The Semi-Psychotic Girl with Diabetes

Erna, injured party, b. 1974. The defendant was married to Erna's childminder.

The district court, 1992-09-04, convicted, unanimous

The court of appeal, 1993-11-15, acquitted with the votes 4-1

Erna got diabetes when she was 4½ years old. Eventually she became the most extreme case in the whole county where she lived. Therefore she was never allowed to be alone or unsupervised. Her mother had shift work. It was very difficult to find a minder for a child needing that amount of care and supervision. She was finally accepted by Dagmar, who was also diabetic. Dagmar also provided day care for other children. Erna's and Dagmar's families had been friends for many years, both before and after Dagmar began looking after Erna. She did so for a period of 33 months, from autumn 1984, when Erna was 10 years old, until 1987-06-12, when she was 13. After this period she was not in day care.

The fact that the 9 years of compulsory schooling in Sweden are divided into 3 levels (low, intermediate and high) of 3 years respectively, will prove to be important. Erna started her final three years in autumn 1987.

In her late teens Erna was in the habit of inventing accusations that were difficult to disprove. In a treatment centre and at one hospital the principal and the chief physician, respectively, had issued strict orders to the staff that no one must ever be alone with her. And no one among the staff of the treatment centre dared give her a hug or a pat on the shoulder because of the risk that she might accuse or report them for sexual harassment.

Nevertheless, when she in the autumn of 1990 accused a non-identified man of sexual abuse, the head of the diabetes clinic reported this to the police. During autumn 1990 he had expressed severe doubts concerning her trustworthiness in his case-notes. In the court of appeal, however, he testified that she was trustworthy to a very high degree.

At the age of 17 Erna told a social worker that she had been abused when she was 14 or 15, and she told the police that the abuse had taken place during her final three years at school. Both statements clearly indicate that Dagmar was no longer the minder.

It was a highly aggressive police officer who introduced the idea that additional assaults might have occurred at the intermediate school level. The serious deterioration of the girl's mental health coincided with the period of the police interrogations.

The series of police interrogations resulted in Erna accusing Dagmar's husband Dag. He had, allegedly, performed some 300 acts of coitus. Erna claimed that some 80-90 % of these were performed on weekly days in his bedroom between 1 and 3 o'clock.

The district court ruled that: "It seems completely apparent to the district court that he [=Dag] during this period of time has been alone together with Erna at his home. Furthermore, it has been made clear that Dag on many occasions has been alone together with Erna in her and her mother's apartment. [ ] Consequently, Dag has had the opportunity to be alone with Erna in the way she has told without the risk of being interrupted by any other person."

The final part of the quotation above to the following pattern. Following a fire in Erna's and her mother's apartment they lived for 4½ months at the home of the mother's boyfriend. According to the latter's own testimony he had been away from his apartment about 3-4 times a week when he attended various committee meetings.

Since day care was paid for by the municipality, the exact hours when Erna was at this address were documented. Note that what is documented are the maximum hours. Occasionally Erna might have followed a schoolmate to her home, even though time had been reserved for her at Dagmar's.

In another register every day when Dag was absent from his work was documented, regardless of whether he was ill or whether he was away for any other reason. Furthermore, all Erna's school timetables for the three years in question were collected.

When all this information is combined, it becomes clear that Dag and Erna had the physical opportunity of being together in Dag's apartment on weekdays at any time between 12 noon and 16:30 for a total of four (4) days over the three years in question. Note that the district court did not discover that the defendant had a foolproof alibi.

What about the alone-together-postulation as regards the apartment of Erna's mother's boyfriend Exact information about the date of every committee meeting in which he had participated was obtained from the relevant organisations, including at what time each meeting had finished. First, it has been proved that no more than three of the meetings coincided with occasions when Erna was late home from school. Second, none of these meetings finished later than 20:15. Third, Erna never left Dagmar's home before 21.00. The reason was for this was that it was Dagmar's responsibility that Erna took her night dose of insulin, and that she did so at 21.00. Her doctors knew that they could not trust the girl to do it herself (the prosecutor tried to conceal this piece of information).

Because of Erna's illness someone (either Dagmar or Dag) had to follow her home, and to stay with her until someone else came home. However, the mother and her boyfriend agree that it never happened that Dag remained in the apartment for several hours on those days when the boyfriend was working until 2 o'clock in the morning.

The district court stated in their judgement that the nature of Erna's account "very strongly tells in favour of her having experienced the things she had recounted", and that those circumstances that are vague or obscure "provide no reason for reducing the confidence in the truth of her account".

Moreover, the court found no motive as to why Erna would lie. – This is an absurd argument, because neither the court nor anyone else [until the defendant shifted to another defence counsel] had searched for any such circumstances. Instead, all the authorities involved had been unusually active in concealing Erna's motive – which was both flagrant and well-known to the authorities.

They were perfectly aware of the fact that Erna was semi-psychotic. The real view of three professional, viz. the head physician who treated her diabetes, a psychiatrist, and her psychotherapist, was that her mental state belonged to the borderland between neurosis and psychosis. She herself had told that she went back and forth between the physical world and an immaterial world populated by creatures that have concrete names. These creatures govern her fate, and she must necessarily obey their commands. They all love her. But they will punish her because she had told her psychotherapist about them.

At the hospital she simulated a broken foot for several weeks. She used crutches for walking around, although the x-ray examination showed no injury. But on one occasion when she had gone out on the town a nurse happened to see her, and there she was walking in a perfectly normal way.

For some time she imitated another young patient who suffered from anorexia, but in the end she was not able to keep it up.

At the hospital she was twice in close contact with two girls who had been exposed to sexual abuse. She also imitated their experiences. If no attempts had been made to consolidate her own "abuse experiences", these might have been as short-lived as her anorexia.

This case ended with a correct verdict, but only with a very narrow margin. And the acquittal was achieved only because the defence counsel and the defence experts devoted a gigantic amount of time and effort to the task of disproving the seriously distorted facts of those experts who either openly or secretly supported the prosecutor. Neither the district court nor the court of appeal managed to make an adequate assessment of the pseudo-facts advanced by the prosecution.

Puzzling together all the relevant temporal information in the case of the semi-psychotic girl with diabetes (Erna) would today be an easy task. However, in 1993 computers were not yet sufficiently developed. Nor had I learned the necessary skills. Hence, a large job of comparing all temporal relations and other evidence had to be performed primarily by hand. We can be sure that extremely few judges (if any at all) would have devoted the same amount of time and effort to the analysis of evidence.

The judges of the district court cannot have been eager to avoid false convictions. Without making any attempt at checking the facts they stated that it was "completely apparent" that the defendant had had ample opportunity to abuse Erna without the risk of being interrupted.

Although the defendant was acquitted by the court of appeal, the chairman was furious, because the defence had provided such a large amount of unusually strong evidence that he did not dare convict the defendant. During the proceedings he incessantly heaped invectives at the defence counsel and the main defence expert (MS).

In trials involving sexual abuse of children it is a common phenomenon that people will subsequently "recall" events which they never perceived when they happened. – Because of her diabetes Erna could never be left alone. When her mother worked in the evening, her minder or the latter's husband would follow Erna home and stay until her mother arrived.

Now, in the court of appeal Erna's mother testified that one night when her daughter was 12 she came home from work just as Dag came out from Erna's room. She could see from his mouth that he had just had an orgasm. She did not say a word to him. She was afraid that her daughter might bleed to death. But she did not uncover the cover, because if she did, Erna's heart would have collapsed and she would have died instantly. This event was etched into her memory. After the orgasm event she made arrangements so that Erna would never again be followed home by any member of her minder's family in the evenings.

The defence counsel asked why she had not told this event during any of the police interrogations. And why had she not reported it to the police when it happened Why did she permit her daughter to stay with this family for at least another eight months

The computer printout provided by the municipality clearly disproves the mother?s new arrangement. Besides, Erna did not have her own room when she was 12. Because of her diabetes she had to sleep in her mother's room so that she could be supervised.

In agreement with the pattern described previously and encountered in many cases in many countries, no one bothered about finding or punishing the person who had allegedly abused Erna when she was 14 or 15.








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Uppdaterad: 2009-11-19

Yakida