The three girls were thinly dressed and chilled when, in the middle of the night on a weekend in early April, they knocked on the door of a house in a locality in Dalsland.
The girls told, among other things, that they had managed to escape after being locked up for several months.
This was the beginning of a comprehensive investigation that has now led to prosecution.
A man and two women are being prosecuted, suspected of having kept a total of eleven children isolated from the outside world.
I haven't seen anything like it before, that you've been able to keep children away from authorities for such a long time, says prosecutor Oscar Johansson.
It's different for different children. But you can say that the crime period overall was from the autumn of 2023 to October 2024.
"Demanding imprisonment"
Two of the prosecuted are parents of ten of the children. The third prosecuted is the guardian of the eleventh child.
I will be demanding imprisonment for at least two of them, says Oscar Johansson.
According to the prosecutor, the children, all of whom are under 15 years old, were not physically locked up. But they were kept away from both school and healthcare for a longer period.
The suspicions concern child abduction, and also include, among other things, assault and child protection violations, he says.
Installed transmitters on cars
The social services in three different municipalities have made decisions to take the children into care on several occasions. Instead, they were kept hidden and did not get to go to school or, for example, the dentist.
According to the prosecutor, the family has moved around in different municipalities to avoid the decisions.
I will be arguing that it has happened in an honor context, that there is an honor motive, says Oscar Johansson.
Some of the children have been taken into care on several occasions, but have repeatedly disappeared from their LVU accommodations, which TV4 News has previously reported on.
The three suspects also installed, according to the prosecutor, GPS transmitters on several of the social services' cars.
You can basically ask them what they had in mind. But my thought is that they wanted to keep track of where the children would be taken if they were taken into care, says Oscar Johansson.
But it's just an interpretation based on the evidence. They are not being prosecuted for this.
