A gym teacher in Gothenburg has been sentenced to protective supervision for sexually assaulting several 10-year-old girls during lessons. Despite warnings from school management, he continued his inappropriate behavior. Police also found child pornography on his computer.
At an elementary school in Gothenburg, a gym teacher in his 50s subjected 10-year-old girls to so-called "tickle tests" after physical education lessons. He separated the girls from the boys and had them lie scattered in the gym, where he tickled and massaged them over their entire bodies, including buttocks, thighs, stomach, and breasts, according to Gothenburg District Court.
Despite several conversations with managers about being too physical with students and a concrete action plan introduced two years after he started at the school, he continued the behavior. The school was informed but allowed him to keep working. The crimes, consisting of four counts of sexual molestation, were committed in 2022.
During a house search, police seized the man's computer and hard drives, where they found a PowerPoint presentation with 13 images and videos from Astrid Lindgren's "Madicken" showing the children naked in various positions. He was convicted of possessing 48 child pornography images, five of which are deemed particularly ruthless. Additionally, there were around 10,000 images of girls posing in a sexual manner, but these are not considered pornography but rather a gray area.
The man denies the crimes and says he was "completely horrified" upon learning of the computer content. He describes the images of young girls as containing "natural beauty" and denies any sexual inclination toward children. The verdict was issued on Wednesday.