Light in darkness: a "Center for Justice" in Sweden

Citizens in the Nordic countries are at a disadvantage because the general opinion is that our authorities are models of virtue, dispensing nothing but welfare and practicing the rule of unexceptionable humanitarian law. Groups or organisations fighting for human rights here therefore tend to be run by, or in the pockets of, the authorities themselves and concerned solely with human rights abuses in far away countries, not in our own countries, since such abuses are not supposed to exist here.


Here, however:

Centrum för rättvisa

we have a Center for Justice (Centrum för rättvisa), an organisation of Swedish lawyers whose agenda is individual rights against the state.

CFR is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to enforce the rights and freedoms protected in the European Convention on Human Rights, the Swedish constitution and statutes. The mission of CFR is primarily to help people who have a legitimate case that involves individual rights and freedoms, and have, among others, taken on cases concerning equal treatment, freedom of association, right of ownership and legal security.

As a Scandinavian I must say it sounds too good to be true.


And here:

European Court requested to review Swedish "Big Brother" snooping law

is the English version of an article stating that the center is prepared to fight in the European Court of Human Rights against newly passed legislation authorising the Swedish state to conduct all-pervading surveillance in the style of DDR. The case concerns a violation of Article 8 (everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence). This is particularly important to victims of the child protection authorities, since violation of Article 8 is central in most child protection cases.

  

Ritalin prevents the growth of brain

This article about ADHD is long. More than 10 pages. The knowledge it conveys is important. Everyone should read it because it shows how the myths about mental illnesses were created.

Anyone who has children with so-called ADHD, MUST read the article. It explains what ritalin, and more are doing with children. You also get information on how to give "ADHD-children" a higher quality of life.

Sitat:

Today I am bringing you news from the world of ADHD, because scientists claim they have found a difference in the brains of children with ADHD versus "normal" children. The brains of these children who have been diagnosed with ADHD were scanned with an MRI machine. They compared 40,000 different points in their brains looking for signs of thickness in the brain tissue. They discovered that the brains of children diagnosed with ADHD were a little behind schedule in growing.

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Mona Lygre has put in a lot of work posting videos about the child "protection" "services" of Norway on Youtube and elsewhere. Recently, Jessie, with the nick Bizziboy, in Canada made contact with Mona and he has registered here on rbv.

He gives his hometown as Calgary, which is in Alberta. I have just started exploring some of his videos about foster care and other aspects of CPS over on his side of the Atlantic. Here is his address on Youtube for our readers:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Bizziboy

I see that your site has links to other useful sites too, Bizziboy.

Welcome to rbv, Jessie. The Section for English Speakers is open only for postings made by ourselves, or we can't handle the spam. But you may post in the section "Plassen for nye medlemmer" for a while and some of it may be transferred by us to the English language section.

Has Mona told you that BarnasRett (Rights of the Children) and NKMR (The Nordic Committee for Human Rights) are websites devoted to combat destructive CPS activities and that both have sections in English? Click the British flag in both cases.
  
Regards,
Marianne Skånland (Skanland)
  

  
A web-site with some information about Norwegian CPS:
Save our children and families from Child Protection

  

The letter is here.

Sitat:

3/10-07 Amnesty International Secretariat 1 Easton Street London WC1X 0DW I am the administrator of the Norwegian language forum Redd Barna Våre which I started in early 2006. The posters on the forum take a critical view of the methods used by the Child Protective Services (CPS) in Norway, the theories used by them to justify these methods, and of the legal framework which gives the social services wide ranging powers. Members of the forum come from different backgrounds, but they have all had negative experiences from their contact with the CPS. Some have had their children forcibly taken away from them by the state and placed with foster families or in institutions, while others have been made to accept against their will humiliating intrusions into their private lives by the CPS or by psychologists working for the CPS. Several posters on the forum are afraid to disclose their identities because they fear that their participation in the forum will later be used against them by the CPS. On the forum we regularly receive pleas for help from parents who fear for the safety of their children. There are also cases of families who have fled the country for the safety of other countries with a more humane Child Protection system. The authorities have made several attempts to close our forum. There is no doubt that employees of the CPS read the posts on the forum, since a police complaint has been made against me by the social services in my district. Not so long ago the Bergen City Council (Kommune) took action against a poster resident in Denmark by filing a complaint against our forum to the Danish Data Inspectorate (Datatilsynet), which fortunately refused to pursue the complaint. I have no doubt that the existence of the forum such as ours is within the scope of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression. Moreover, the Norwegian Data Inspectorate ruled in 2004 that another web site which published lists of CPS workers and psychologists working for the social services, was not in violation of Norwegian Law. The administrators of that web site warned against the CPS workers and psychologists named in the list, following numerous complaints they had received from distraught parents. Despite emphasizing that the reason for our criticism of the social services is to ensure that the social services actually achieve their stated objective, which is to help families and children in difficult circumstances, our discussions on the forum are instead seen by the authorities as a threat to the working of the social services – an attitude on the part of the authorities which may in itself be considered to reveal that all is not right with the present practice within social work. Several representatives of the present government have expressed their discomfiture at the existence of a forum which boldly calls into question the aims and methods of the Child Protective Services. We are repeatedly warned that government is considering measures which will make our activity illegal. The posters on the forum are however united in their belief that in genuine cases where families and children may find themselves in difficult circumstances, the social services ought to concentrate the efforts and resources into assisting these families and children, rather than threatening the well being of families with coercive and humiliating measures which have on some occasions even lead to tragic deaths. I also have good reason to believe the numerous reports of interventions by the social services for far more frivolous reasons. I am writing to you because I would like Amnesty International to investigate the working of the Child Protective Services (CPS) in Norway. I fear that far too many children are being removed from their families on flimsy grounds. Some of these children are being forced to grow up in badly supervised institutions, where they often become alcohol and drug abusers, while others are forced to live with foster families who are not related to the child’s biological parents. These children grow up with little or no contact with the parents. The CPS even turns down requests by grandparents and other relatives who wish to remain in touch with these children Not so long ago the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child (CRC) expressed concern at the large numbers of children being removed from their families in Norway. The document in which the CRC highlighted this problem is available online: http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/1a35ad6034bde2a4c1257018002e091e?Opendocument In particular, I wish to call your attention to points 23 and 24 under the subheading “Children deprived of their family environment” in the above mentioned document. The UN body clearly recommends that the Norwegian state should give priority to protecting the natural family environment. Not only have these recommendations been completely ignored by the Norwegian government, changes have been recently made to the existing legislation which regulates the functioning of the CPS, which now make it even more difficult for a child to be returned to its parents, after the child has been placed in an institution or with a foster family. The revised law came into force on 1 January 2007. In addition, the revised law now makes it impossible for grandparents and other family members to maintain ties with a child placed in care. Exception to this rule is made only in cases where both parents are dead, or have been stripped of their legal rights to see their child. The revised law clearly aims to sever all ties between the child and its biological family. The CPS removes children from their families for a number of reasons. In some cases, domestic violence or child abuse are the alleged reasons. In other cases, the financial situation of the parents or parent, along with a combination of lack of progress at school, is considered to be sufficient reason for children to be permanently removed from their families. The CPS possesses sweeping powers which allow social workers to remove children under emergency protection orders, as is the case in the United Kingdom. When the CPS brings a case before the County Social Welfare Board (equivalent to UK Family Court), statistics show that the authorities win in almost 90% of the cases. The County Social Welfare Board holds, without exception, in camera hearings, allegedly to protect the interests of the child. However, many legal experts have raised concerns about the impartiality of the County Social Welfare Board’s decisions, which in large measure rely on the undocumented testimonies of social workers, and more importantly, on the expert opinions of psychologists with close links to the CPS. Many parents find that their side of the story is not heard. Another fundamental aspect of this issue is the CPS’ problematic use of research material and data. Social workers tend to place far too much emphasis on the home environment at a time when research in psychology stresses the importance of the environment outside the child’s home. Social workers’ training makes them predisposed to see the home environment as the cause of children’s problems at school or in the community. The CPS operates with a list of “risk factors”, all of which pertain to the child’s home environment. Removing a child from its family is not in itself considered by the CPS to be a risk to the child’s future development. The CPS conveniently ignores the adverse effects of removing children from their families, which have been highlighted in many different studies. I do realize that measures taken to protect children will be considered intrusive by all parents, and these measures will vary from state to state. However, I do not believe that such measures can be arbitrary: depriving a child of its family for a bad reason is a serious breach of the rights of the child, as much as it is a breach of the rights of the family. I do not believe that it is necessary to suspend the legal rights of families and children in order to safeguard the interests of children. That, in my opinion, is what is happening in Norway today. There are also documented cases of child abuse at institutions run by the state, but the Norwegian government has not so far shown any sign of wanting to review the child care system which allows this to happen. I would like Amnesty International to take a closer look at the issue which I have attempted to describe above. There are a number of published articles and reports from the media to support the claims I have made, but these are in Norwegian. If required, I will make these available to you. I do hope you will not be misled by the good reputation that my country enjoys in the world. Abuses of human rights take place when power is in the hands of the wrong people, and when the legal rights of the victims are suspended. Even with the best of intentions, this can very easily happen in a democracy like ours. Yours sincerely Arild Holta

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A high court judge has stopped the BBC airing a TV programme about an 18-year-old mother with an IQ of 63 whose daughter was taken away for adoption, ruling that it would be a "massive invasion" of the woman's privacy and "undermine her dignity as a human being".

This is laughable! The CPS (Child Protection Service) is responsible for the massive intrusion of the teenagers privacy, not the BBC. The CPS who stole this young woman's two-year old daughter is responsible for 'undermining her dignity as a human being', not the BBC.

The programme was planned as part of a five-day documentary series of individual stories portraying different aspects of adoption and fostering. T's story was intended to inform the public about the concept of "concurrent planning" - placing a child with foster parents with the possibility of adoption while at the same time assessing the mother's suitability to go on parenting the child .

Naturally the CPS doesn't want light shed on the brutal practice of sepating mother and child while assessing the mother's fitness to be mother. The judge decision to not allow BBC to air the documentary is for the protection of the CPS, not the young mother nor the child.

  
forum.r-b-v
4 October, 2006


Child Prisons? In Sweden?

By Siv Westerberg


*****
Siv Westerberg is a practising lawyer in Gothenburg, Sweden. She has several times proceeded against the Swedish government at The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in cases concerning the rights of the family, in which she fights for clients attacked by the Swedish child care authorities. An earlier version of this article was published in the Swedish periodical Medborgarrätt (Civil Rights) no 2, 1995, and also by the Nordic Committee for Human Rights in October of 1998.
*****


Psychiatric clinics for children in Sweden today are largely a form of child prisons. Children forcibly taken away from their parents and into public care by the child care authorities are locked in since the authorities, by observing the behaviour of the child and its parents in this abnormal situation, want to gather "evidence" to the effect that the child should continue to be in the forcible custody of the authorities - because of its own and its parents' "abnormal behaviour".

As regards orphanages, it should be kept in mind that the number of parentless (orphan) children in Sweden today is very small due to the high average life span of parents. The few orphans there are, almost always have close relatives who are willing to take care of them. Considerable improvement in the standard of living for everybody and the possibilities of economic social support have had as a result that there are hardly any children at all in Sweden who have to be placed in orphanages because the parents cannot afford to support their children. Today, therefore, the orphanages have by and large the same function as the child-psychiatric clinics.

In the dubious activity which the taking of children into forcible public care is, the foster-homes constitute the element most inaccessible of all to scrutiny. In this field, private persons, with or without shady backgrounds, carry out an economic activity, combined with direct neglect and maltreatment of the children, which is unknown to the majority of the Swedish population. It is, for example, standard procedure that foster children of school age are prevented from attending the obligatory school.

But examples from real life are more instructive than long dissertations. With my clients' permission I therefore place before you four cases from my law-practice in recent years. All four concern the children of caring and normal parents, none of them drug addicts or alcoholics. These parents have also, through all the years of forced separation from their children, fought untiringly in the various courts of law to have their children back.

1)
Daniela Wollmar was nine years old when the child care authorities took her forcibly into care. Her mother, Kerstin Wollmar, is a teacher by profession. Daniela's two grown-up half-siblings have testified under oath before the courts to the effect that they have had a good mother and that Daniela, too, has been given every care and love by her mother.

Kerstin Wollmar fell out with her employer, the municipality of Tidaholm, about her work as a teacher. The municipality's "revenge" was the taking into public care of Daniela, who was suddenly fetched one day from school and taken to a child-psychiatric clinic. For three months she was denied schooling. Then she was taken to an orphanage where there are locks on the doors and where a "sluicing system" prevents parents and others from entering. Here she was kept for three years.

Daniela, who had previously attended a normal school, was now placed in a school for retarded children. On the 2nd of January 1995, in a transport strongly reminiscent of a transport of prison convicts, she was taken to a foster-home. The address was kept secret from her mother. Again she was denied permission to go to school. The reason given by the social authorities for this prohibition is that they cannot keep the address of the foster-home secret from the mother if Daniela goes to school. Daniela was denied all contact with her mother or her sister and brother. When the mother finally found out where the daughter was, Daniela was sent back to the orphanage by the foster-parents, who would not be in charge of her if the mother was to know their address and perhaps get access to Daniela and be able to look into what they were doing.

2)
Anne-Marie Paulsen-Medalen is the single mother of two sons: Jan-Åke, born in 1986, and Peter, born in 1984. In 1989 both boys were forcibly transferred to the care of the child authorities. Peter is handicapped and the authorities claimed that his mother was unable to take care of him. In Jan-Åke's case the major justification given for taking him into care was that the authorities considered him to be seriously psychically disturbed and that the mother was supposed to be the cause. The authorities have refused to let him return to his mother since they claim that he is still suffering from these disturbances. His mother has never observed any psychic abnormality in him; he was, on the contrary, unusually alert and gifted, and he developed well in every way. This was confirmed by his teachers, who said to the mother and her lawyer that they, too, had never seen any psychological abnormality in Jan-Åke; he was precisely like other normal children. Anne-Marie Paulsen-Medalen then called them as witnesses in court. Now the teachers changed their tune, however. No doubt under pressure from the child care authorities and perhaps from the school authorities, who work in close contact with the child care authorities, the teachers now stated that Jan-Åke had "psychological problems".

Handicapped Peter was placed as a foster-child in a family with four children, the foster-father working on the wharf and the foster-mother working nights as a nursing-assistant. The family had yet another foster child. In addition to the usual foster-child payment, the foster-mother received payment equal to full nursing-assistant wages, in order that she should take leave from her work and to concentrate on the handicapped foster-child Peter. The social services did not know that although the foster mother took leave from her night-work at a hospital in Gothenburg, she immediately took another job of the same kind at a hospital in Alingsås.

Anne-Marie Paulsen-Medalen understood that Peter was seriously neglected and mistreated in the foster-home. He had inexplicable blue marks on his body, and he cried and begged his mother to be allowed to come home. Her criticism was stifled by the social services with a threat of taking her to court on a criminal charge if she continued to investigate the deplorable conditions.

Her suspicions were confirmed when the police had to intervene in the foster-home on a midsummer night so as to stop the strongly intoxicated foster-father from killing the equally intoxicated foster mother. It then emerged that the social authorities have known all along that the foster-father had had a serious alcohol problem for many years.

The foster-parents separated. The social authorities have continued to keep handicapped Peter under forced care with the foster-mother, who, besides, is still working full time at her job. When she separated from her husband, she had her own four children and two foster-children to take care of, and shortly after that, she also had to take care of a baby, which her teen-age daughter was then expecting. She has continued to work nights and has left the night care of Peter to her 17-year-old daughter.

At one time during the forcible public custody of Anne-Marie Paulsen-Medalen's two boys, the authorities had both of them, then six and eight years old, placed in a child-psychiatric clinic for observation and diagnosis.

During the three weeks of their stay in a closed ward, they were allowed out of the house altogether six times.

The authorities claim that Peter is severely retarded. He has been placed not in a school for retarded children but in a so-called "training school", where not even an attempt is made to teach him to read and write. His mother, as well as several other people who have met him, hold a different opinion, but no attempt is made by the authorities to encourage the development of any capabilities that he may have.

3) and 4)
Alexander Aminoff and Frans Lovasz are two young men who in their childhood were under the forcible custody of the child care authorities and were placed in foster-homes in which they were exposed to neglect and to physical abuse and were for long periods denied schooling. Both were, after many years, able to flee from foster-home life through dramatic escapes.

After reaching adulthood, they have both tried to take the Swedish state to court claiming damages for the suffering they went through in their foster-homes during the years of forcible public care. Their cases have been denied admissibility to the courts. Behind the diffusely formulated decision of rejection, the reality seems to be: Swedish courts consider that he who cannot, as an adult, give precise information as to the day, time and place for every beating by hand, rope or stick that he was subjected to as a foster-child, cannot have his claim for compensation examined by a Swedish court. One also discerns a line of reasoning to the effect that the court cannot understand how it can be grounds for compensation that a child has been prevented from meeting his parents or has been denied schooling.

Both Aminoff's and Lovasz's cases have also been denied consideration by the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Must we conclude that the Court of Human Rights, along with our Swedish state, considers a vast system of persecution and harassment of families, carried out by our authorities with great financial benefit accruing to every link in "the system", to be in the best interest of children, while the victim who seeks compensation is considered with contempt and suspected of being greedy? When will European society be told the real truth about the forcible care and foster-home system?

*

The Paulsen-Medalen case was heard in The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on November 24, 1997. The ECHR delivered its verdict in March 1998. The only 'crime' that the Court found Sweden guilty of was that the Supreme Administrative Court took two and a half (2 1/2) years to hand down its decision not to review the care case. The mother was awarded 10 000 SEK in damages.



Paulsen-Medalen & Svensson mot Sverige

Aminoff v. Sweden. Friendly Settlement. Commission Report

Alexander - A confiscated Child

Alexander Aminoff's linguistic proficiency in childhood


*****
  

  
Redd Barna Våre, 27 June 2006



The Folly of Sweden's State Controlled Families
The lawyer, Mrs Siv Westerberg's lecture to The Family Education Trust, London, 19th June, 1999.


***
Siv Westerberg is a lawyer with a legal practice in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her special domain is medico-legal cases. Before qualifying in law, she worked for many years as a medical doctor.
***


Thank you very much for your invitation to come here and talk about the situation in Sweden. I am a founder-member of an organisation called 'The Nordic Committee for Human Rights', which consists of other lawyers like myself, university lecturers, doctors, teachers and many other professionals. We are all very worried by the situation in Sweden with regard to the family. We are doing our best to establish contacts with other countries where a similar trend, against the private family and in favour of the state-controlled family, seems to be developing. I want to tell you about it.

Sweden has, during the last decades, developed into a kind of socio-medical totalitarian state. A totalitarian state where families are deprived of the right to care for and educate their own children, and are deprived of the basic human right to both family life and private life.

European history of the twentieth century has some horrible examples of how a democracy can turn into a totalitarian state. Mostly such a transformation is brought about by armed soldiers and policemen in uniform. Those soldiers and policemen use brutal physical violence against anyone who refuses to obey their orders. For every citizen in those states it is immediately obvious that the brutal servants of the state are their enemies. It is immediately obvious to the citizen that this is the end of freedom. From then on they know you are permitted just to say things or do things or even think things that the totalitarian state allows. Otherwise something disasterous will happen to you.

But the development in Sweden towards a socio-medical totalitarian state wasn't like that. In fact the army and the police have very little power in Sweden. Instead, the government achieved their totalitarian power by using persons whom the ordinary citizen believes to be their friends. Where other European dictatorships once used policemen and armed soldiers to make the citizens obedient, the Swedish authorities use doctors, nurses, midwives, teachers, pre-school teachers and child-care assistants to do their dirty work for them.

The Swedish authorities chose to 'medicalize' a lot of different features of daily life and to describe various kinds of quite normal behaviour as 'pathological'. For instance, a fond and protective mother has been described as having an 'unhealthy, symbiotic relationship' with her child; it was enough to render her an 'unfit mother'. Or take, for example, the fact that it is sometimes untidy in a house where a family with four small children are living. In Swedish court proceedings, that can be developed into a theory that the mother must have some psychiatric disease and that the children's health is jeopardized when the house is untidy; because an expert, a child psychiatrist, says so.

And for the ordinary citizen such a method is almost more dangerous than using armed soldiers and police. If you were a Jew in the late nineteen-thirties in Nazi Germany, you knew very well that the Gestapo was your enemy. You knew that it was wise to avoid having anything to do with them. But in Sweden they use officials whom you, at first, believe to be your friends.

Most people believe that the midwife in the maternity welfare clinic, the doctor you consult when you or your children fall ill, your children's teachers, the social officials that poor people meet when they have to ask for some economic support at the end of the month - you believe that they are your friends, not your enemies. Initially these professional people are friendly; they seem to be really interested in you and your family's well-being.

They are so friendly and nice to you that you have confidence in them. So you confide in them concerning your family's life. You tell them that, as the mother of four small children, you are sometimes terribly tired and exhausted from all the jobs you have with the children. At that moment you can't even dream that a few years later you will have those words thrown back in your face in a court proceeding. A court in which the Swedish authorities are going to deprive you of your right to care for your own children. A court proceeding where the Swedish authorities intend to take your children into forcible care and send them to a foster-home.

And often your words have been distorted. Now, in court, it is: "Years ago Lisa Svensson told her doctor that she wasn't up to looking after her children". In a state that took the rule of law seriously, and followed court procedure, you would get the chance to cross-examine witnesses. The mother's lawyer would be given the chance to look seriously into the eyes of that doctor and ask him: "Did Mrs Svensson really utter those exact words to you? Before you answer my question, please, Doctor, remember that you are giving your evidence under oath." And than that doctor would very likely say: "Well, what she actually said was that she was very tired."

But in Sweden, cases concerning the taking of children into forcible public care are not heard in the civil courts but in the administrative courts. And there you very often are not given the chance to cross-examine witnesses and experts. The proceedings in these administrative courts seem to me to be more or less a parody of impartial court proceedings. The proceedings are a mixture of oral and written evidence and 'hearsay' evidence is permitted. From the moment that I, as the lawyer of those unhappy parents who are going to lose their child to the Swedish State, enter the courtroom, I feel that not only the social authorities, but also the court, is against me. The judge and the officials from the social welfare centre are talking to each other in a very cordial manner. It is obvious that both feel that they are a part of the same very powerful authority system.

During the last twenty or thirty years Swedish families have step by step lost the basic human right to family life and private life. In thousands of families this has lead to thousands of parents losing their children. The Swedish State has taken their children into forcible care and placed the children in foster-homes, mostly very bad foster-homes too.

The biological parents are permitted to see their children for just a few hours, just a few times a year; even then, only under close supervision by social workers and/or the foster-parents. If the children were very small when they were taken into forcible care, they will soon forget their parents. And children and parents will soon become strangers to each other.

The social workers and the foster-parents strengthen this situation. They regularly tell the foster-child what bad and dangerous people the child's biological parents are. If you tell a small child things like that over and over again the child will soon believe you.

Pretty soon the child will say that it doesn't want to see the parents anymore, because it thinks they are dangerous. And so the foster-parents and the social workers tell the biological parents that they are not permitted to see their child at all, because their child is afraid of them. To prove this, the social workers and the foster-parents take the child to a psychiatrist - who derives his or her main income from co-operation with the social authorities. It thus follows as night follows day, that the child psychiatrist will write a doctor's certificate asserting that the child's mental health will be jeopardized if the child is obliged to meet its biological parents.

All such theorising is pure nonsense. No scientifically acceptable method exists whereby psychology or psychiatry can forecast what would happen to a child's feelings in these circumstances. It is a cruel lie. The question of how often a child should be allowed to see its parents after it has been taken into forcible care, is not a medical question at all. It has been 'medicalised' simply in order to make the decision seem reasonable and 'scientific'.

If there is a dispute between the biological parents on one side and social workers and foster-parents on the other side concerning access - and very often there is such a dispute - that dispute should be resolved by an impartial court - not by a child psychiatrist. There should be extremely strong reasons for deciding to prevent parents from seeing their own child less than once every week. And there should also be extremely strong reasons for supervising children and parents when they meet each other too. How is it possible to retain personal family bonds when somebody is listening to every word children and parents say to each other? And here I am sorry to have to tell you that I have never heard of a foster-child in Sweden who was permitted to see its parents as often as once a week. In most of the cases I have encountered, the parents are permitted to see their own child for just a couple of hours once every second month or still more infrequently.

In the very few cases I have heard of where parents and children were permitted to see each other slightly more often - it is never as often as once a week - all of those cases had a happy ending. That is to say, the child moved back to its biological parents and the family was reunited.

Neither is it typical for foster-parents and the social authorities to accept that it is in the best interest of the child to move back home to its own parents. On those rare occasions when it happens, it is invariably for another reason. Namely, that the child has escaped from the foster-home and run home to its own parents. And when the child had done so a number of times, both the social workers and the police gave up fetching the child back by force to the foster-home.

Thus, it is my considered opinion that the reason the social authorities prevent parental access to their biological children is because they know the child will escape back home if it is allowed to retain the bond with its family. Social workers and foster-parents know very well that if the child is given the chance to compare the care, grounded in true love, that the child gets from its own parents; with the care the child receives in the foster-home, the child would prefer to live with its own parents.

But when those enemies of the parents, the social workers, have a doctor's certificate as proof that a the child will suffer psychologically if it sees its parents often enough to know them, the parents very seldom have any possibility of getting the court to change its decision. A real 'unhealthy symbiotic relationship' has developed where the courts are the willing slaves of expert opinion whilst the experts are dependent upon social workers for much of their livelihood.

The question at the front of your minds may be, why are social workers and foster-parents so eager to take children from their parents in this way? The answer, I am afraid, is largely financial. If the foster-parents lose the foster-child, who moves back to its own parents, the foster-parents lose the very high income they have from the foster-child. What is more, a large part of their income is tax free, which is a considerable benefit since taxes are so high in Sweden. A few years ago I calculated that in Sweden a foster-mother having three or four foster-children will have a higher income than a university professor has after tax.

As for the motives of the social workers who provide the source of this lucrative income - other people's children - for the foster-parents, their motive is also largely financial. There simply would not be anything for social workers to do if they did not constantly 'talk up' the supposed problems of 'child abuse'. Sweden has no real poverty, it has a homogenous population and very few real social problems. Practically speaking, there should be very little for social workers to do - unless they make work for themselves. This they do by means of remorseless propaganda against ordinary families. They tell us in reports and surveys how people are neglecting or ill-treating their children on a hitherto undreamed of scale. And why didn't we hear about this in times past? Because we didn't have wonderful social workers then who could uncover these abuses!

It is a simple technique and effective. Unfortunately, it is also difficult to refute except by showing up a large number of individual cases which, taken together, demonstrate beyond any doubt that the principal perpetrators of family and child-abuse in Sweden are the social workers themselves.

But now some of you might be wondering whether all this forcible taking of children into care and sending them to foster-homes affects also ordinary middle class families in Sweden? Do those children who are forcibly taken into care by the state, have parents with severe mental illness, or problems with drugs or alcohol? The answer is no.

I, and other Swedish lawyers who specialise in helping parents against the social authorities in child-care cases, have estimated that it is only in about ten percent of cases that the parents have problems with alcohol, drugs or mental illness. The remaining ninety percent are quite ordinary families who never had any such problems.

So how do they fall into the clutches of the social services? Well, in Sweden, there is special emphasis on targeting the so-called 'poor'; as well as a disproportionate number of immigrant families. The social support system for poor people has been so good for many years, that poverty is never a reason for a family being without food, clothing or a roof over their heads.

The process whereby poor, but steady and conscientious, families lose their children often starts in the following way. The father and/or the mother goes to the social welfare office to ask for some economic support. Usually they immediately get economic support. But at the same time they get a social worker into their lives. And that social worker starts mixing into the family's life, for instance asking why the wife is a housewife? Why doesn't she go to work in a factory and leave her four small children for eight or ten hours a day in the kindergarten?

Then these poor people feel hurt and humiliated. They might tell the social worker that it is none of her business. The social worker is then annoyed. She is used to having power over the people to whom the social services give economic support. She is not used to opposition from them. So there is a dispute between the poor family and the social worker. Finally the social worker takes her revenge by finding fault with the family's way of caring for their children and she arranges for the children to be taken into forcible care.

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When uncontrolled power is given to almost any person, that power will be abused. Naturally enough, social workers would like to use their power against middle class families too. The reason they mostly confine their abuse to poorer families is that there are more of them and they are more easily available, being more likely to have asked for the economic help which brought the social worker into their lives in the first place.

However, middle-class families in Sweden are coming up against the social authorities in increasing numbers. As you might know, Sweden has had a social-democratic government for most of the twentieth century. The social democrats do not like private schools, private hospitals, private kindergartens or private homes for aged people. So, for a long time, they have made different kinds of trouble for those who attempt to initiate business in any of these areas. The result is that Sweden has very few private alternatives to public care when it comes to both the young and the old, far less than in other Western European countries. That means that even the ordinary middle-class family has no choice but to turn to the social authority for a kindergarten for their pre-school child, or a home for their grandmother when old.

And so even the middle class family has to meet a social worker sometime. Every time you do that in Sweden there is a danger to your children because there is the risk of dispute. For instance, say you have a criticism to make of your child's teacher at the kindergarten she attends. Your child is unhappy there so you tell the kindergarten school's social worker. She will be annoyed because she works in a monopoly, does not have to tolerate criticism and is not used to it. She strikes back. If your daughter doesn't like the kindergarten, there must be something wrong with your daughter, not with the pre-school teacher!

And the fact - it is immediately a fact - is that if there is something wrong with your daughter, it is your fault! You haven't given her the right care and education. The social authorities start an investigation of your family. In a few days two social workers come to inspect your home. They ask you and your husband the most personal and intimate questions about your life. If you tell them it is none of their business, those social workers will strike back.

They will write a report that you and your husband do not understand what is in the best interest of children and that you refuse to co-operate with the social authorities. And in another few weeks you get a letter calling you to a meeting in the social council. They will meet and decide then that your children should be taken into forcible care and placed in foster-homes.

So, for the last few years it has not been only poor people asking me to represent them. Amongst my clients there have been teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers and managing directors who have all had their children taken into forcible care. I have taken nine cases to the European Court - more, I believe, than anyone else; and have won seven of them. However, it has had no effect on the authorities or on their policies. They have not even complied with the intention of the European Court to return the children to their parents.

So, when I tell you that the Swedish authorities deprive families of their right to rear and to educate their children as they want, you must remember that the ordinary middle class family in Sweden is living under a real threat if they do not do exactly what the authorities tell them. They risk losing their children.

But now you might say, why can't you appeal such ridiculous and wrong decisions to a court in Sweden? Well, you can appeal, but your chances of winning are very small.

If a child psychiatrist or psychologist told the truth to the court, that there is nothing wrong with a child who doesn't like school, that particular 'expert' would never again be invited to work for the social authorities. Thus the major part of their career would be terminated. Neither could they hope to make up the deficit by private practice since most of their clients would not be able to afford to engage them. Catch 22.

How about the judges then? you ask. Do they really believe all that bogus science about the damage parental love can do to a child's health? Well, the Swedish state orders judges, policemen, social workers, teachers and so on, to go to lectures and conferences where they have to listen to speeches from psychologists and child psychiatrists. They have to listen to a load of pseudo-scientific rubbish, spiced with Freud and phoney theories about normal child behaviour. Unfortunately, even quite intelligent people can be propagandised in this way by those whom they believe are better qualified to know these things.

About five thousand Swedish children are at present in forcible care in foster-homes and institutions. Add to that about ten thousand children who are taken "voluntarily" into care. That is to say, their parents are told that unless they sign papers which say they gave up their children voluntarily, they will never see them again.

Thus Sweden has about 15,000 children in care out of a population of 8 million. Britain has 40,000 in care out of a population of 58 million. If Britain took children into care at the same rate as Sweden, there would be more than 100,000 children in care and, I hope, a big fuss made.

So this taking of children into care is big business in Sweden. And for the persons who execute this care it is financially very good business too. So, lots of foster-parents, social workers and child psychiatrists would lose their income if this terrible policy came to an end. Therefore, all those people who depend financially on the system will use every legal and illegal means to allow the business to continue.

When I say 'illegal' I mean, for example, that it is not unusual in Sweden for social workers and foster-parents simply to refuse to give a child back to its parents even after a court has decided that care should cease. It sounds incredible, but it happens.

The Swedish government also uses more subtle methods to ensure that it retains an ideological power over the education of every child in Sweden. One method is the financial system in Sweden.

During the last thirty years the tax and benefit system has, step by step, been changed so that today it is more or less impossible for a family to live on just one income. That is a fact both for people with a low income, for middle class people and also for families where the husband has a rather high income. Swedish law requires that every adult is responsible for his or her own support. So a few years ago, Sweden abolished widow's pensions in the general social security insurance. Nowadays a housewife whose husband suddenly dies, is obliged to go out to work.

For some time now, the Swedish courts in divorce cases have not awarded the wife any maintenance from the ex-husband. Not even if she has been a housewife and mother for twenty years. With a very high divorce rate, who would be a housewife in such a country?

Therefore every woman in Sweden is more or less forced to have paid work outside the home - even if she is the mother of seven children. What do you do with your small children, their care and education, if you have to work away from home eight hours a day? This terrible system, that forces every woman to be away from her home and children all day, was completed around 1975.

As for what happened before 1975, the system was much the same as everywhere else in the civilised world. A woman with children was a housewife with a family that depended on the husband's income. It was husband and wife who decided their children's care and education and also the question of who should look after their children if they both decided to work outside the home. That is impossible today. They no longer has such a right and, besides, all the grandmothers who were once so much part of the family unit, are now having to work themselves, to earn a living.

Before 1975 a well-qualified person, even after tax, had a good living and could afford to employ a nanny or an au pair to take care of the children and the housework while they worked. Today in most Swedish middle class families, it is impossible to have domestic help. Taxes have been raised and there has been a levelling of all salaries. So after tax there isn't so much difference between the salary for a qualified job and the salary for an unqualified job. So, for instance, a teacher or a young doctor, paying tax, would not be able to afford the services of paid domestic help.

So neither people with low incomes nor professionals have a choice. You have to leave your small children for eight to ten hours every day in state governed care. In statistical terms, a child is in a day nursery from the age of one year till the age of six years and will encounter, on average, 275 different grown up people who care for them. As for their own parents - they are lucky if they see them for more than one or two hours a day.

By this means, everybody is delivered into the embrace of the state and its servants. By this means too, the state has succeeded where many other tyrannies have failed, in controlling the family. That is to say: power over the most important aspect of their lives has been taken out of the hands of ordinary men and women and has been invested in employees of the state.

It is a tyranny whichever way you choose to look at it. Like the forced sterilisation programme pursued by the Swedish government, unnoticed, for forty years, so also this will run and run, unopposed by a Swedish public that is too intimidated to protest.

It is in the hope of alerting educated opinion outside of Sweden that I come to speak to you today. You may not be able to do anything for us in Sweden since that is our responsibility - but, at the very least, I hope that you will recognise the simple techniques by which the state can seek to gain power over its people. In resisting such moves here, you may be able to isolate and shame Sweden into putting her own house in order.

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pdf-version:
The Folly of Sweden's State Controlled Families

On Christian Parents.net:
The Folly of Sweden's State Controlled Families

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Redd Barna Våre
24 June 2006


The Manavgat "child custody" case in Turkey –
the Norwegian authorities are the kidnappers


By Marianne Haslev Skanland, Bergen, Norway
(university professor)

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A coming court case in Turkey has been reported several times on Norwegian tv and in the press over the last couple of months. The reports here are skewed to suit official Norwegian ideology as practiced by our authorities, to the detriment of families. It is important that the people of Turkey should be informed that the Turkish family which has been hit by the actions of the Norwegian state are in good company – with several thousand Norwegian individuals and families who try to defend themselves against similar actions from the authorities here.

It is impossible to know fully from the Norwegian press reports the true facts of the case, since the Norwegian press and media are very authority-obedient in this kind of social issue. The authorities themselves only state whatever suits their purpose and regularly hinder information from the victims. I therefore do not know the name of the Turkish couple or their lawyer but would like to ask any reader in Turkey or anybody with connections there to try and pass on to them this information about the state of child protection in Norway, if possible before the case goes to court.

What can be understood from the press is as follows:

A married couple from Turkey have been settled in Stavanger in Norway with their two sons. The Norwegian social authorities (the CPS - child protection services) took their children away from them 4 years ago and placed the children in a Norwegian foster-home. The children were then about 5 and 7 years old.

The children have been prevented from keeping up their Turkish language (there is no information of any other possible language background of the parents) and have also not been brought up as Muslims, although that is what the parents want. The authorities have curtailed every contact between parents and children as much as possible. Still, the boys fortunately still have their Turkish citizenship. (The popular ideology here is for the courts to take away all parental rights to children taken by the social services, and adopt away foster children against the will of biological parents.)

The biological parents had to flee back to Turkey because the mother was pregnant again and the Norwegian social services were planning to take that child as well. They are now living in Turkey.

Then, a couple of months ago the Norwegian foster parents went to Manavgat with the two boys for a holiday. The biological parents probably had some sort of contact and knew about this, because they have tried to take the boys back. This is portrayed in the Norwegian media as the parents kidnapping children to whom they have no bonds and have no rights.

The boys, now about 9 and 11 years old, seem to have been completely brain-washed against their parents by the Norwegian foster parents and child protection authorities, and are said to be frightened of their parents.

There is evidently going to be a court case in Manavgat starting on the 3rd July. In the meantime the foster parents tried to take the boys out of Turkey but were stopped and are not permitted to do so, which is at least something to be thankful for.

The Norwegian propaganda has a free run. The social services spend large sums translating their reports into Turkish and sending their lawyer to Turkey, to hold press conferences there and present the Norwegian social services as almost saintly assistance to children and the foster parents as wonderful. The foster parents are allowed free access on tv, and say that since the boys have been with them for 4 years that is of course where they belong and that if the Turkish courts decide that the boys should be returned to their biological parents, then the foster parents will take the boys and flee to some other country. This is portrayed as heroic. Nobody in Norway is given the possibility of coming forward to say the same of the actions of the biological parents, who cannot forget their children. Their love for their children, who have not only been "placed" with them for 4 years, is condemned as criminal and their action trying to defend their family, first against the social services and then against the foster parents, is condemned as kidnapping.

Such action on the part of the authorities in a so-called welfare state like Norway – the action of taking children from their parents, paying foster parents large sums over several years, and mobilising lawyers and the press in order to stop the biological parents from having their children returned to them – I am sure must strike you as very serious and one's first thought is that the parents must be dangerous criminals, possibly child molesters. However, this is very unlikely.

I have, together with other people who have seen the actions of the Nordic child protection authorities over a number of years now, experienced that the field of social work relating to children has gone quite in the wrong direction here. There are so many thousand social workers, psychologists etc who need jobs that the majority of child "protection" cases are simply created by them and are without foundation in fact. It is an industry. The result is that we "oppositionals" have had to try and start up information about the ugly truth: the actions of the social authorities simply destroy families, with terrible results above all for the children. The suffering of the parents is also almost beyond belief. I can tell you that there are new families ringing us up every week, people in the process of being deprived of their children on the basis of false accusations, people whose children have been taken and who are condemned for trying to get them back. They have a hard time understanding that this is not some accidental error, which will quickly be rectified by talking to the social services or will at least be quashed in court.

There are many research reports about the ill effects of the child protection industry internationally, and they all show the same negative results for children deprived of their real families – they quite often experience it as a total destruction of their childhood and even of the rest of their lives, not to mention how it affects the children that the authorities have also destroyed the lives of the parents. The social personnel in power and the political authorities close their eyes entirely to this and continue their vilification of parents. They also try to stop any information that does not suit their book, and if possible punish and ostracise those who raise their voice against the destruction of families.

I know personally a number of parents, and some children, who have been victims of such family destruction. I have also functioned as an expert witness in court, both here and in Sweden, for parents desperately trying to get their children back from the authorities, and have read all documents including court judgments in many dozen other cases as well. I have to say that it is the rule, not the exception, that the authorities come up with unfounded accusations about parents and children, and are permitted by the courts to do so. The same sort of development is taking place in other countries as well, but the Nordic countries are probably somewhat extreme. My assessment is that the reason is the affluence here, which makes it possible for the authorities to spend millions on wholely destructive actions against families instead of on real social work and assistance to the aged, the sick and the poor. The social services are extra active against families of non-Nordic origin.

In this particular case, according to newspaper reports the husband has been involved in some narcotics business and is also said to be violent. One cannot at all be sure of the truth or seriousness of such accusations against parents at all, they are found in every child protection case, and can often be proven to be false – but the children are taken nevertheless. The father has said that his dealings with drugs started when their children were taken from them. Nothing is said about the mother in the case but the regular thing for the social authorities is that they claim that parents are "unsuited". As regards all the actions of the Norwegian authorities and foster parents against the parents in this case, they are exactly of the type that we see in practically every case.

I can tell you that we have cases here of parents – unfortunately few – who see the danger early enough, and take their children and flee abroad. The Norwegian authorities pursue them even abroad if they can, turn up with "impressive court verdicts" and try to have children and parents extradited, the parents being taken to court for prison sentences.

There was a newspaper interview with the Norwegian lawyer of the biological mother a couple of days ago. Unfortunately she seems completely subservient to the usual official Norwegian views, so what good she can do for her client is difficult to understand. I can only hope that they have a Turkish lawyer who is more firm, more ethical, and less frightened, so that the biological parents can have their children restored to them.

I should very much have liked some information about the experiences of Norwegian victims of the child protection industry to be passed on to the Turkish public and at least to the Turkish lawyer of this couple, before the court case starts. There are a couple of Nordic web sites which have information in English (and some in French and German):

http://nkmr.org
http://www.barnasrett.no

Especially the first of these has a very wide range of articles in English. Very serious consideration should be given to the articles by Siv Westerberg, the Swedish lawyer who has been the most active in taking such cases against Sweden to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. I know of the Kurd cases against Turkey in Strasbourg, but I hope that any "national" misgivings people in Turkey might have on that count would not prevent them from looking impartially at the child protection cases – in which our Nordic authorities do not in fact protect children at all.

If this information can reach anybody in Turkey and perhaps do a little to help this Turkish couple and their children, who have without any doubt been very harmfully treated by the Norwegian social authorities, we should be very grateful. Information, publicity, warning about the child protection industry also helps new potential victims to be forewarned.

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Redd Barna Våre
9 June, 2006


Time wasting by a social worker

From the files of the NCRO

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The National Child Rescue Organisation (NCRO) in Britain was run by Gerry Howard, now unfortunately deceased. the NCRO was very active in trying to help families affected by the Child Protective Services interfering in the family and taking children into care.

In the 1990s, the NCRO had a good web site which unfortunately does not exist any longer. However, Gerry Howard wanted the information from the website spread as widely as possible, and gave organisations and people in other countries struggling with the same problems, full permission to republish articles from NCRO's website.

Marianne Haslev Skånland

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BEYOND BELIEF!

Mrs Humphries (we have changed her name for obvious reasons) is a divorced lady with three children, two daughters ages 16 and 12 and a boy of 9.

At the age of 46, Mrs Humphries married a much younger man of 24 and he then moved in with the family. About ten months later, Mrs Humphries returns home unexpectedly to discover her young husband in bed with her 16 year old daughter. She immediately has him removed from the house.

Within two or three days, Mrs Humphries confides in her friend who is a schoolteacher and, within hours, she finds a social worker knocking upon her door. She invites him in, makes him a cup of coffee and tells him what has happened.

With this, the social worker says he will have to return to "talk the two younger children through the experience". Mrs Humphries objects strongly on the grounds that the other children were not aware and should not be told. The social worker, a man in his fifties, insists. It is at this point that Mrs Humphries asks the National Child Rescue Organisation to become involved.

An NCRO investigator arranges to be at the house the next time the social worker calls. The two men meet and the resulting conversation goes like this:

NCRO INVESTIGATOR: "What are your intentions?"

SOCIAL WORKER: "I have to talk the children through the experience."

NCRO INV: "But they don't know about it. Why tell them?"

SOCIAL W: "They have to know their sister was sexually abused and that the same thing could happen to them."

NCRO INV: "But their sister wasn't sexually abused - she was a willing partner above the age of consent. What's more, it can't happen to the other children because the man is no longer living in the house."

SOCIAL W: "Well! That's what I've got to do! That's the way we do things."

NCRO INV: "So how long will all this take?"

SOCIAL W: "I'll have to visit once a week until they get to know me as Uncle George - that way I'll know I have their confidence. Then I'll have to break it gently to them and then I'll have to talk them through it so they won't worry about it!"

NCRO INV: "So how long overall?"

SOCIAL W: "Could be a couple of years."

NCRO INV: "So you are telling me that you are going to call at this house once a week to tell two young children something they don't need to know ... and then teach them how not to worry about it? And you're willing to call at this house for two years if you have to?"

SOCIAL W: "As I said, that's the way we do things."

As a result of this conversation, NCRO wrote to the approriate director of social services asking him to intervene. He did and by telephone thanked NCRO for drawing this "unbelievable" matter to his attention. The social worker was not seen again at the Humphries house.

There is a very good possibility that had NCRO not brought this case to the attention of the director, one social worker would have wasted 200 hours or more – actually doing a lot of damage to two young children. This is a typical way many social workers invent work that doesn't really exist instead of spending their time giving down-to-earth, practical assistance to families who are really in need of help.

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