26-year-old Benjamin Tagoe, originally from Ghana, was once known as a famous and cherished dance teacher who participated in the Melody Festival. However an investigation has revealed the African national to be a manipulative pedophile who committed a series of sexual assaults and rape against young girls placed in his care.
By – Brünnhilde
On Friday, June 15, Solna District Court sentenced Benjamin Tagoe, 26, to four years in prison for multiple cases of sexual abuse, exploitation and rape against young girls. His youngest victim, who was raped and filmed on several occasions, was only 12 years old.
His pedophilic crimes were discovered when one of the girls’ mothers reported the popular dance teacher for rape against her daughter. Through the dance lessons Tagoe conducted, he came into contact with hundreds of young girls, and towards several of them he showed great commitment and interest, even privately, which quickly developed into a sexual interest from the African who was many years older.
Witnesses state the then 12-year-old girl had a great passion for dance. The young girl began to keep in touch with Tagoe through various social apps and sometimes kept him company on the subway before the dance classes. In conversations in mobile chat programs, Tagoe tried to get in the conversation topic of sex at least six times on a number of occasions, and also invited the girl to engage in sexual acts. Among other things, he wrote: “get ready to be nasty” and that he wanted the young girl to perform oral sex on him.
He also succeeded in manipulating the young girl to perform oral intercourse with him on a number of occasions, both privately indoors and outdoors in a public space, during the spring and summer of 2017. The African also filmed the sexual assaults with his cell phone on several occasions and the disturbing footage clearly showed the underage victim and the location in which the rape occurred. He also forced her into vaginal intercourse and physically assaulted the girl during one of the many occassions when he raped her in her apartment. In the judgment of Solna District Court, it is clear that Tagoe had no reason to assume that the young victim was older, even though he claimed that the girl told him she was 17 years old.
Another victim, who was only 13 years old when Tagoe began to manipulate her with coersion and sexually explicit conversations on social apps, was repeatedly asked by the African teacher whether she was “good at sucking”. He also tried to force the girl to remove her clothes and send him nude photos of herself. When the girl was 14 years old, Tagoe began to rape her after their dance training in connection with the dance hall he used in the Blue House in Tensta. At least on four different occasions, he raped her through forced vaginal intercourse, and according to the court, he knew that she was a minor because she was his student for several years since she was aged 10.
A third victim, an adult woman, also sought charges against Tagoe when he, without the woman’s knowledge, filmed them when they had intercourse. The woman had strong fears that the film could become public, as it would pose a threat to her due to her family’s strong cultural standards regarding sex before marriages.
Benjamin Tagoe has almost three thousand followers in his Instagram account, but after it has become widely known in his close circle that he had been arrested and now convicted, the reactions were strong.
Hundreds of people have left comments on his social media account threatening his life, describing in detail what they wanted to happen to him and what they planned to do once he is released from prison. An increasing amount of people are continuing to express their disgust over his pedophile crimes.
“The girl was 12 years !!! … So many lives you destroyed, so many girls’ lives you destroyed, so many girls that will grow to be afraid of those like you, men who they expected to be their role models and not be a toy for your damn salt goat to enjoy for a while and then film it, for what? In order for you to see and hear the girl cry when she is being used? Yes, you should be sorry, Sweden’s only giving 4 years for those who deserve death penalty,” wrote a person in a comment addressed to Tagoe.
“Shame I Took Your Classes and Supported You 🤢” wrote one of his former students.
Benjamin Tagoe was convicted of rape against children, sexual exploitation of children, sexual abuse of children, sexual abuse and offensive photography. However the sentence was four years in prison including time served, which means that he can be released in three years. A relatively mild sentence despite the serious nature of his crimes, it has already caused public uproar and discontent especially considering the extremely young age of his victims.
It is unclear whether Tagoe is a citizen of Sweden, given that he calls Ghana “his country” in several different contexts, but the prosecutor did not pursue expulsion as punishment. He will also pay a total of $ 235,000 in damages to the three victims, of which SEK 180,000 will be allocated to the 12 and 13 year old girls. .
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