A 45-year-old man in Uppsala is accused of sex offences against 19 women, raping seven, and also filming several rapes and producing child pornography.
The man, who has not been identified, is accused of ten acts of rape against the seven women and filming four of the alleged assaults. Prosecutor Moa Blomqvist said the man had met the women in the context of dating but had sexually assaulted them.
The investigation into the rapes has been underway for around a year, according to a report from broadcaster SVT, after a woman reported to police that the suspect had raped her.
Investigators were able to uncover sexually explicit images and video of other women which led them to investigate the possibility the man has sexually assaulted far more than just one woman.
Prosecutor Blomqvist said that there was no evidence that the man had drugged any of the women, but some said that he abused them while they were sleeping or while they were intoxicated after drinking alcohol.
The photography charges relate to filming and photographing sex acts as well as filming the intimate body parts of the women, one of whom is said to have been underage — leading to charges of producing child pornography.
Sex crimes and rape attacks have seen a significant rise in the last several years, according to a report released last October by the Swedish Crime Prevention Council, Brå. The report stated that between 2014 and 2018, the number of sex offences had tripled.
The Swedish capital of Stockholm reported a 14 per cent increase in reported rapes from January to June of last year compared to the same period in 2018.
“I look extremely seriously at all the rapes. The increase is alarming,” Moderate Party politician Irene Svenonius said at the time.
An SVT report in 2018 revealed that migrants were the perpetrators of the vast majority of rapes in which the victim does not know their attacker beforehand.