A 28-year-old Swedish woman flew to Scotland to have sex four times with a 15-year-old boy she’d fallen for online, a jury has been told.
Matilda Hogman is accused of repeatedly engaging in sexual intercourse with the teenager and repeatedly kissing him and touching him on the body at a Premier Inn at Dunfermline’s Fife Leisure Park.
But she claims the boy told her he was 16 years old at the time they met up.
In reality, the boy was 14 when they started speaking to each other online and he was 15 when they met.
A trial at Dunfermline Sheriff Court heard video evidence from the teenager who said that they had sex at the hotel on four separate occasions in November 2020.
When asked by a police interviewer how he felt about this, the boy said: “It felt a bit forced and I did not have time to make a decision.
“I was not ready for it.”
Money and sweets
Speaking about the first time it happened, he said: “She started kissing me and it went on from there. The kissing part was fine but it got too far.
“I told her I did not feel right and she said it would be alright.”
The boy told police he’d “snuck out” of his home to go and meet the woman at the leisure park. They ate McDonald’s and went to see a movie together, he said.
He told the trial that in the months before they met she would send him gifts – including clothes and sweets – and gave him money through Paypal which mounted up to about £500.
It is also alleged that Hogman intentionally caused the boy to view sexually explicit images of her, and repeatedly sent messages of an explicit nature and induced him to send explicit images of himself through online messaging platforms.
Court papers state the alleged offending took place on various occasions between July 1 and November 10, 2020.
Hogman, a former game development student, also faces a second charge of intentionally meeting the boy to engage in unlawful sexual activity while not reasonably believing he was 16 or over.
Dad tracked son down
Jurors also heard from the boy’s father who said he was aware of his son talking to someone online.
The dad said he tracked his son down when he met Hogman outside a shop. He took a video on his phone while confronting her.
In footage shown in court, Hogman could be heard saying she thought the boy was 16 and his son could also be heard saying he’d told her he was 16.
However, the trial also heard a later video recording of the teenager giving evidence under questioning by defence lawyer Peter Robertson, in which the boy said: “What I said there (in the video) was a lie.
“She did know I was 15 but all I am trying to do is protect her.”
Meeting online
The trial heard that Hogman and the boy had met online playing a warfare game called League of Legends and that their conversation developed on a messaging app.
Giving evidence, Hogman agreed that the communication became flirtatious and sexual in nature.
She feared the boy would be unhappy if she didn’t continue making positive comments about his appearance.
At times tearful while giving her evidence, Hogman said she never intended to develop feelings given the age gap but ended up “falling for him” and felt she always “had to be there” for him.
She said they spent whole days speaking to each other online and by Autumn 2020 they talked about meeting up.
Hogman said: “The relationship progressed to the point I loved him, but in hindsight we probably just had a really strong mutual need of care and attention.”
Sexually explicit messages exchanged between the pair in the months before they met were read out by a cyber crime forensic team leader.
One WhatsApp message from the woman in late October said she “should get a contraceptive of sorts” and another said she’d give him “the night of your life.”
Questioned by Mr Robertson, she said she travelled to Scotland because he wanted her to, and that he told her to “do it or I will hurt myself or kill myself.”
She said she did not dispute them having a sexual relationship but says she believed him to be 16.
Age dispute
Hogman said that in early July the boy had phoned her to say he was only 15 and not 16 as he’d said before.
Procurator fiscal depute Christina Kelly highlighted a subsequent WhatsApp message from Hogman in which she said the boy was “almost 15”.
But Hogman claimed this was either a ‘typo’ or that she may have mixed it up with the Swedish age of sexual consent which is 15.
And her defence lawyer made reference to WhatsApp messages sent to her less than two weeks later from the boy in which stated he was 15. Hogman said she believed he would be turning 16 soon, months before they met.
Hogman claims she only discovered he was not 16 years old when she was arrested.
The trial was also shown messages she had sent the boy in October in which she’d called herself a “predator” and a “paedo” – but the woman said she and the boy had a dark sense of humour about their age difference and that it was a “joke in poor taste.”
The trial before Sheriff Susan Duff continues.
- Hogman was later acquitted when jurors agreed with the defence that she had believed the boy to be 16 – the legal age of consent in Sweden.
