A 26-year-old Syrian man has been sentenced to one year in prison and a 10-year expulsion order after sexually assaulting a 67-year-old woman under his care in Vänersborg, Sweden. The victim died under unclear circumstances just weeks after the attack.
The assault occurred on the morning of April 3 last year, when the woman’s son received a phone call from his mother. All he could hear at first were screams. She then managed to tell him that a man from the home care service had sexually assaulted her.
As reported by Samnytt, the victim later identified the perpetrator as Mahamad Almousa, a 26-year-old Syrian national who had previously worked in the NU healthcare system and was then employed in home care in Vänersborg.
The woman told investigators that Almousa groped her breasts under her clothing, climbed on top of her in bed, and “squirmed and moaned” while she felt he had an erection. Although she told him to stop, she was too weak to push him away.
Almousa was arrested but denied wrongdoing, claiming he had only massaged the woman at her request and that she had taken his hand and placed it on her chest, later pulling him onto the bed. He even alleged that the elderly woman had assaulted him.
The Vänersborg District Court dismissed his account, citing the woman’s frail health and limited physical strength as clearly contradicting his version of events. “In view of this and the other circumstances, Mahamad Almousa’s version of the incident can be disregarded,” the court concluded.
Almousa was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to one year in prison and 10 years of exile from Sweden after serving his custodial sentence. He was also ordered to pay 152,000 kronor (€13,800) in damages. The compensation will go to the woman’s estate and her son, as she died on April 20, just over two weeks after the attack. Police had managed to interview her three times before her death.
The cause of death remains unclear, but Almousa was in custody at the time.
Almousa is still visible on the NU healthcare website from his time as an intern at a Swedish hospital six years ago. It includes a quote attributed to him that reads, “In the future, I want to become a nurse, but I haven’t decided in which field yet. Everything is interesting. Everyone is very kind and I have enjoyed myself very much here. I can definitely imagine coming back and working here.”
The case has become part of a broader European trend of sexual abuse against elderly women by migrant care workers, with several disturbing incidents reported in recent months.
In Austria, an 82-year-old woman with dementia was allegedly raped by her Afghan caregiver on Sept. 18. The woman’s son witnessed the attack in real time via cameras he had installed in her apartment out of concern for her safety. The suspect, 26-year-old Sarafaz Z., confessed while in custody, and the investigation is ongoing.
In Sweden, prosecutors are preparing charges against a 33-year-old Iraqi man accused of multiple sexual assaults and rapes of elderly women in Umeå. Detained in April, he is believed to have assaulted three women between February and March this year. “There are different plaintiffs for whom he has been remanded in custody for crimes against,” prosecutor Petra Hedberg said, adding that charges for serious sexual assault, serious rape, and sexual harassment are expected.
Another case in Sweden saw 28-year-old Somali national Baasim Yusuf sentenced to eight years in prison in January for a series of aggravated rapes and sexual assaults against women aged 77 to 88 in Uppsala, two of whom suffered from dementia or Alzheimer’s. Yusuf filmed some of his assaults, but he cannot be deported because he has Swedish citizenship.
And in France, 39-year-old Laury Jean-Baptiste was sentenced to 20 years in prison in September 2024 for attempting to rape a 102-year-old nursing home resident in Rouen. The victim managed to fight him off but died less than a month later.
