. So that's the whole spectrum, says Chamber Prosecutor Hedvig Lundblad.

All crimes that the man is suspected of must be committed remotely and range from the exploitation of children for sexual positioning to child rape.

The man is arrested on suspicion of crimes against seven girls aged 11-16, but a total of just over 30 possible victims are being investigated across the country.

The case is the largest of two investigations regarding grooming that the IT forensics in the police area West are working on right now.

- These "real" grooms are going with the big gap in social media and trying to get in touch with many. So it's no wonder you come up in large numbers of plaintiffs. Then it is a great job to identify the people who have been contacted and identify if they have become a victim, says Birgitta Dellenhed, head of the IT crime section at the police in the West region.

In 2018, 12 people were sentenced in Sweden for exploiting children for sexual posing, one of whom came from western Sweden. During the same period, 876 children under the age of 18 were reported as being exposed to grooming, 39 from western Sweden.

At the same time, the figures do not give the whole picture because many perpetrators who contact the victim for posing go much further, so that the case is instead classified as, for example, sexual assault against children.

Birgitta Dellenhed sees three ways in which she becomes aware of child sexual crimes, like grooming. Through the US organization NCMEC, in connection with ongoing police investigations and finally through reports from the public.

- It's not always easy to see the signs. We should be better at asking questions, being observant in other ways, ”she says