Victims becoming perpetrators

Victims becoming perpetrators is a pattern Sofia Zetterlund confronts in both her professional work and her memories: people subjected to severe harm may themselves commit violence, but their histories do not make that outcome inevitable or erase the harm they cause. The idea joins a case involving Tyra Mäkelä, Sofia’s recollection of child soldiers in Port Loko, and her anxious questions about Linnea Lundström’s future. Across these examples, the narrative holds victimization and culpability in view at once, resisting a simple division between the harmed and the harmful.

A pattern without inevitability

The phrase takes shape through Sofia’s recognition that people once understood chiefly as victims can become perpetrators. Her memories of children in Port Loko make the reversal stark: child soldiers kill the UNICEF paediatrician whose work was to help them. The same possibility enters her assessment of Tyra Mäkelä, whose history of depression and long marriage to Harri Mäkelä precede another suicide attempt and the murder of the couple’s adopted son. Later, thinking about Linnea Lundström, Sofia wonders whether a girl damaged by her father’s abuse might herself become an abuser.

These cases do not establish a single causal law. They differ in circumstances, and Sofia’s question about Linnea is a fear, not a prediction confirmed by events in this material. The recurrence instead makes the possibility of repetition difficult to ignore. Harm can pass into new relationships, while the narrative preserves uncertainty about whether it will do so in any particular person’s life.

Tyra Mäkelä: abuse, illness, and culpability

Sofia’s account of Tyra’s history stretches back to adolescence. At fourteen, Tyra intentionally overdosed on pills; at twenty, persistent depression led to disability benefits. Sofia then traces a further deterioration across the fifteen years Tyra spent with her husband, whom she describes as sadistic. That period ended in another suicide attempt and the murder of their adopted son. Sofia believes the marriage exacerbated Tyra’s condition, connecting prolonged abuse with the circumstances in which the killing took place without treating that connection as an undoing of the crime.

Sofia considers the possibility that Tyra experienced repeated psychotic episodes during the years of abuse. She bases this assessment in part on two recorded psychiatric-clinic visits in the preceding year: on both occasions Tyra had been found wandering the streets, hospitalised for several days, and then discharged. Sofia also points to Tyra’s very low IQ and argues that the court had largely disregarded its bearing on her responsibility. These are elements of Sofia’s assessment, not a claim that the court accepted them or that they absolve Tyra.

Alcohol and Tyra’s idealisation of her husband further complicate Sofia’s account. Tyra’s passivity could make her appear complicit in the abuse; Sofia also believes her mental state left her unable to intervene. The tension matters: victimization does not automatically settle questions of responsibility, but judging conduct without its conditions can obscure how constrained a person was. Sofia insists that the cruelty of the case must not cloud that judgement. The verdict has been upheld at the highest level, and the remaining question is the sentence. In Sofia’s view, prison will not help anyone; Tyra needs treatment, although treatment cannot undo what she did.

Port Loko and the reversal of care

Sofia’s memory of her UNICEF work brings the pattern into another setting. Seven years after writing her report, she returns to it while wondering whether she is ready to revisit that period. She still dreams of the child soldiers in Port Loko and remembers two boys near a truck, each profoundly harmed. She also recalls a UNICEF paediatrician murdered by the same children he had been called to help. The reversal is not abstract: the intended relation of care has become one in which the children kill their would-be helper.

A children’s song also returns to Sofia in this recollection. Alongside the remembered children and the murdered doctor, it gives the past a persistent presence in her present work. Her compressed formulation of the episode—victims turned perpetrators—names a transformation, not an excuse. The children’s victimization and their killing of the paediatrician remain facts that coexist; the memory does not dissolve either into the other.

Linnea and the feared repetition

After Karl Lundström is taken back to the cells, Sofia’s thoughts turn to his daughter, Linnea, who is only just into her teens and has already been badly damaged. Sofia wonders whether Linnea, like Tyra, might become an abuser. The comparison joins two different situations through Sofia’s concern about what prolonged harm can do, while leaving Linnea’s future unresolved.

The little Sofia can find about Linnea is school information: she is in her first year at Sigtuna boarding school, earns good grades, and is the school champion at 800 metres. Her athletic ability offers a concrete counterpoint to Sofia’s fear: Linnea is not presented only as damaged, and her current achievements do not answer what she may become. Sofia’s question about how much a person can endure before breaking into a monster remains a question, not a diagnosis of Linnea or a settled account of Tyra.

Responsibility and the work of judgement

Across the three strands, the concept insists on distinguishing explanation from exoneration. Sofia connects Tyra’s history and mental state to her actions, but acknowledges the murder and the verdict. She remembers the child soldiers as both children caught in violence and the killers of their helper. She fears that Linnea may repeat abuse but has no evidence here that she will. These distinctions prevent the pattern from becoming either a deterministic claim that suffering produces violence or a denial that victims can inflict serious harm.

The episodes also make judgement a practical question. In Tyra’s case, the sentence remains pending even though the verdict is final, and Sofia argues for treatment rather than imprisonment. Her assessment challenges a narrow account of culpability by bringing mental illness, intellectual disability, alcohol, and prolonged abuse into view. The larger concern is what happens when harm is recognised only after it has been repeated: Sofia’s memories and professional reflections keep attention on the conditions surrounding violence, while refusing to confuse understanding those conditions with undoing its consequences.