Sweden jails ‘sadist pimp’ for eight years

The preliminary investigation clearly showed that the man, who pretended to be a fashion photographer to lure victims, had used the photo front as a way to get sex and to act as a pimp, the stockholm District Court stated in its verdict on Friday.  

When the extensive case went to court last year, the prosecutor described the man as a sadist living a double life. 

"He appears to have had a normal, functional life with a wife and a job," prosecutor Silvia Ingolsfdottir said when she submitted the charge sheet to the court.

"What I've seen is the other side, where he appears to be a sexual sadist due to the sexual acts that excite him, with a focus on dominance and violence," Ingolfsdottir told the TT news agency about the man who stood trial for six rapes, including multiple attacks on a 17-year-old girl.

IN PICTURES: See the Swedish police's photographs of sex toys and bondage gear in the suspect's possession

When the man was originally detained by the police as he made his way to his day job, he was carrying a bag filled with sex toys, clothes pins, ropes, a blindfold and a balaclava. 

The 49-year-old was suspected of raping the same girl three times, when the victim was 17 back in 2002. The man pretended to be a fashion photographer, and lured her to the place of the attack where he forced her to have sex. During one alleged assault, he was accompanied by two other masked men, who also allegedly took turns raping her. The main suspect tied up, blindfolded and whipped the girl during the suspected gang rape.

The prosecution did not produce enough evidence of this alleged assault to sustain a guilty verdict, the court found on Friday.

In encounters with other victims, the suspect had up to 25 men with him, the prosecutor explained. The man also told women they had to have sex with him so he could "try them out" for prostitution, or as payment in kind when he recruited sex buyers for them.

The man used several different aliases, more than 40 according to the investigators, to get in touch with, recruit or cajole women into selling sex. Posing as a woman, the 49-year-old told would-be victims that prostitution would allow them to earn significant amounts of money. He had about ten mobile phones in his possession upon his arrest.

There were a total of 13 plaintiffs in the case against the man. Several of his victims first contacted the police in Stockholm a decade ago, but have claimed that law enforcers did not take their complaints of rape and being passed on to other men seriously.