Swede wins damages over 'skeleton sex' case
A 40-year-old Swedish woman has been awarded 70,000 kronor ($8,177) in damages after a long-running case which saw her falsely accused of using human bones as sex toys.
Gothenburg District Court convicted the woman in 2012 for violating the peace of the dead after police found large quantities of genuine human skeletons in her apartment. However claims she had been using the bones for sexual purposes were thrown out by the court.
She consistently denied committing any crimes, telling regional newspaper Göteborgs-Posten (GP) at the time that she was an "odd bird" but "not sexually interested in necrophilia".
But by the time an appeals court a year later declared the woman not guilty of the offence, her collection of bones had already made headlines in newspapers across the world.
On Wednesday, the Swedish Chancellor of Justice ordered that 70,000 kronor be paid out to the woman as compensation after she was forced to spend the first night of her police arrest in 2012 without her glasses and locked up naked in a cell wearing only a blanket.
She had initially asked for 15 million kronor after she was kept locked up for 86 days during the investigation and trial. She also said media attention following the prosecutor's claims in court that she had sex with skeletons had ruined her life.
"Now you know what a human life is considered to be worth in Sweden. I had counted on getting 70,000 but asked for 15 million because that is what I think my life is worth," GP quoted the woman, named only as Helena, as saying after the ruling on Wednesday.
The highest sum ever paid out in a criminal case in Sweden was 10.2 million kronor to a Swedish-Bangladeshi man who was acquitted in 2012 after serving eight years in prison on murder charges.
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Gothenburg District Court convicted the woman in 2012 for violating the peace of the dead after police found large quantities of genuine human skeletons in her apartment. However claims she had been using the bones for sexual purposes were thrown out by the court.
She consistently denied committing any crimes, telling regional newspaper Göteborgs-Posten (GP) at the time that she was an "odd bird" but "not sexually interested in necrophilia".
But by the time an appeals court a year later declared the woman not guilty of the offence, her collection of bones had already made headlines in newspapers across the world.
On Wednesday, the Swedish Chancellor of Justice ordered that 70,000 kronor be paid out to the woman as compensation after she was forced to spend the first night of her police arrest in 2012 without her glasses and locked up naked in a cell wearing only a blanket.
She had initially asked for 15 million kronor after she was kept locked up for 86 days during the investigation and trial. She also said media attention following the prosecutor's claims in court that she had sex with skeletons had ruined her life.
"Now you know what a human life is considered to be worth in Sweden. I had counted on getting 70,000 but asked for 15 million because that is what I think my life is worth," GP quoted the woman, named only as Helena, as saying after the ruling on Wednesday.
The highest sum ever paid out in a criminal case in Sweden was 10.2 million kronor to a Swedish-Bangladeshi man who was acquitted in 2012 after serving eight years in prison on murder charges.
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