On naïveté, stupidity and personal responsibility in Sweden

Over the past few weeks there have been reports on the man who is on trial in Malmö, accused of having lured anything from a couple hundred up to a thousand young "girls" into having sex with him, with possible charges of rape pending. The youngest is said to be barely 12 years old. It is of course horrendous that there are such twisted individuals out there who prey on minors. Nevertheless, the events do raise several questions which the commentators seem to be doing their best to avoid.

In the first place, most of these so-called "girls" are not children, regardless of the ambiguous definitions of this term that prevail in Sweden. They are teenagers. Several of them are said to be between 15 and 17 years old. One therefore assumes that they are not idiots. Furthermore, one of these teenagers travelled all the way from Stockholm to Malmö to meet a person with whom she had only had contact in a chatroom. I know from personal (adult) experience that this is no cheap undertaking, even for a "youth", largely because it is the X2000 (express train) that runs this route. Getting hold of a cheap ticket would imply planning the journey well in advance. I therefore assume that this was what she - and the others who met this man - did. What was she expecting? Which brings me to the first question:

1. Just how stupid are Swedish teenagers today? I shall have to come back to this point.

A teenager who lives with her parents gets on a train and travels 4 - 6 hours from Stockholm to Malmö without her parents noticing anything or becoming suspicious if/when they do notice that she is gone. No-one seems to have said anything to her after she returned home, most likely on the following day. Which brings me to my second question:

2. Just how stupid are Swedish parents today? Don't they teach their children to be sensible and alert? Aren't they in charge of their children? Even if they are not, then they ought to have at least raised them well enough to ensure that they do not run to any and everyone who happens to beckon to them.

I can understand that a child under the age of 8, or in the worst case, up to 10 years of age can be easily influenced and thus enticed into doing things that he/she would not otherwise have done. But it is very difficult for me to explain the behaviour of teenagers who walk right into such traps with their eyes wide open with any other word than stupidity.

We live in a part of the world and in a country which has unlimited access to information. We are not in some remote area where people have never seen a television, listened to the radio or read a newspaper. What is wrong with us? Where did this stupidity come from?

The public is always quick to blame one party without looking at the other side of the coin. How easy is it to force/trick a teenager into travelling miles away from the sanctity of her home to a strange man or woman of her own free will?

If there were more attentive parents/adults and sensible teenagers then half of these dangers would cease to exist. But history has shown that there is a significant absence of adult role models in this society.

Not so long ago there was a great hysteria about an HIV-positive man (originally from Iran) who had had sex with nearly 180 Swedish woman during a three-month period. The man had even had a long-term girlfriend during this period of time. Police stations around the entire country were innundated with telephone calls from terrified women who thought they might have had sex with this man. Of the hundreds that rang, only one claimed to have been raped. To have had sex with so many women in such a short period of time would have meant that most of the women had had sex - and unprotected sex at that - with him within just a few hours of meeting him. But that did not stop them from claiming that he had "tricked" them into having sex with him. They accused him of having lied, etc., etc. (Not to joke about such a serious matter, but one is also expected to take it for granted that they told nothing but the truth when they picked up a strange man in a bar and had sex with him 2 hours later; in other words, they did not lie about anything). Instead of admitting what everyone knew deep down, that they had been incredibly stupid and irresponsible, not to mention promiscuous, they were painted as innocent victims. Not one of the numerous columns which were written on this sad story shed light on the other side of the coin. The women shared no responsibility for what had happened. They had done nothing wrong. It would therefore be quite all right to do it again.

Men lie. Even women lie. People lie. One ought therefore to be careful and use common sense when one comes into contact with strangers, regardless of the medium of communication. Imagine if the newspapers in the HIV-case had highlighted eller reminded their readers about this simple fact? Imagine if parents had summoned their children and read about the case aloud and told them a thing or two about life? Then the teenagers in the current case would perhaps have thought carefully before setting off on their little adventure.

Imagine if these girls had said, "no, I shan't come", or asked why the man/woman wanted to know certain things, or reported the predator to their parents? How many of them would have been exploited then? I find it hard to believe that most of these girls were not aware of exactly what they were doing. Some certainly went to meet him because they thought it was exciting, that it was a new experience. This is not a matter of naïveté, but more a question of plain stupidity. Teenagers do not need people around them who do everything in their power to insult their intelligence and tell them that they "have not done anything wrong." What they need instead is a straightforward adult who will tell them exactly what the world is like: that children who do stupid things can wind up in very serious trouble indeed.