File photo of police cordons. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT
A 30-year-old man has admitted to raping a young girl in Malmö and is in custody.
The man, a Libyan national according to court documents seen by The Local, is suspected of a sexual attack on a ten-year-old girl in Malmö last week.
The child was cycling home from school at around 5.30pm on Thursday when the man is said to have approached her and then attacked her in a bicycle shed attached to an apartment block.
The man reported himself to the police, a prosecutor told a remand hearing today, and confessed to the allegations. The court remanded him in custody and ordered him to undergo a minor psychiatric evaluation.
According to previous charges he is also suspected of exposing himself to a woman in her 50s in August and asking to buy sex, and of having touched a 14-year-old girl's bottom in the northern city Skellefteå.
Sweden classifies child rape as sexual intercourse with someone under the age of 15 or any "other sexual act" comparable to intercourse. That includes inappropriate touching, even if the perpetrator does not use force. The crime is classified as aggravated if violence or threats are used, or if there are several perpetrators.
A total of 207 alleged rapes were reported to the police in Malmö last year, down on the year before. Of those, 34 were committed against children under the age of 15, the lowest number in the past five years, according to Sweden's official crime data compiled by the National Council for Crime Prevention.
