151 cases of sexual assault investigated in N. Norway: report

OSLO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Police have investigated 151 sexual assault cases in one municipality in northern Norway and issued ten charges, public broadcaster NRK reported Tuesday.

Out of the 151 cases in Tysfjord municipality in the northern county of Nordland, 43 cases included rape, while 40 cases dealt with sexual intercourse with children under 14 years of age.

A total of 106 cases were dropped, mostly because of statute of limitations, the report said.

Many of the cases include gross sexual assault, such as rapes of children, and the oldest case originated in 1953.

Many of the assaults have been going on for a long time, and they started when the insulted were very young. The youngest was only four years, according to the police.

Tone Vangen, police chief in Nordland county where the assaults took place, expressed regret that the police "did not do a good job until June 2016".

"On behalf of the police, I deeply apologize because of that," she said in a press release.

"According to today's legislation, many cases would have been defined as rape," Police Attorney Oyvind Rengard told NRK.

A year and a half ago eleven women and men were interviewed by newspaper VG and reported that they had been subjected to sexual assault in Tysfjord municipality in Nordland. Since then, more than 80 people have been reported as suspicious and in total more than 70 have been reported abused.

The assaulted were mainly girls between seven and 16 years old when the sexual assaults were committed.

Between 1997 and 2014, the police dropped 82 percent of the cases of sex offence reported in Tysfjord.

According to NRK, a former police officer in the municipality has been reported to have failed to investigate the abuse, which is now being investigated by the Special Unit for Police Cases. Enditem