Dumpen: Sweden’s Uncomfortable Mirror on Adults Who Target Children!

How Dumpen operates

Members of the organisation use adult decoys who present themselves online as children. Conversations are documented, and when an adult arranges to meet the person they believe to be a child, representatives of Dumpen may be waiting at the meeting place.

The encounter is filmed. The person is questioned about the conversations and the proposed meeting. The video, chat records and identifying information may subsequently be published.

What the reader encounters is often profoundly disturbing. The conversations can move rapidly from apparently ordinary contact to explicitly sexual requests, demands for images or plans for a physical meeting. I see adults who have been told that they are communicating with a minor, yet continue.

I will not reproduce those conversations here. The details are not necessary to understand the seriousness. Nor should the sexualisation of children be turned into material for shock, entertainment or social-media engagement.

Dumpen also publishes accounts from survivors and reports relating to convictions and child sexual abuse. Its wider message is that these offences are not rare abnormalities committed by a few recognisable monsters. The people seeking contact can appear ordinary, hold respected jobs, have families and move through society without attracting attention.

That is one of the most unsettling lessons: there is rarely a warning label.

The real scale cannot be seen in police statistics alone

Sweden likes to view itself as one of the safest and most child-friendly countries in the world. In many respects, it is. Sweden was the first country to prohibit all corporal punishment of children, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been incorporated into Swedish law.

But good laws and a progressive national identity do not automatically protect every child.

In 2025, Sweden recorded 3,802 reported rape offences against children aged 17 or younger. These represented 39 per cent of all reported rape offences that year. Another 4,664 reports concerned sexual molestation of children. Girls constituted the majority of recorded victims, but boys were also affected, and reports involving boys under 15 have increased considerably over the past decade. These figures describe reported offences—not unique victims, convictions or the full scale of abuse. They must therefore be interpreted carefully. Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention

A national study cited by the Swedish foundation Allmänna Barnhuset found that the share of surveyed young people reporting sexual abuse had increased from approximately one in five to one in four over five years. The organisation also emphasises that official reports reveal only part of reality because many children never tell the police, social services or even their families. Allmänna Barnhuset

Behind every statistic is a child whose boundaries were violated by somebody who was older and should have known better.

An online offence is still an offence against a child

Adults sometimes minimise online abuse because no physical meeting occurred. That distinction may be relevant when deciding the precise criminal charge, but it does not make the behaviour harmless.

A child who is manipulated into sending an image has already been violated. A child threatened with the distribution of that image is already trapped. A child instructed to perform sexual acts through a camera is not participating in something “virtual.” The fear, shame and loss of control are real.

Images can be copied, sold and redistributed indefinitely. A child may never know who possesses them or where they will appear next. The abuse is therefore capable of continuing long after the original contact has ended.

The Swedish Police describe how apparently harmless social and gaming platforms can become routes to sexual exploitation, blackmail and violence. Police advice is to preserve conversations and usernames and report suspicious behaviour even when the identity of the adult is unknown. Swedish Police Authority

We must also stop placing the main responsibility on children. Of course, children should be taught about online risks. Parents should be present, schools should discuss digital boundaries, and platforms should design safer systems. But a child’s mistake never transfers responsibility from the adult.

The adult is responsible. Always.

The legal gap exposed by the decoys

Dumpen has also revealed an uncomfortable gap between moral intent and criminal liability.

Swedish law criminalises contact with an actual child under 15 for sexual purposes. However, when the supposed child is an adult decoy, the grooming provision does not generally apply because no real child was contacted.

Morally, the adult may have believed that the intended victim was 12, 13 or 14. The messages, sexual intention and journey to the meeting place may all be real. Legally, however, the absence of an actual child can mean that the particular grooming offence has not been completed.

A parliamentary motion submitted during the 2025–2026 session proposed considering a specific offence covering sexual contact attempts directed at someone the adult believes to be a child, even when the “child” is a decoy. The motion referred to legislation in countries such as the United Kingdom, where certain decoy situations can result in criminal liability. It was a political proposal, not a statement of current Swedish law. Swedish Parliament

This issue deserves a serious legal review. Intent must matter. At the same time, legislation must be precise enough to distinguish a demonstrable attempt from fantasy, irresponsible speech or manipulation by others.

That is the task of lawmakers—not an excuse for political paralysis.

The controversy cannot simply be ignored

Supporting the protection of children does not require us to pretend that every aspect of Dumpen’s method is beyond criticism.

A publication on Dumpen is not a criminal conviction. The organisation decides how to conduct the contact, which material to publish and how to present it. Public identification can lead to the loss of employment, family relationships and personal safety before any evidence has been tested in a criminal court.

In February 2026, Göteborg District Court convicted Dumpen’s responsible publisher of gross defamation in a first-instance judgment concerning the publication of a previously unknown person’s name and image. The court acknowledged the importance of highlighting adults seeking sexual contact with children, but found that the identification in that particular case was not defensible. Göteborg District Court

There are also concerns that civilian confrontations could affect digital evidence, alert a suspect before police can investigate, or complicate later interviews and prosecutions. A small qualitative criminology study from Malmö University concluded that the police professionals interviewed saw risks to investigations and crime-prevention efforts. As an undergraduate study, it should not be treated as the final scientific verdict, but the concerns deserve attention. Malmö University study

Due process is not an inconvenience invented to protect people we dislike. It protects everyone from error, manipulation and uncontrolled punishment. Even in the most emotionally charged cases, evidence must be preserved, accusations examined and punishment determined under law.

But legal safeguards must not become a comfortable way of changing the subject.

Too often, the entire debate becomes centred on the adult: Was the person entrapped? Should the name have been published? Was the confrontation proportionate? What happened to the person afterwards?

Those questions matter. Yet somewhere in the discussion, the potential child disappears.

Dumpen is a symptom of institutional failure

Whether one supports or opposes Dumpen’s publications, its popularity tells us something important. Many people do not believe that society is finding, stopping and prosecuting enough adults who target children online.

That mistrust did not emerge from nowhere.

A Swedish National Audit Office review concluded that internet-related child sexual abuse had created major challenges for police and prosecutors, including problems involving staffing, training, technical support, coordination and case prioritisation. The internet has given offenders access to children and abuse material on a scale that traditional investigative structures were not built to handle. Swedish National Audit Office

When public institutions leave a visible vacuum, civilian actors will attempt to fill it. Some will act responsibly; others may not. The long-term answer cannot be to depend on activists carrying cameras. It must be to build a system capable of intervening before a real child is harmed.

Sweden needs larger specialist police teams, faster digital-forensic capacity, better cooperation with international authorities and clear procedures for evidence supplied by civilians. Technology companies must be held responsible for reporting and removing abuse material, preserving evidence and designing services that do not make it easy for adults to locate vulnerable children.

Children who disclose abuse need rapid access to trained professionals who believe them without placing guilt on them. Families need guidance. Schools need practical knowledge rather than occasional awareness campaigns. Adults who recognise dangerous sexual thoughts in themselves must be able to seek professional treatment before they offend—but seeking help can never replace accountability for crimes already committed.

My position is with the children

I do not read Dumpen because I want revenge. I do not believe that humiliation alone creates a safer society, and I do not believe that social media should replace the courts.

I read because the material forces us to look at behaviour that is otherwise hidden behind screens, respectable appearances and closed doors.

We should be capable of holding two thoughts at once: Dumpen raises legitimate questions about proportionality, publication and due process, while the conduct it documents points towards an appalling and urgent social problem.

Demanding safeguards around a method must never become indifference towards its subject.

An adult who believes they are speaking sexually to a child has already crossed a fundamental moral boundary. When that adult requests images, applies pressure or travels to meet the supposed child, society cannot dismiss the behaviour merely because a decoy was waiting instead.

Children are not responsible for satisfying adult desires. They are not material, entertainment, products or opportunities. Their trust is not consent, their curiosity is not consent, and their silence is not consent.

Dumpen may be controversial. It may be imperfect. It may eventually have to change its methods as courts, laws and technology evolve. But the reality it exposes cannot be deleted with it.

The most important question is not whether Dumpen makes us uncomfortable.

The question is why so many adults are willing to do things to children that should be unthinkable—and why our institutions have still not become good enough at stopping them.

Until that changes, I will continue to read.

And I will continue to stand on the side of the children.