A man in Sweden has been acquitted on charges of "child rape" because the girl's body was considered too "well-developed" for a 13-year-old, the Daily Beast reports. The 27-year-old man, whose name was withheld, saw the charges tossed out of court when officials decided the girl was so curvy that he "could not have known" her real age. Two courts—a district court and Sweden's Court of Appeal—threw out the case after seeing video of the girl talking to police officers, the Local reports. It's considered "child rape" in Sweden to have sex with someone younger than 15, but such charges depend on the defendant reasonably knowing that the sex partner is underage.
The girl had apparently fled her foster home for Västerås, just outside Stockholm, without money or a place to stay, when she met the man at a playground. She accepted his invitation for a drink, she says, because she was thirsty and hungry. The man initially denied having sex with her until his semen was discovered in her underwear. Now the girl's attorney says they plan to take the case to Sweden's Supreme Court, in the hope of setting a new benchmark case in their favor. Similar cases have cropped up elsewhere, including a 16-year-old London girl accused by a judge of "grooming" an older, male teacher for sex, and a 14-year-old girl dismissed by a Montana judge as "older than her chronological age" after having sex with a 47-year-old teacher. (Another rape conviction was overturned thanks to an 1872 law.)
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