Legal battles that continued for more than two decades appear to have come to an end.
The Southwest Finland District Court has dismissed all sexual offence charges brought against Anneli Auer and her ex-boyfriend Jens Ihle.
The verdict marks the latest judgment in one of the longest-running and most controversial cases in Finnish legal history. Wednesday’s ruling follows the Supreme Court calling for a retrial last year.
During a past trial, three of Auer’s four children told tales of satanic sexual abuse, leading Auer and Ihle to eventually be convicted on those charges.
The district court now said the statements the children made as minors were not corroborated by other evidence and could not be considered reliable.
Instead, the evidence supported the children’s later accounts that the alleged crimes never happened. If the ruling holds, it would mean Auer and Ihle spent years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
In June 2013, the Turku Court of Appeal sentenced Auer to seven and a half years in prison. Her former partner, Jens Ihle (then known as Jens Kukka), was sentenced to 10 years.
The ruling relied heavily on the accounts given by three of the children, as well as expert assessments of those accounts and of injuries found on the children.
Since the start, Auer, Ihle and the eldest child denied that any sexual offences had taken place. The conviction nevertheless became final.
Both Auer and Ihle have since served their sentences and were released.
Anneli Auer first came to the attention of the Finnish public when she was named as a suspect in the murder of her husband, psychologist Jukka S. Lahti, who died in December 2006 at the family home in Ulvila, a small village on the outskirts of the city of Pori.
She was twice convicted, and then acquitted, of killing her husband in a case that became known as the Ulvila homicide.
In 2023, the All Points North podcast explored the case of Anneli Auer and the ‘crime of the century’.
Anneli Auer and the Ulvila homicide
