Opinion: Swedish law sexualizes children

Today, a child’s criminal legal protection against being subjected to child sexual abuse material offenses depends on the child’s pubic hair, breast or scrotum size. It sounds unreal, but it is actually true. When the child has completed their pubertal development, often in their early teens, a perpetrator who disseminates sexually abusive images can escape criminal liability.

The Child Pornography Act is intended to protect individual children and children in general from perpetrators who, for example, disseminate, share, and document sexual abuse of children. The images and films are not pornographic, as the name of the law suggests, but rather depict sexually abusive and exploitative material involving children under 18 years of age.

It is illegal to possess, sell, buy, or disseminate such material. However, during the almost 30 years the law has been in effect, there have been shortcomings in the protection of children. The law contains a specific definition of who is considered a child.

What determines whether a child is considered just that is not their age, but their pubertal development. If it is not visible in the image or from the circumstances surrounding it that it is a child, the child’s protection is assessed based on things like pubic hair, and the size of the scrotum and breasts. This applies to a thirteen-year-old as well as a seventeen-year-old.

According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention’s (Brå) annual statistics on reported crimes, the number of reported child sexual abuse material offenses has increased significantly in recent years (for example, by as much as 76 percent in 2025 alone compared to the previous year), and there is no reason to believe that this trend will slow down. This is evident from high-profile judgments from, among others, Sundsvall District Court (TR B 2888-23) where a perpetrator admitted to having and sharing images of a fourteen-year-old girl but was acquitted of child sexual abuse material offenses because the court could not determine the girl’s pubertal development.

It is not only absurd that the judiciary speculates about a child’s pubertal development in this way. Determining a child’s chronological age through pubertal development is strongly criticized internationally because the method does not work once the child, regardless of gender, has begun their pubertal development. Furthermore, assessments of who is considered a child differ among professionals, which can lead to biased or unbalanced assessments that give some children stronger protection than others.

The perpetrator’s knowledge of the child’s age is not a circumstance that affects criminal liability for child sexual abuse material offenses when the child is fully pubertally developed. Nor does the perpetrator need to conduct any investigations to determine if the child in the image is a minor.

We can conclude that today, the perpetrator’s interest in accessing sexually abusive material involving children outweighs the child’s right to be protected from sexual abuse.

To our knowledge, there is no other European country where pubertal development affects a child’s right to protection against sexual abuse as it does in Sweden. Sweden stands out negatively in a European context by allowing children to be sexually exploited without the possibility of redress under current legislation and prevailing practice.

The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child has repeatedly sharply criticized Sweden and demanded that pubertally developed children receive the same protection as children who have not entered puberty. The right not to be discriminated against applies to every child living or residing in Sweden and is a fundamental principle of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been Swedish law for several years. Despite this, Sweden currently has legislation that sexualizes children.

We therefore demand that the government appoint an inquiry with directives to:

• Abolish the puberty development requirement, so that the law protects all children regardless of pubertal development.
• Allow the perpetrator’s knowledge of the child’s age to affect criminal liability for all handling of the material.
• Replace the term child pornography with terminology that better describes sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

All parliamentary parties claim to want to strengthen child protection – it is now time to move from promise to legislative change!

Ida Östensson, Secretary General ChildX
Silvia Ingolfsdottir, lawyer & partner at Brottsbyrån
Atilla Yoldaş, lecturer and author
Maria Dufva, criminologist and author
Henrik Wahlström, artist and author
Gustav Sundh, senior teacher in after-school care, lecturer and author
Poya Ashna, expert on men’s violence against women
Lena Ljungdahl, security specialist, lecturer and author
Elin Ek, presenter, TV producer and author
Margaux Flavet, artist
Nathvadi Kwampaiboon, opinion leader and creator