Interpersonal relationships

The woman filed 15 reports with the Oulu police department about the alleged actions or threats uttered by the father of her children. Illustration picture. Mostphotos

At the beginning of January 2019, a woman living in Oulu filed an investigation report about her ex-husband to the police. According to it, the man had dropped a child of around 5 years old from the bed and another child under school age from the stand during the meeting between the father and the children.

The woman claimed that the man had filmed the children at night, kissed and hugged them forcefully, which disgusted the children. In addition, he claimed that the man took the naked child in his arms while he was naked in the shower.

The police began to investigate the man’s actions. The man was interrogated for hours. He was suspected of both child abuse and exploitation.

Meetings for a break

One of the children had to be interviewed at Oulu University Hospital’s forensic psychiatric department for children and adolescents due to criminal suspicions.

The social authorities, on the other hand, instructed to stop the meetings between the father and the child.

However, the police investigation did not lead to results.

Between 2017 and 2019, the same woman made 14 other investigative reports about her ex-husband. These were based on violations of the restraining order, defamation and illegal threats.

In none of these cases did the investigation lead to charges.

Father’s Day cards for grandfather

Years later, in the winter of 2022—2023, a woman in her forties was herself charged with false reporting. The public prosecutor prosecuted the case.

The woman denied the crime. According to him, all the reports submitted to the authorities had their basis in reality. As for the children, he had only reported what the children had told him.

According to the children’s father, the woman’s intention was to prevent him and the children from meeting, and she also succeeded in that.

The man described his suffering in court. He said that he had dreams about his children when he couldn’t meet them. His sister and mother also wanted children.

Among other things, the man said that he felt it was an insult that the children’s mother had made the children make Father’s Day cards for their grandfather, not for him.

The district court refused

However, the Oulu district court dismissed all the acts described in the indictment.

Some of the works were not shown. Some of the reports made by the woman had their reasons.

The district court considered that the suspected child abuse in January 2019 had come to the attention of the authorities based on the school nurse’s record, not the mother’s report.

The district court dismissed the charge.

Features of alienation

However, the man from Oulu was not satisfied with the district court’s verdict. He appealed to the Rovaniemi Court of Appeal by himself, without a prosecutor, and won his appeal.

The Court of Appeal states that the social authorities had already in 2017 registered characteristics of the woman’s activities that indicated that she was trying to alienate the children from their father. Among other things, he did not take the children to father’s meetings.

There were also indications that the mother had fed her children her opinion about their father.

At the end of 2017, the child had told the supervisor that he did not want to go to his father anymore. At the end of the meeting, the supervisor had heard the child say to his mother, “I said what you told me to say”.

The mother was behind the announcement

The Court of Appeal also re-examined the alleged showering and beating report from January 2019.

The Court of Appeal drew attention to the fact that the woman herself had recently filed a report on the matter with the police. The school nurse had made her own report only later.

According to the Court of Appeal, there is no reasonable doubt about the defendant’s guilt.

The Court of Appeal sentenced a 45-year-old woman to an 80-day fine, which amounts to 1,200 euros. The woman owes her ex-husband 5,000 euros for suffering, to which interest must be added starting from summer 2019.

Similarly, the woman must pay her ex-husband’s legal costs.