Swedish police officer Kristian Youssef has been sentenced to five years in prison by the Södertörn district court for sexually abusing boys through Snapchat, with the court convicting him for 48 different sexual crimes.
Most of the crimes involved him demanding — sometimes through the use of extreme threats — that the boys send him nudes and videos where they performed sexual acts. In turn, he also sent sexual videos and photos of himself to his victims.
”I thought he would kill me otherwise,” one of the children told police about his fear of not sending the man nude photographs.
Youssef has worked as a police officer in the Stockholm region since 2019, but he lost his job after a court determined he sexually abused multiple children. He was also found guilty on 12 cases of child sexual abuse, six cases of child sexual misconduct, 10 cases of child exploitation, and 18 cases of child pornography offenses, according to Expressen.
All 10 victims are boys, and most of them are 12 years old, with Youssef identifying his victims through Snapchat, according to Swedish outlet SVT.
Several of the boys informed investigators that they told Youssef how old they were, making it clear that they were minors.
The convicted man used coercion to get what he wanted from the boys, including threatening them with pictures of weapons he had in his possession. Under this threat, he urged them to send nude photographs while performing acts on themselves that can be classified as rape and sexual assault under Swedish law, according to the court ruling.
Youssef, using up to five Snapchat accounts, including on his police-issued telephone, also led some boys to believe that he would send them money for nude photographs, which he never did. He saved some of the videos and photographs of the boys on the cloud as well.
The case was only discovered when the father of one of the 12-year-old victims sent sexual pictures to an unknown Snapchat user, who had also sent the boy sexual photos of himself. The father documented the chats and sent the evidence to the police.
Swedish police then tracked down Youssef, including his IP address, telephone number, and email address. Police also raided his house, secured his electronic devices, and used the data on them to track down other victims Youssef had targeted.
During his trial, Youssef said he was not guilty and that he blamed the boys for the exchange of nude photos.
Youssef received a six-month reduction on his sentence because he has been in custody for an extended period of time and because he was fired from his job.
”Because of these factors, the sentence must be reduced by a total of six months,” stated a judge in the case.
