Kai Mykkänen (NCP), the Minister of the Interior, has expressed his shock at reports that an underage girl has been raped and sexually abused repeatedly by a group of men in Oulu, North Ostrobothnia. (Credit: Vesa Moilanen – Lehtikuva)
Minister of the Interior Kai Mykkänen (NCP) has expressed his shock at reports that a group of men are suspected of repeatedly raping and sexually abusing an underage girl over a couple of months in Oulu, North Ostrobothnia.
“Things like these shouldn’t be happening in Finland,” he lamented on YLE A-Studio on Monday.
The Oulu Police Department on Saturday reported that several men of foreign background are suspected of repeatedly raping and sexually abusing a girl aged over 10 but under 15 in a number of flats in Oulu. The District Court of Oulu has detained a total of seven people on suspicion of aggravated child sexual abuse and aggravated rape in connection with the offences, which are believed to have taken place this year over a few-month period.
More arrests are expected, according to the Oulu Police Department.
The case has been described as exceptional also by Johanna Niemi, a professor of procedural law at the University of Turku. “Sometimes it feels like nothing can shock you, but this case certainly does,” she stated.
YLE on Monday highlighted that foreign nationals are disproportionately represented in sex crime statistics: Finnish nationals were suspected of a total of 693 sex crimes and foreign nationals of 286 sex crimes in Finland in 2017.
“This is a difficult issue that we must be able to talk about,” commented Mykkänen.
He also drew attention to the need to take action to prevent sex crimes by, for example, educating the residents of reception centres across the country.
The Finnish government, he also pointed out, has tabled a legislative proposal to expedite deportations in circumstances where the foreign national has committed a crime in Finland. The Ministry of Justice, meanwhile, has presented a legislative proposal to introduce the aggravated rape of a child into the criminal code and raise the punishments for aggravated child sexual abuse.
