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Stockholm 1952: the year of the justice scandals (s.c.nordic texts)
nordic flags
The home pages for the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.nordic
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Stockholm 1952: the year of the justice scandals



From: Johan Olofsson
Subject: Long forgotten scandals (was: Will the truth come through?)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Date: 06 Oct 1996 01:50:01 +0200
Organization: Lysator Computer Society, Linköping University, Sweden
Message-ID: <yzz7mp5t1hy.fsf_-_@tinkerbell.lysator.liu.se>

I wrote:
> After years of desperate concealing they blow out in 1952 including
> cabinet members, higher judges, the royal court, a long dubious
> imprisonment for blackmail, a combined priest, procurer & probation
> officer, arson, poisoning and a bunch of suicides.

I understand this was almost the same as asking for private e-mails requesting more spicy details. Since I don't want it to become my new full time occupation to maintain several separate e-mail threads, I chose instead to give a fairly extensive version in the newsgroup. (Be prepared: it will be a long article. Don't come and say I didn't warn you! :-)

First a few words about my sources and degree of expert knowledge.
:->

Sources and credibility?

I've got my impressions from my grandfather born 1905. According to him the 1952-events were the second most important scandal in his lifetime, competing with the Krüger-crash in the beginning of the 1930s (and the reveal of bribes for the Swedish prime minister Ekman) and possibly also with king Gustav V:s actions in favor of a participation in World War I on the side of Germany ("bondetåget" and "borggårdstalet") leading to cabinets without parliamentarians. My grandfather has been dead a lot of years now, but I wouldn't think he would have changed his opinion due to recent events.

I've had to check names and data in the Swedish Nationalencyklopedien since I can not remember to have learned anything at all about this in school. Further: I've got the impression that most Swedes below the age of 70 don't know more than I did.

The decisive documents are classified as secret until the year 2022. Till then a lot of questions will remain unanswered. I have (therefore?) not tried to order any scholar works at the university library. (It seems as nothing is available locally, and I don't believe any new facts to be presented in them anyway, ...and my time is limited.)

My grandfather, who as a youngster was a Communist smith became after a decade at the sea and some years at school a liberal engineer employed by the town of Malmö, and active in the workers union for sea-engineers. He saw the justice scandals of the 1950s as the alarm bell against moving too much initiative, responsibility, power and involvement to the state, to the municipalities, and to their officials. An alarm bell which was neglected by the leading political force of that time, the Social Democratic party. Maybe because the process hadn't more than started yet; maybe due to a general optimism about the future and the good-natured humans. My grandfather's attitudes weren't at all unique. They were sooner rather usual in his generation, and among most people to the right of the Social Democracy.

- Enough ranted! Proceed to the juicy details, please.

- OK!

The police supports a homosexual league?

1948 a pastor Kejne began to report to the police that he was harassed by young men. He wasn't taken seriously by the police. He himself saw a clear connection to the harassment from his allegations against a State Church lay-preacher Malmberg, who as a probation officer and kind of a social worker had a lot contacts with the wild and angry youngsters of Stockholm.

Kejne and Malmberg weren't friends.

They both worked with problematic youths, but in competing organizations with different traditions and religious views. (In Swedish their conflict was referred to as the dispute between pastor Kejne and pastor Malmberg, but since I understand it to be improper English to call a layman pastor I'll use the term mister.)

Mr Malmberg was a highly respected man with connections: appreciated both by the bishop and the archbishop, by the judicial officials, by the local city politicians and the top officials in the city hall.

Pastor Kejne became a pain in the ass for the local police office, even more so when he started to complain at their superiors, and added to his reports also a more serious accusation directed against mr Malmberg personally; accusations supported by a list of witness(es?) in a written report to the police: A young acquaintance of Kejne, a student of medicine actually, had seen his landlord mr Malmberg dressed in brassiere and female underwear.

Pastor Kejne now not only reported suspicions to the police, as he had done orally with the harassment and the procuring he held mr Malmberg to be responsible for. He now also did parts of the work for the police; and an investigation had to start since this was a case for the Public Prosecutor.

The police had however much to do, and the interrogations gave reason to further interrogations - of men who unfortunately were very busy. Additionally the prosecutors had a tendency to get ill, and at least half a dozen different prosecutors had the burning case in their hands, eager to throw it on the lap of someone else in a reverse relay-race.

A bunch of inquiries

After a year pastor Kejne had found a journalist who thought Kejne's story worth writing about, and after that the Stockholm governor Hagander ordered an investigation of the police's slowness. And the prosecutor took the case to the court. And mr Malmberg was convicted to four months hard labor for sexual conduct with a minor (a 17-years old), and also sentenced for libel against pastor Kejne.

I don't know if the 17-years old had been entrusted to mr Malmberg in his function as probation officer, but if so it would maybe explain the hard labor. Otherwise we must draw the conclusion that homosexual conduct was perceived with austerity ...maybe particular for representatives of the Church? The legalization of homosexual acts was as late as 1944 decriminalized.

Anyhow, this affair isn't finished yet!

The official inquiry was presented, and didn't answer many questions at all. A peculiar detail was however that it documented distrust for the police commissioner Zetterberg. The inquirer made public that the commissioner had denied that police detectives followed pastor Kejne, but pastor Kejne's statement and other facts indicated the opposite - according to the official inquiry.

A following inquiry reported how documents had been removed from the initial police investigation, i.e. testimonies mentioning the name of the cabinet member Quensel; and again statements by the police commissioner Zetterberg are contradicting each other.

The disappeared testimonies were believed to have included allusions to an arson investigation, which 15 years before had been discontinued "due to lack of evidence." An acquaintance of mr Quensel had been found dead after the fire. Seemingly also mr Quensel adored young and angry men, and rumors had it he liked to spank them. Except for this, I am unaware of any connections between mr Malmberg and mr Quensel.

But before this inquiry had been published, there had been a general election in Sweden. And before the election the cabinet had appointed a state inquiry to disarm the ticking bomb, ...or at least to buy more time.

The incident which extorted the appointment of this fifth inquiry (..oh, I see, I almost forgot the third and the fourth ones... well, the Justitiekansler (the Attorney General) and the Justitieombudsmannen (the Parliamentary Ombudsman of Legal Affairs) had also started an investigation each) was an unlucky forgetfulness by the Stockholm police.

An unsuccessful emergency solution

In an obvious attempt to get rid of a disturbing problem two Detective-Department officers drove a male prostitute to the home of pastor Kejne, where he asked for a clasp-knife which should have been dropped at an earlier visit. Unfortunately the police hadn't checked if pastor Kejne had any visitors at home, and now a credible journalist happened to witness the police trap.

The pastor was enraged and went to the local police office immediately, where it hadn't yet been noticed that the action had failed. Pastor Kejne was unfortunately taken into custody and examined for the alleged contact with a prostitute (19 years old, i.e. not a criminal act as far as I've understood).

When pastor Kejne was released he went straight to the Parliamentary Ombudsman and filed a request for inquiry.

Well, now press reports and rumors were unavoidable. The impression that the government and the Stockholm police were infiltrated by a homosexual league could harm the Social Democratic party, in power since 1932, in the upcoming elections. Subsequently a civic commission was appointed by the cabinet council to (according to the prime minister Erlander in several public speeches) "promptly inquire and shed light on all circumstances" in the pastor Kejne-case, "particularly the authorities' cognizance" and prioritizing habits.

After the elections the speediness wasn't that important any more, and then the shedding light-aspect was tuned down, and it became an issue whether the commission should classify parts of its investigations as secret, or if certain aspects should be excluded from its duty.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman made his inquires, and found no reason for measures.

The Attorney General ...well, ...I really don't know! I think it was this inquiry which denied Kejne's accusations against a bunch of the appointed inquirers for hidden homosexual disposition. Also Quensel's sexual habits were investigated by the authorities, and declared to be "not homosexual however foreign to common customs" and including spanking of young naked men.

An unsuccessful mercury solution

Quensel did however resign,
and Kejne almost left this earth.

Twice within one year!

The first time his dog happened to win the competition over an irresistible daintiness.
The dog died.

The second time an injection of mercury salt solution in an orange turned out to be insufficient for humans of pastor Kejne's size. After a few months at hospital he was back and dangerous again.

The suspect was brought to the police by a journalist, and the police released him instantly. The police not only was short of arrests, but had also severe problems to find personnel with time for the investigation. But after one and a half year a statement was released that an unguent containing mercury had been possessed by pastor Kejne; apparently hinting at interpreting the poisoning as the result of suicidal behavior.

(It came to last until 1960 before he finally got enough of poison to pass on. And again a series of mistakes followed his case: When the coroner requested his corpse, it turned out that it due to some blunder or misunderstanding already had been cremated.)

But before that he had more judicial proceedings to experience.

After a lecture in Göteborg where pastor Kejne stated suspicions against the Stockholm police for illegal telephone taping, this statement resulted in a prosecution according to a paragraph about urging or promotion of riot. (!)
The police commissioner Zetterquist filed a libel suite. The irony in the history is that both pastor Kejne and his main enemy police commissioner Zetterquist accused the other for being treacherous knights in the noble fight against the threat the customers were to the young male prostitutes. The threat consisted among other things of the blackmailing the youths could be subject for when they had become trapped in the homosexuality their customers enticed them into. That blackmailers sooner were prostitutes than customers was somehow forgotten.

At the trial the autumn 1952 the judge asked a witness in responsible position (who should know which answer he was assumed to give) if illegal telephone taping was known to him. When the witness surprisingly affirmed, the prosecutor had no other choice than urgently to require the trial to be held without public (i.e. with the protocol made secret). The court followed the prosecutor's request.

Benevolent thoughtlessness

The same year rumors grow regarding the police-physician in Stockholm. His treatment of mental illness conditions were said to be peculiar. And somehow people had come to believe that he had initiated the clasp-knife trap.

Thoughtless and evil tongues spread the rumors, and to stop it the police in Gävle, some 200 kilometers away from the capital, was asked to investigate the allegations. This unusual measure was probably intended to finally get the rumors to stop. All earlier investigations had been only partially successful. Each assurance about the physician's innocence had indeed acted soothingly - but only temporarily.

However, something went wrong. The provincial police came to become less impressed by the police-physician than by the gossipers. The investigation concluded that the hearsays so far it could be examined seemed to be justified, and that a prosecution was motivated.

When the investigation was delivered at the police in Stockholm, it happened to be left in a drawer for a few weeks. When it was rediscovered, and the physician was to be arrested, everyone was very surprised when it turned out that the suspect had left the country a few days earlier.

That was the tale about the so called Kejne-affair.

The old king, the dissatisfied wife and her deceived husband

The second scandal had its beginning much earlier.

When it came to public knowledge, 1951, the authorities alleged it to be a case of blackmailing.

I believe the opinion to be split among people old enough to have memories from that time. My grandfather seemed to be convinced that the alleged criminal never saw himself as a blackmailer, but as a flexible businessman who tried to secure as much as possible of a contract which couldn't be fulfilled by the counter-party. As an argument in the negotiations he might have used the threat to disclose the perfidy of the counter part - the royal court.

Others, maybe the most, of them who were grown ups at that time, seem to hold the blackmail conviction to be just.

The problems began in 1936 when a mrs Haijby sued for a divorce. The judge in charge refused to proceed. Instead the royal court was warned, the document disappeared and the master of the royal household engaged a lawyer who made a proposal mrs Haijby simply couldn't resist.

She got much more money than she ever could have got in allowance from mr Haijby, whose success as a director, manager and businessman had been changing. She also got her divorce, however with a slight rewording of the cause.

Mr Haijby was promised an even larger sum of money. In return he undertook to emigrate to America. Arrived in Washington he found the embassy to be unable to pay the agreed sum. They couldn't even pay what he needed to settle, why he returned to Stockholm where the royal court tried to please him with rather large allowances. Mrs Haijby had got 18'000 kronor. In few years mr Haijby got 70'000 kronor. But then the relations changed.

A new manager and new routines

The second try to disarm the danger was a police examination 1938 in Göteborg about lewd conduct with minors. The investigation was soon interrupted. "Due to lack of evidence" the formal reason was: The boys' words weren't enough. The real reason might have been that the attacked mr Haijby considered his possibilities to improve his position, and in an overheard telephone conversation he had discussed if his relation to the king could be used to help him out of his predicament.

And it did! The sole mentioning of the relation in an overheard conversation worked as a wonder. The examination was postponed and mr Haijby returned to Stockholm.

Motivated by the investigation of lewd conduct, mr Haijby is now admitted to mental hospital, but found to be well, and after that he had to be released within two months according to the law. Before his release he was asked to sign a declaration asserting that he never had had any relation to the king.

The scared mr Haijby seems not to have understood that the investigation was closed, and not that he was declared well by the doctors. Mr Haijby, in dread of a continued life at the mental hospital, chose the better alternative the prison and signed the declaration.

When he was released, he feared the prosecution and agreed in December 1938 to a new emigration - an escape from the justice supported by the royal court. Somehow he never came further than to Germany, which after the Röhm-putsch wasn't precisely as hospitable for single men as it had used to be.

Mr Haijby soon begged to be allowed to come back to Sweden again, and his reasons to this are underlined by a friendly note from Gestapo to the police in Stockholm. Gestapo enquired of whether if the Swedish authorities wished mr Haijby to be interned in a concentration camp. Obviously this was too much for the court. The generous offer was declined.

A few years later Haijby was returned to Sweden (maybe due to his work on a dangerous manuscript) and became a patient at the mental hospital - but with continuous leave of absence! His admission to the hospital could be a story of its own, but let me make it short: Mr Zetterberg, known from the previous affair (but not yet police commissioner), entered in the intrigue. As a friend he persuaded mr Haijby to request to be admitted, and as a friend he mediated in the contacts with the royal court, and it became through him the money was delivered to mr Haijby (for receipts!).

A bestseller gets sold out

After the war mr Haijby is relieved. The Gestapo-threat has disappeared. But the continuous negotiations with the royal court is annoying, and his financial situation is troublesome. He is bitter and feels old and deceived; his access to the glamorous life gets more and more limited. 1948 he finds a publisher for The Book ("Patrik Kajson går igen") and hopes for improvements.

The book becomes a great success. All 700 copies are sold out almost before they have reached the booksellers.

- By the police with money from the royal court.

The publisher has the copyright and earns more from not printing any new editions than he'd ever had earned from the book itself. (Which by some is claimed to have been mediocre. Who knows?) Financially mr Haijby's position improves. The Cabinet decides to pay a monthly allowance of 500 kronor. (Much, much less than the royal court had contributed with ten years ago, but the times had changed.)

What I would like to learn is if the national libraries ever received the copies the printers by law are supposed to submit.

When the king had died a prosecution for blackmail was started, and mr Zetterberg who now had become police commissioner declared under oath that his contacts with mr Haijby had been ordered by his superiors.

During the prosecution and the trial in two courts of justice the story above got known step by step - and laboriously denied by the authorities despite several evidences by credible men witnessing under oath. The state inquiry investigating the scandalous rumors was made secret, but in those parts relevant for the blackmail trial again made public by the court of appeal.

Different kinds of criminals

The illegal and unethical actions by judicial officials, psychiatrists and other authorities in this affair came to be discussed in connection with the same kind of deeds in the Kejne-affair.

The public debate was complicated by the secrecy and the regard taken to higher state officials and the royal court.

Much attention and critic was aroused by the author Vilhelm Moberg who during a visit in Sweden (he worked in USA during these years) stole, copied and made public paragraphs from a secret Attorney General investigation making it evident how mr Haijby had been twice formally hospitalized without psychiatric reason, and twice practically deported without any judicial reason, although denied the right of a just trial.

Vilhelm Moberg was prosecuted and fined for this crime. His revelations of the more serious crimes never led to any prosecution. Mr Moberg's fine was paid by money collected among the subscribers of a Swedish magazine.

The Swedish news agency, radio and newspapers did however mostly repeat the versions approved by the government. The government and the news editors jointly worked to reinforce the people's confidence for the authorities. It didn't change much when the court of appeal in the blackmailing case abolished the secrecy for documents judged to be strictly limited to the blackmailing accusations.

After 1938 mr Haijby was without doubt perceived as a blackmailer by the royal courtiers and confidently discussed and gossiped about among upper class men. The judges in the court of appeal, as well as the counsel for the defense, most probably knew what "everybody" had known for 15 years: mr Haijby was a dangerous blackmailer one had to be obliging, friendly but cautious toward. To acquit him was unthinkable.

And maybe they were right.

Mr Haijby never published any other book. He was sentenced to six years in prison, and when he was released he discovered that he had no friends left, no family and no money, and his suicide was predictable.

Who watches the guards?

The most serious and far reaching question in the Haijby affair is maybe not the crimes against mr Haijby's human rights, but instead the consensus among the highest judicial officials (and the cabinet) agreeing to subordinate a lot of laws and instructions under the demands of (what they perceived as) a blackmailer's threats. This leads forward to later rumors and unconfirmed press reports about higher judges bribed by criminals.

Why was the blackmailer not prosecuted, but instead supported by the highest officials during more than 14 years? Has this been a common practice in Stockholm?

And why has this aspect been almost neglected in the public debate?

Another serious effect of the scandals was that the attitudes to homosexuals became more and more austere. Pastor Kejne, Vilhelm Moberg and the few supporting newspapers contributed to this as well as the other side - not the least the tabloid press.

In connection with the three greater scandals a lot of relatively less severe transgressions were brought to the light, but in the polarized atmosphere they came to be neglected.

The indignant critics of the lawyers emphasized the worst crimes. And the established participants in the public debate didn't want to be associated with the critics, and came mostly to voice doubt of their credibility, which had the consequence that very little of the critic was taken up by the heavy names in the debate.

The maybe false impression was thus that all of the establishment including the (republican) Social Democratic party accepted or supported all these crimes motivated by the greater interest The General Confidence for The Government And The Constitution.

A judge is prosecuted in his own court!

The third of the scandals is now to be related more briefly.

The judge Lundquist had since 1931 caused a great collection of reports and requests and accusations. More than anyone else. None is found justified until 1952 when a prosecutor from a distant province by mistake gets one of the cases before he is introduced in the collegial atmosphere of the capital. The result is an indictment on two dozen different crimes (most of them labeled as severe by the prosecutor) - and a shocked nation.

The case is unique in many ways. For instance it was the first time ever a judge was prosecuted in the history of Stockholm. The news papers, the national news agency and the radio act however as one man: The case is reported, yes it is indeed, but very carefully. A responsible attitude was obviously understood as intense work against the menace of an undermined confidence in the authorities.

For the prosecutor it turns out to be his life's fight. His colleagues, his superiors, the Attorney General, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the minister of justice, the national society of lawyers ...all do they report him for different offenses and misdemeanors against laws and established customs.

After three months of investigation by the prosecutor, the prime minister reports to the parliament that the investigation so far shows all accusations to be ungrounded. For the prosecutor grand favors were prospected - which he let make public. When he also went to court with the case the hinted order and promotion was forgotten.

The judge Lundquist is however sentenced. (Not for ALL accusations, but enough to shock the nation totally.) It becomes evident that he through his friendly relations with other influential men have been able to hide the two most irritating witnesses in mental hospital since 1936, and that he was guilty of for instance perjury, fraud, embezzling and theft during guardianship.

The most shocking was perceived as the fact that report after report had resulted in no other action than humble questions to the judge, who told that the accusers were unreliable. And the police and all the prosecutors were content with this kind of answer, and did no exertions until a brand new prosecutor made the mistake to check facts instead of asking judge Lundquist. Then both police and lawyers became very busy - to attack the erroring prosecutor!

kind regards!

Johan Olofsson



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- See the discussion in section 1.2.2!
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