Two teens accused of seven-hour racist assault and livestreamed abuse in Stavanger

Two 16-year-old boys are facing trial in Sør-Rogaland District Court, accused of subjecting a 14-year-old to a seven-hour ordeal of violence, sexualised abuse, and racial harassment—much of it livestreamed on Snapchat—prosecutors allege was racially motivated, Dagbladet reports.

The victim, whose parents are of African descent, was lured to Stavanger city centre on the evening of the attack, where the two older boys allegedly detained, assaulted, and humiliated him between 16:40 and 23:50, according to the indictment filed by state prosecutors in Western Norway.

Prosecutors claim the pair punched, kicked, and whipped the boy with a belt, forced him to eat grass, kneel in a roundabout while howling, and kiss their shoes. They allegedly pulled down his clothes, photographed his genitals, and made him perform sexual acts on himself while broadcasting to a Snapchat group called “big black.” The abuse continued on a train to Sandnes, where they threatened to throw him from the platform, tore a religious necklace (a cross) from his neck, and extorted 290 kroner from him under threats of spreading the images.

The boys are charged under Norway’s Penal Code for deprivation of liberty (equivalent to kidnapping), violence, sexualised abuse, production of child abuse imagery, and—critically—racially aggravated hate crime. Prosecutors argue the attack was motivated by the victim’s ethnic background.

Criminology professor Sveinung Sandberg of the University of Oslo, who has studied 51 Norwegian cases involving filmed crimes, told Dagbladet that victims suffer “a profound loss of ownership over their own lives” when abuses are recorded and shared. “They live in constant fear that the material exists somewhere, that someone might spread it,” he said, advocating for harsher penalties in such cases.

The defendants’ lawyers, Verna Rege Nilssen and Maren Eide, declined to comment on whether their clients admit guilt. The trial is ongoing.