Emilie Voe Nereng reacts about a lifted childhood photo in post shared by Donald Trump. «Imagine that Donald Trump has used a photo of me to spread fear. It is completely sick».
“–It says something about how little critical of sources people are today when even the President of the United States reposts it without thinking about the consequences. ‘Does this young girl know she’s being used in such a massive rape case?’ And I’m not even Swedish“, she said according to Faktisk.no.
The story in the post was titled: «Mass migration is a weapon of mass destruction». It was linked it to a statement that «1 of 4 will be raped as sexual assaults increase 500 %». It is claimed that «Sweden now has the second highest number in the world,- six times higher than the United States»
This story is false, as reported by Expressen, the fact check Faktisk.no and Reuters fact check. There was a reported a 463 % increase in reported rapes between 1990 and 2011. But it was not connected to immigration. The increase in reports was because Sweden changed the definition of rape to protect women.
The new definition not only the stated use of physical force as criterium for rape, but also if the victim was helpless because of for example intoxication. The focus in the law changed from a question of use of force, to a question of voluntary participation. Therefore the increase in reports to the police.
The stolen photo of the Norwegian girl was from an article in VG, when she as a 14 year old held a lecture at the Regional University of Lillehammer in 2010.
Spread by Trump and by influencers
The «Truth Social» post shared by Trump was reposted over 5000 times. The post Trump shared stems from the account «I Love America News», who got it from the X-user «iamyesyouareno». The latter published the post with photo in 2024, where it got over 2,5 million views, Faktisk.No reports.
The photo was used first time in 2017, but the story was traced back to 2017 by Faktisk.No. It was then published by the anti-islamist group Pegida. The story has circulated in right wing circles since then, among others on a Russian webpage.