Original subtitles

Carola says that Håkan sold her as a sex slave.

He says that it never happened.

Who is telling the truth?

THE SEX SLAVE

All text messages are taken from the preliminary police investigation.

How much?

One thousand

Come a little after 10 pm. The kids are still up.

[Carola] I know who sold me.

But I don't know who bought me.

[Lagh] It's a completely unbelievable story.

MOTHER OF YOUNG CHILDREN HELD AS SEX SLAVE

A mother of young children being sold as a sex slave

by her own live-in boyfriend in their house.

TOOK MOBILE PAYMENTS

NORRTÄLJE SPORTS FIGURE ARRESTED

[Nora] You never think it would happen in Norrtalje,

let alone anyone you knew.

He monitors her constantly.

[Carola] With GPS when I was outside the house

and video cameras in the house.

[Lagh] He blindfolds her and ties her to the kitchen table...

where he sells her.

-Does she do blowjobs? -Yes.

[Carola] I didn't know if it was one man or if it was multiple men.

Over a hundred people came to our house.

[Lagh] There are thousands of chats.

I would love to suck you off Come here, it's hard I'm so sexually frustrated

You'd have to read all of them

to understand the full scale of this.

[Nora] He was very well-liked by basically everyone.

[Tomas] He worked as a teacher.

She worked in retail.

They lived in a house in Norrtalje.

Everything seemed normal.

But then again, that's often how the story goes.

[Nora] She's been victimized by a person

who we all live with and constantly spend time with.

[Bjorn] It's a big investigation that we put a lot of resources into,

because we needed to.

[Tomas] She doesn't know how many men there were.

It could be like she says.

Or it could be like he says.

[Håkan] It's perfectly obvious that these are false accusations.

If you follow the logic and ask the right questions,

then the truth will come out.

You'll reach the same conclusion. I'm innocent.

Carola lied.

Period.

[low, tense music]

[Carola] For as long as I can remember, I've wanted a big family.

It gives me so much joy to be with my kids,

to see them grow and change.

In high school, I met my future husband, Daniel.

[Eva] She was just a regular, happy girl.

She was only 16 years old or something like that,

and my son was a little older.

We had a great connection right from the beginning.

When they had the kids...

that connection only grew.

She really let us in.

[Carola] We both had full-time jobs.

Three kids.

A red house on the countryside.

I had everything you're supposed to for a happy, normal life.

I guess we started to lose the spark after baby number two.

We sort of lost each other in the relationship at that point.

We both got a little bored.

There were times when the normal average Joe sex was really nice,

but we both still wanted to try something new.

I think I just wanted some sexual thrills.

We decided to open up our relationship.

My husband wanted us to place an ad for

a threesome and possibly a foursome.

HAIR COLOR BLACK

It was a little vague.

We didn't really know what we were looking for,

HORNY CAR MECHANIC WANTS TO HAVE SOME FUN

so it was more dependent on what kind of replies we would get.

CARRO85, 27 - STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 167 CM - 85 KG - ATTRACTIVE

As a girl, you get a lot of validation on these sites.

MESSAGES - LIKES - VISITS

There were hundreds of replies.

I chose...

one of these replies.

Where do you live?

I think the distance was the most crucial factor at first,

the fact that he lived so close by.

And that was Håkan.

HÅKAN NORRTÄLJE - SWEDEN SINGLE MALE SEEKS WOMAN 192 CM - 95 KG - ATTRACTIVE

We exchanged phone numbers,

and I was just supposed to call him on my way home from work.

But he was already pretty forward.

Eventually, we decided to meet.

I think it's a good place to meet someone for the first time.

On the other side,

there are rocks where you can sit and chat.

My first impression of him was...

very kind.

He was worldly, and he stood out.

It mattered a lot that he had interests,

that he worked out at the gym and took care of himself

and was into speedboats.

When we're out there on that island,

he asks me what I wanna do.

And I say that I don't know.

And then he says, "I'd like to kiss you."

So I reply, "Well, go ahead."

And then it was just like an explosion of emotions.

And we went back to his place.

[Anneli] She hadn't yet been through what I had been through.

She was only at the beginning and on her way in.

ANNELI HÅKAN'S EX-GIRLFRIEND

To Håkan, I'm the woman who came before Carola.

The best date I ever had was with Håkan.

It was amazing.

There were roses, it was nice and cozy,

and he was so thoughtful and amazing.

Stable and strong and manly.

So incredibly good at seduction.

I never thought he could be dangerous,

but I understood relatively early on

that things weren't adding up.

I reacted immediately when Carola met him.

"EVA" CAROLA'S FORMER MOTHER-IN-LAW

"This isn't good."

He started courting her very openly.

She was very receptive to it at that time.

He came to her work on Valentine's Day with roses.

He's showing her and the world how amazing everything is.

It was like she was under some kind of spell.

[♪]

Naked and waiting, send a pic.

If I say please?

[Carola] Very quickly after he came into my life,

we entered this whirlwind romance.

He was so intense about getting to know me

and learning who I was, and I...

had never really felt that way before.

So, after only six months...

I made the decision to get a divorce.

[Nora] I was four or five years old when my mom and dad got divorced

and Mom met Håkan.

Everyone else saw him as...

NORA CAROLA'S DAUGHTER

...a good person in general.

He was very well-liked by basically everyone.

And it was really frustrating for me

when I knew what kind of person he really was.

He's very good at adapting to different situations.

He can be the funny one. He can be the quiet one.

He can be the loud one.

He's got all these sides to him.

It's when you meet him that you get the whole picture.

There's something about him that words can't describe.

[Jenny] She was deeply in love with Håkan.

THE SMÅLAND HOUSE SOLD

It all happened so quickly.

They got a loan for a house on Bjorno,

and not just any house.

JENNY CAROLA'S FRIEND

It had to have this huge garage because of his boating hobby.

There's a lot of money involved,

and their finances were quite strained.

They had a goal in mind, and that was to create a façade.

And from Håkan's side, I think it was also about him

having additional control over Carola.

[Lagh] The situation that Carola is in

is that she lives in this relationship with Håkan.

REBECCA LAGH CAROLA'S LAWYER

She has five children, two with Håkan,

and three children from another relationship.

She lives in a world where she has absolutely no wiggle room whatsoever.

She's completely at Håkan's mercy.

He wanted to have rough, violent sex that she didn't really want.

Håkan has, on numerous occasions,

performed vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse

in their home against her will.

[Carola] I think that for Håkan, sex is about power and control.

His needs are the only thing that matters.

Sometimes, we would have sex and I was on top of him,

and it would start off nice,

and then out of nowhere, he would slap me.

He would throw me onto the bed,

face-down...

and rape me anally.

And I remember grabbing the covers really hard.

And once he was done, he'd tell me,

"Go take a shower."

Somewhere inside him is the person I love,

the same person who did this to me,

so I'm trying to defend it,

that it's probably not like I thought it was.

So then it was like my experiences didn't happen.

Feels like my experiences didn't--

It's hard to explain, but like they didn't happen.

[Lagh] I've seen a lot of cases where

you break someone down simply by exercising power and control.

You switch between cold and warm moods,

and the one being subjected to this

never really knows where they stand with this person.

And eventually, you end up blaming yourself most of the time.

"If I just do things differently,

he'll be nicer and love me," or something like that.

And you're constantly pushing your limits.

And that's extremely clear in Carola's case.

[Carola] I think it was at that point that I started to doubt

everything about myself.

He constantly made me doubt the truth.

If I had experienced something, he could make me believe

that I'd experienced something else entirely.

[Nora] I felt like I had lost my mom,

because she was no longer the same mom I had grown up with.

She was a completely different person.

She was so under his control that she lost herself in it,

so caught up in what he wanted and what he told her to do.

You know the rules go all the way, right?

Of course, I know what I'm doing and what I want.

Write the rules here?

[Lagh] He asked a lot of her.

He went to such extremes all the time.

Pretty early on, he got her to sign contracts in his chat.

For example, he could sleep with whoever he wanted,

as many women as he wanted,

but she wasn't allowed to sleep with anyone except Håkan.

You can sleep with other people. I can only sleep with you.

Even if we break up, you still get to sleep with me and decide who I can see.

YOU'RE IN CHARGE

[Carina] I'm not used to the idea of having contracts.

I didn't know how to react when she told me.

"Wait, what? What did you just say?"

CARINA CAROLA'S FRIEND

I didn't understand.

You couldn't say anything to her

because she wasn't receptive to it.

[Carola] He words things in such a way

that he turns it into about how much he cares about me.

It was purely sexual.

Meanwhile, he saw me as the woman he loved,

who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

When we built a house together, he set up cameras in the house.

CAM 2

Pretty quickly, I noticed that they were pointed at me.

I'd get messages like, "Why have you been on the couch for so long?"

He was monitoring everything through the cameras.

If the cameras weren't in their usual spots,

you never really knew where it was safe to move around.

Put the bedroom camera where it's supposed to be

I haven't touched it

[Jenny] If she left for work 15 minutes early, she'd be told,

"Who are you meeting? Whose dick are you planning to suck?"

She would be timed when coming home from work.

What time do you get off tomorrow?

4:10 pm.

You work from 6 am to 3 pm.

[Carola] He always told me that I was lying.

Work was kind of a safe space.

Are you on break?

I could just be in my own little world sorting merchandise

and just exist.

But then he'd suddenly pop up behind a shelf,

even though I knew he was supposed to be at work.

Who is ---?

Delete her on Facebook.

He'd print out my phone records every month.

So then we'd sit at the kitchen table,

where I'd have to account for every call.

Sometimes I wasn't sure why I'd called a certain number,

and then I'd have to call them.

I can't shake the feeling that you're lying to me—about your calls, your texts,

and going to work just to be with other people. And I don't want that.

How can I prove that I don't even want to be with anyone else?

I'll get your name tattooed on me to prove that I'm yours.

It became really important to him

that I get his name tattooed.

This is a conversation between me and Håkan.

"A deal.

You're owned by me whether I get a new girlfriend or not.

I can see whoever I want,

and you'll do everything I ask of you, no matter what."

"You will get the tattoo 'Håkan S.'

It stands for my name, but also 'Håkan's,' as in my possession.

Do we have a deal?"

And I said yes.

It became really important to him that I was to be owned by him,

that I stopped being a human being

and just become a possession.

[Nora] He's dangerous to everyone around him

because he gets inside your head

and controls you without you realizing it yourself.

He's controlling you,

and you don't notice until it's too late.

She changed from this happy, bubbly, spontaneous person.

Honestly, I couldn't help being angry with her.

I'd been very upfront with her.

JENNY CAROLA'S FRIEND

In hindsight, I feel bad about some stupid things I said.

I was trying to be clear and trying to make her understand that this wasn't healthy.

[Carina] It started with me not being allowed into their house.

I wasn't allowed to set foot on their property.

We were trying to open her eyes to who he really was

and what he was really doing to her.

CARINA CAROLA'S FRIEND

He noticed that we were trying to drive a wedge between them,

and then he wouldn't let me contact her at all.

[Eva] It's the classic scenario.

Her contacts from before were taken away.

She was isolated.

"EVA" CAROLA'S FORMER MOTHER-IN-LAW

He was in charge.

She was completely under his thumb.

He isolated her so he could do whatever he wanted.

Anything can happen behind closed doors.

Someone will be coming over.

[Carola] My boundaries were constantly being pushed.

One thing was clear:

I didn't wanna have sex with another woman.

I've arranged for a woman to come over on Sunday.

Okay. What does she want to do?

It doesn't matter, you'll both do as I say.

Then I agreed to it to get him to stop nagging me.

But then it ended up becoming an obsession for him.

It was very intense, and it went on for a very long time.

And then it became couples.

Can you get away tomorrow night to meet a couple?

I don't know if I can get a babysitter.

Toward the end, things just escalated so quickly, so I--

I don't know what he was feeling or what he was thinking,

but his lines were blurring too.

Come down, take your clothes off and you'll get it

BDSM entered the picture very quickly.

There was a black plastic box

on top of a closet in our bedroom

where he kept sex toys, whips...

and various kinds of rope.

Håkan liked to play "master and slave."

We had a very open floor plan and big windows,

so we had to hang sheets over all the windows.

He strapped me to the dining room table

where we usually sat and ate with our children.

Then he'd put a blindfold on me,

and also a ball gag.

There's this panic where you don't know how long it's going to last

or when it's gonna end,

when he'll finally be satisfied.

[Nora] Our bedrooms were upstairs, so we'd go up to bed.

After that, we weren't allowed downstairs,

especially not into the kitchen to get anything to eat or drink.

I guess something was happening downstairs that he didn't want us to know about.

Come a little after 10 pm. The kids are still up.

[Carola] There were several times when he'd tie me up

and then tell me other people were coming over.

What happens if she notices?

How does she feel about it?

[Carola] And eventually, it actually started happening.

She doesn't need to know. She's blindfolded.

The only sense I really have is my hearing,

so the whole time, I'm trying to hear what's going on.

How many footsteps do I hear?

They never said anything, either.

I didn't know if it was one man

or if there were multiple men,

or if there were different men every time.

Panic is, um...

a strange thing.

There were so many times when I wished he'd just, like--

that he'd just end it all.

There were well over a hundred people.

You'd think one of those people would have sensed that something was off.

And then you're supposed to come to work

and be happy and act like nothing happened.

But as you're there at the register helping all the customers...

you think, "Is it him?"

"Or is it him?"

As soon as I saw a man...

I would think, "Could it be him?"

[Nora] So I noticed that Mom had bruises

on her legs and on her arms.

Whenever I asked her, she'd say,

"I just dropped a pallet on my leg at work."

And I thought he was beating her.

I didn't know how. I didn't know why.

Me and my siblings would find Mom crying.

When we asked what was wrong, she'd just say, "I'm tired."

It was like an anger inside of me that I wanted everyone to know.

It reached a point where I felt like it was no longer worth it

to put that energy into trying to save my mom

when it didn't seem like she wanted to be saved.

So at one point, I'm talking to my mom,

and I say, "Now you have to choose.

It's me or him."

And she says,

"You know I can't do that."

That's when I moved in with my dad and started living there full-time.

To be on the outside and try to help someone who's being abused,

it's very frustrating.

They've seen that she's changed.

But they also become powerless.

And Carola hasn't been able to leave.

[Carola] After almost ten years, he had complete control of everything

and full custody of the children.

He had made me sign over the house.

He had complete access to all my communication channels.

[Lagh] She's a shadow of a person.

She has nothing left.

She can't see a way out.

But what she doesn't know

is that there's a police investigation underway.

[♪]

POLICE

[Bjorn] Someone made an anonymous call to the non-emergency line.

The tip says there's a woman who's being subjected to

extreme control with very little freedom.

CAM 2

She was being monitored with a GPS tracker...

and surveillance cameras inside the house.

She was being subjected to rape several times a week.

BJÖRN POLICE

And all the while, there were also young children living in that home.

TOMAS POLICE

Because of that, we have to think this through very carefully.

[Bjorn] In this case, we couldn't contact the woman that this tip was about,

as that could make things worse.

We were worried about what might happen to her.

[Tomas] A person who is under surveillance

will never be able to freely tell the police about it.

We can't take any chances. We can't just guess.

One thing that stood out about this case was that...

REBECCA SOCIAL SERVICES

...he'd managed to get custody of the children

and had control over every aspect of their life.

If you're an abuser and you wanna keep up your façade,

then teaching is the best job you can get.

[Bjorn] We spoke to people who were

on the periphery of Carola's social circle.

At the time, we didn't know

who might still be communicating with the suspect.

So we had to think outside the box

without putting anyone in...

serious danger.

[Rebecca] The police received this anonymous report,

and then they called a joint action meeting.

The child welfare caseworker was invited,

and I was invited as a domestic violence social worker.

We sat there and discussed how we could help Carola

while also acting in accordance with the law.

First, the child welfare caseworker

summoned Carola to a meeting.

So Carola thought it would be a normal meeting about her children.

And in the next room, the police were waiting.

We knew beforehand that he normally had a GPS on her.

We also know from experience

that men using GPS tracking might also use audio surveillance.

If there's a chance that Håkan is listening to her

and I ask her questions about abuse,

she's not gonna answer truthfully.

It also increases the risk that he'll hurt her even more.

So I had written down in a notebook

and asked her if she was wearing a wire.

IS SOMEONE LISTENING IN?

And then she looked at me,

and that's when I knew that...

our suspicions were correct.

It really messes with your head.

It's like a weight has been lifted,

but I'm panicking at the same time.

I realize that they know more than I think they know.

She soon tells me that she's been working with the police on this for about two months.

And if I'm willing to talk to them,

they're willing to help me.

The woman that we first met during the interrogation process,

I perceived her as broken and going through an acute phase of trauma.

When you get to that point where you can't--

where you can't take it anymore...

the fear and the panic kind of leave you.

[Tomas] She tells me everything she has been subjected to

throughout this ordeal,

which is a huge amount of intercourse

and other sexual activities without any consent.

[Lagh] The police talk to Carola,

and she confirms what this report says.

Then, the prosecutor decides to take Håkan into custody.

There are a lot of logistics involved

to keep Håkan from realizing what's going on.

Why aren't you answering?

There's a GPS tracker in her car.

They make sure someone is driving her usual route

so Håkan won't know through the GPS that she's going somewhere else.

At the same time,

they're planning to arrest Håkan at his workplace.

[Tomas] To arrest someone at their workplace is obviously highly invasive,

but we came to the conclusion that there was no other way.

The evidence is often digital in cases like this.

It's really not very hard to delete things in the cloud

or even remotely these days.

A lot of the evidence was in the phone that he had with him at his workplace.

[Bjorn] We searched the home.

We seized phones, computers, and iPads.

He’s sitting on the couch next to me. If he can’t sleep, I shouldn’t sleep either.

He got upset that I had talked to Carina, so he spat.

The full picture that emerged from the evidence was enormous.

A large volume of digital material.

[Lagh] There are thousands of chats.

You have to read all of them

to understand the full scale of this.

Do you want to and have the money for it?

There are conversations with other men where he's selling her.

And that's a shock to her.

How much will you pay?

Up to 2,000 if we can do most stuff

Come in.

Then she can have 2,500.

What does she think about it?

[Tomas] She explained to us that this had happened repeatedly over the years.

[Bjorn] We interviewed about 40 people.

This was a major investigation

and we devoted a great deal of resources to it, because we had to.

[Tomas] We connected chats

to GPS positioning, to mobile payments.

SENDER - RECEIVER

It's clear that this had to be paid for

and that the money was important.

People are willing to pay 2,000 just to watch. What can you offer?

He-- he made money off me.

It's so absurd that it almost doesn't register.

Wednesday?

I'm a sports coach, so I'm busy most nights.

The worst feeling was that I know who sold me,

but I don't know who bought me.

[Nora] It didn't take long for the headlines to appear.

NORRTÄLJE SPORTS FIGURE ARRESTED

I remember old friends started to contact me.

TEACHER ARRESTED

He teaches at my kids' school!

How can you sell your wife?

Fucking monster. Just shoot him.

Bervo, just shoot him.

To this day, I can't understand how he, as a father of three

Originally posted by fantasia73 Who is the sports profile? H*kan --- called the fandom.

and a teacher, could do this to Carola.

COWORKERS: HE WAS A WELL-LIKED TEACHER

I would have guessed that there was rape and abuse going on.

One more. You got it.

But it was to such a horrible degree

that I never could have imagined.

[Anneli] I don't think Håkan has any limits.

I'm inclined to think that he's capable of anything.

I think Håkan believes that he's a great person

who hasn't done anything wrong.

That's the way he is.

I wouldn't have guessed that he sold her,

but the rest, I would have.

Simple as that.

He never takes the blame for anything he's done.

He'll keep denying it until the day he dies.

[director] Håkan has agreed to be in this documentary.

How do you feel about that?

I think it goes to show...

how sick he is.

[Håkan] It's not true.

It's perfectly obvious that these are false accusations.

If you follow the logic and ask the right questions,

then the truth will come out.

She's lying.

I'm innocent.