The UN rates Norway one of the best countries for a child to
grow up in. And yet too many children, according to a large number of Norwegian
experts, are taken into care without good reason. The conviction of a top
psychiatrist in the child protection system for downloading child abuse images
is now raising further serious questions.
It was a winter’s day, some years ago, when two child
welfare specialists – a female psychologist and a male psychiatrist – knocked
on the door of a small modern wooden house on the edge of the Norwegian
capital, Oslo.
A lively little girl opened the door and greeted the
strangers warmly.
But the girl’s mother, Cecilie – who understood the purpose
of their visit – was much less pleased to see them.
“I was very scared. I didn’t want them in my house in the
first place,” she says, remembering that day.
“I was really nervous that they will find something wrong. I
know this is how the Child Protection Services take away children.”
The experts had been appointed to write a report for a
family court hearing which would decide the little girl’s future.
Their visit followed years of concern by the Child
Protection Service that Cecilie - a single mother - wasn’t looking after her
daughter properly, and had rejected offers of help.
That day, she was right to be nervous.
The experts were highly critical of what they observed at
her home.
They wrote in their report that “there was no natural flow
to the interaction” between mother and daughter.
They said Cecilie struggled to keep the house in order. And
they commented on other details that Cecilie believes they misinterpreted.
“Everything is twisted in a negative way,” she says.
“This was not so long after Christmas, and in the local
store I had found some gingerbread which they were selling really cheap, for
one Norwegian krone. So I bought it just for fun, so that my daughter and I
could make some gingerbread men together as an activity.
“But apparently they thought my financial situation was very
bad, because I had bought it after Christmas… How can you say a person is poor
just because they buy cheap gingerbread?
“When I saw the report, I was so devastated. It was just all
this negativity - negative, negative, negative. There was nothing positive at
all.”
The experts’ report – based on information from many health
and childcare professionals as well as their own observations – concluded that
the little girl’s “development would be limited” if she remained with her
mother.
The report said: “This is because the mother does not
recognise her daughter’s basic needs and does not perceive the mental harm she
may have suffered” while in her mother’s care.
Since then, Cecilie – a lean, anxious-looking, blonde woman
now in her 50s - has only seen her daughter seven times.
“I have not been able to follow her development,” she says.
“I just lost my daughter’s childhood. I don’t expect really to see her until
she’s an adult.”
The recommendation to put the girl into long-term foster
care was approved at Oslo District Court. The report’s co-authors attended as
witnesses.
Fast forward to April this year, and one of those two
experts – the male psychiatrist - reappeared in the same courthouse.
This time, though, he wasn’t in the witness stand.
He was in the dock.
He was sentenced to 22 months in jail - after admitting he
had downloaded nearly 200,000 images, and more than 12,000 videos, showing the
sexual abuse or sexualisation of children…
His conviction puts the spotlight back on a system which has
been heavily criticised by some parents – and by leading Norwegian
professionals in the childcare field – for being too quick to put children into
care, splitting families unnecessarily…
The criticisms of the Norwegian Child Protection Service
date back some years. Two years ago I reported on the case of Ruth and Marius
Bodnariu, evangelical Christians who were accused in 2015 of breaking the law
by smacking their children. Their five children – including a small baby – were
put into emergency care, prompting demonstrations by sympathisers around the
world.
The children were eventually returned to their parents – but
the family then decided to leave Norway. They now live in Marius’s home
country, Romania…
n the same year, 2015, more than 140 professionals in the childcare
field – lawyers, psychologists and social workers, wrote a National Notice of
Concern to the government. They said that “a long list of children – the actual
number is not known by anyone – are exposed to serious failures of
understanding and infringements of their rights.”
They added that “when expert witnesses submit their reports
and give evidence in court, we often see that the observational basis upon
which they report is very weak.”
That open letter has now been signed by a further 120
specialists. Meanwhile, a family involved in a custody battle with the state
has won a rare legal victory, gaining the right to have its case heard later
this year at the highest level of the European Court of Human Rights…
But Inez – who’s now become a campaigner for family rights –
regards the silence over the convicted psychiatrist as a cover-up.
She and other parents who’ve lost children are also
surprised by a family court decision that the disgraced expert can keep custody
of his own young children.
“I’m at a loss for words, for the outrage,” she says,
“knowing other parents who have had lesser allegations and have lost children.”
Thore Langfeldt, a psychologist who works with sex
offenders, and who gave testimony as an independent expert in the case of the
convicted psychiatrist, regards that reaction as “moral outrage”.
He says there is no evidence to suggest that people who
download child pornography are more likely than anyone else to commit other
offences against children.
“Sometimes moral panic takes over and empirical
psychological data vanish on us,” he says.
But Inez, who has been active in her community as a local
politician and lay judge, says the case has changed the way she views her own
country.
“Before 2013 I considered Norway as the best country in the
world. And in many aspects it still is a good country. But if the system is
closed and there is no transparency, then it is so much easier to sweep things
under the carpet when things go wrong,” she says.
“There has to be a willingness to fix things, because it
ensures that people can trust the system.”
Courtesy of a colleague
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