Teen daughter gathers own forensic evidence of rapist dad (Smaland, Sweden)

Even in a relatively liberal country like Sweden, girls know that the Word of the Father carries more weight than the testimony of a child. It is horrifying that this daughter had the burden of collecting her own evidence of rape. 

UNNAMED DAD

http://www.thelocal.se/48380/20130607/

Swedish teen gathers evidence of rapist father

Published: 7 Jun 13 17:19 CET

A 14-year-old Swedish girl felt forced to swab her body for DNA, for fear that social services and police would not believe her when she decided to report her father for repeatedly raping her at her home in southern Sweden.

A court of appeals this week upheld the six-year jail sentence for the man from Småland who raped his daughter for a period of two years, according to a report in the Metro newspaper.

The teenager finally decided to tell her friends last winter that her father was forcing her to have sex with him. The friends responded by telling her that she had to tell her mother, and then report her father to social services.

Yet the 14-year-old was convinced that no one would believe her. Metro reported on Friday that she thus decided she had to collect the evidence herself.

She hid cotton buds in her bed and waited for her father to force himself upon her again. After the rape, when the father left the room to get paper to clean her off, she used the swaps to save the evidence. She also used the cotton bud on the inside of her mouth to trace her father's saliva.

Once the case reached court, the father denied all allegations against him and said his daughter was lying. 

Metro reported that the prosecution was successful due to the forensic evidence that the 14-year-old had collected, as otherwise it would have been a word-against-word account playing out in court.

The father was sentenced to six years in jail for aggravated rape of a child and sexual molestation of a child. He was also ordered to pay his daughter 280,000 kronor ($42,600) in damages.

His appeal against the verdict was discarded by an appeals court this week.