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Birkedal cleared over teen sex charges

Trond Birkedal, the 31-year-old former head of the Progress Party’s youth wing, was given a suspended 60-day jail sentence on Thursday for secretly filming naked boys, but was cleared of the most serious charge of having sexual relations with a 15-year-old boy.

Birkedal cleared over teen sex charges
Photo: Tommy Ellingsen/Scanpix

Stavanger district court was not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the prominent politician had a sexual encounter with a then 15-year-old boy at a hotel in Oslo in 2008.

He was also cleared over charges he had sexually abused another 15-year-old boy when he gave him a massage in 2007.

Birkedal confessed to the crimes for which he was convicted. These included secretly filming teenagers as they showered at his home, and several counts of getting teenage boys to perform sex acts in front of webcams.

Birkedal spent 20 days in custody after his arrest, while the court suspended the remaining 40 days of his sentence.

It was a relieved Birkedal who met the press outside a packed Stavanger court on Thursday afternoon.

“I sense the gravity as I stand here with the verdict in my hand. For the first time in my life I have been convicted of a criminal act. My thoughts go, as they have throughout this case, to those I have subjected to something, those who are the victims in this case,” he said.

“At the same time I think the circumstances where I didn’t do anything wrong were clarified very well in court. I’m not surprised, but I am of course very relieved to have been cleared of those.”

A rising star in the populist Progress Party before his spectacular fall from grace last year, Birkedal received some measure of sympathy from the judge, Bjørn Enoksen Ristesund, who said the politician’s fame had blown up the significance of the case out of all proportion.

“For a long time he has been exposed in a negative way. A picture has been sketched of him as a paedophile,” said the judge.  

Prosecutor Karsten Monsen said he would examine the ruling before deciding whether to lodge an appeal.

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France taken to European Court over divorce ruling that woman had ‘marital duty’ to have sex with husband

A case has been brought against France at the European Court of Human Rights by a woman who lost a divorce case after judges ruled against her because she refused to have sex with her husband.

France taken to European Court over divorce ruling that woman had 'marital duty' to have sex with husband
Photo: Frederick Florin/AFP

The woman, who has not been named, has brought the case with the backing of two French feminist groups, arguing that the French court ruling contravened human rights legislation by “interference in private life” and “violation of physical integrity”.

It comes after a ruling in the Appeals Court in Versailles which pronounced a fault divorce in 2019 because of her refusal to have sex with her husband.

READ ALSO The divorce laws in France that foreigners need to be aware of

The court ruled that the facts of the case “established by the admission of the wife, constitute a serious and renewed violation of the duties and obligations of marriage making intolerable the maintenance of a shared life”.

Feminist groups Fondation des femmes (Women’s Foundation) and Collectif féministe contre le viol (Feminist Collective against Rape) have backed her appeal, deploring the fact that French justice “continues to impose the marital duty” and “thus denying the right of women to consent or not to sexual relations”.

“Marriage is not and should not be a sexual servitude,” the joint statement says, pointing out that in 47 percent of the 94,000 recorded rapes and attempted rapes per year, the aggressor is the spouse or ex-spouse of the victim.

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