*
16 March 2012
The Child Protection Service (CPS) – unfortunately the cause of grievous harm
Part 2: Content, dimensions, causes and mechanisms of CPS activities
By Marianne Haslev Skånland
***
The original version of this article in Norwegian was first published in Liberal, volume 4 no 3 of November 2006, the periodical of Det Liberale Folkepartiet (DLF) ('Classical Liberal Party of Norway') . It has later been reprinted on some different websites.
Minor revisions and additions have been made in this English translation. Some of the cases described have had further developments after 2006; these, however, have not been incorporated in the article.
Available English translations have been substituted for some of the original references.
***
Details from some child protection cases
a)
In 1989 a young mother asked the Office of Social Welfare / Child Protection Service (CPS) of central Bergen to help her rent a flat and help with money for this. She had to get away from a co-habitant partner who was violent and harmed her and her twelve year old son. The CPS refused help. It is perhaps hard to blame the representatives of society for refusing; if everyone who had children were entitled to demand a place to live and a livelihood for free, paid by the municipality or the state, the result for society would be rather obvious. But at the same time the CPS wanted her to get psychological treatment for her 'problems' and they were eager to pay for this. The young mother said: "No thank you, I don't need that, I am perfectly well." She decided that she would have to tackle her practical problems some other way.
After a number of complications it is demanded of her that she hand over her son to the CPS. To be separated is as far as possible from any benefit to mother and son. Besides, they have now understood how destructive the CPS is. They board the train to Oslo to flee. But they are caught by CPS and police, are taken by force, the son is forced to the ground and a policeman steps on him and causes a back-injury (permanent). He is locked up in a psychiatric ward to prevent him from fleeing home to his mother. After a time he is sent to the institution Bønesskogen children's home.
At home with his mother he has gone to school in a normal way, while during the months he spends at the children's home, he goes to school 4 days altogether. The personnel try to bribe him with 1500 crowns (today ≈ EUR 200) to go to school. Most of the time he is in the company of criminals and drug addicts in the Nygård park but he also goes up into the mountain above Bergen and tries to sleep out of doors. He is away from the children's home during the night without the personnel bothering to look for him. At last he manages to flee to his mother in Oslo and they live under cover for a while. In a court case about possibly letting him return to his mother officially, the personnel from the children's home say that they love him so deeply that he must live with them, and the CPS claims that an important reason why they had to transfer the care to themselves and place him at the children's home was to make sure that he goes to school. However, the CPS gives up trying to exercise power over him, though they still hold the mother's care to be very detrimental to him and their own to be very good. They also claim that the mother is a drug addict. It is true that she has smoked hashish a few times, but nothing else.
These are the early phases of Adele Johansen's child protection case, for its treatment of which the state of Norway was in 1996 found to have violated human rights at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (cf 12, 13a and b, 14). The case is reasonably well-known, although many newspaper articles are wrong on several points. This often happens in CPS cases and is normally the result of the CPS having steered the case into an unlikely, self-contradictory and tangled muddle.
The continuation of the Johansen case is utterly grotesque. When the son was taken, Adele was pregnant with a new child. The CPS wanted to get hold of this child too. Cut off from her son, she had gone to Oslo to give birth there, in the belief that only Bergen CPS and their allies were especially destructive. Røa CPS in Oslo, however, takes her new-born daughter Signe Malene from her at the hospital after just a few days. They say that Adele is in a dismal condition and incapable of taking care of her daughter, and they are of the opinion that she suffers from serious psychiatric illness. (Lying in hospital she knew that her son was suffering badly and was held with force; likewise she knew that they were coming very soon to take her daughter also. In such circumstances, would it have been normal not to feel helpless and miserable?)
The CPS also claimed that it was proven 'failure to care' that she had not had pregnancy-checkups and that the baby was abnormally small. (In the last court case in 1999-2001 her new lawyer brought as witnesses two doctors who had been involved in the case at Ullevål hospital. They not only stated, but showed in detail that everything the CPS had maintained about her was straight lies. Baby Signe Malene had been completely normal in relation to her own physique and in relation to other women in her family and their babies. Signe Malene had in fact been exactly as big as Adele's son had been at birth. Adele had experience from her first pregnancy, had known perfectly well what was required for the second, and had not needed any further check-ups. Nor was she a psychiatric case, she was completely normal despite the strains she had been subjected to.)
Further developments in the case were of the same kind and so was the treatment of Adele Johansen by the authorities through the subsequent years, with the dirtiest thinkable arguments including old and new lies and completely unwarranted stigmatising and harm to Adele and her other children. The authorities continued to bring in even more of their favourite psychologists, having already played out several of this kind against her. In one of the cases she had been threatened by the judge in court, saying that if she continued trying to make her case public, he would see to it that she was given 3 years in jail.
When the human rights Commission in Strasbourg had found Norway guilty of violating human rights, they in 1994 tried to negotiate a settlement (a regular procedure on the part of Strasbourg). The Norwegian government's offer to Adele Johansen was a sum of money, about NOK 300,000 though they claimed the usual sum was 200,000 and would not promise any particular sum, as a compensation for having robbed her of her daughter. Their condition was that in addition to not taking the case to the Court, she should shut up about the case forever. They did not offer her any reunion, not even visitation rights or the right to know where her daughter was. When the case had been up before the Court in August 1996, Adele said in an interview to the newspaper VG: "Would you have sold your child for 300,000 crowns?" (27). The state later denied having made such an offer.
In another, late round in court, one of the arguments is that Adele now has several children and is badly off, while the foster parents, who are very well off, can offer Signe Malene better opportunities. In yet another round, the municipality of Oslo tried to get social worker Kari Killén, cf (15, 16), appointed as one of the lay judges.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Child Protection Service has, through the consequences of their actions, destroyed the family's life. In the late rounds of court cases up to 2001, Oslo municipality managed to force through the adopting away of Signe Malene. This was done in spite of what Carl August Fleischer, professor of international law, as one of Adele Johansen's expert witnesses in court made clear was the implication of the Strasbourg judgment: When the ECtHR has found that taking away her parental responsibility and cutting off her contact with her daughter in order to make the daughter available for adoption was a violation of human rights, then the termination of parental responsibility is not valid and Adele still has the parental responsibility for her daughter. Signe Malene was also adopted away in spite of what about 10 expert witnesses for her in court could show: that the ideology of the state about care failure, attachment and adoption is completely contrary to the facts revealed by research.
The judgment from the European Court of Human Rights had rather upset our authorities, of course. They did what they usually do: no attempt to change legislation, judicial procedure and administrative process to conform to the human rights convention (17), but a lot of energy spent on denying, explaining away everything and shuffling out of it. Press releases were produced and informational meetings held for the child professions, in which our authorities reassured brave Norwegians that the judgment did not 'really' condemn Norway to any degree, that the judicial process 'had not been condemned', that what had happened 'would never have happened today', since in 1992/93 we had a new law of child protection, introducing the county social boards which were a very good safeguard. However, the ECtHR does to some extent follow up on what the countries do to change legislation, procedures etc relevant to cases in which they have been found guilty of violating human rights. As far as I understand, Norway has not said anything to the ECtHR about the violation being due to anything in our legislation but just an unfortunate slip in the handling of this particular case. To the ECtHR our authorities have apparently not said a word about the new law of child protection making it impossible to commit similar violations, for if they had, then I suppose Strasbourg would have asked where in the new law this was set out. Norway would then be without an answer; the new law in 1992/93 is no improvement, only a further bureaucratisation opening up for added invasion by 'expert' psychologists and more layers of rubber-stamping and spinning out of the whole process, void of any improvement in the legal protection or of safeguards for families.
b)
A three year old boy has been taken by force from his home with his mother and grandmother, a home where his life has been in every way good. He is placed in a CPS-approved foster home. Three months elapse before his mother and grandmother are allowed to meet him. When at last there is a meeting, the foster mother holds the boy firmly and directs his every movement. She hangs over them, saying to the boy's mother: "I am the one he is attached to now." The boy wants to go home with his mother and grandmother. The foster mother and the CPS say that his desperation when he is not allowed to go with them is caused by his mother and grandmother having damaged him and neglected him before he was taken by the CPS. (Foster parents are taught by the CPS to thoroughly harass their foster children's biological family. This is a cornerstone in the 'guidance' given foster people by the CPS.)
At home with his family he has been lively and happy and he is very intelligent. After he has been in the foster home some months, the CPS claims he is very retarded and that he could hardly walk or talk when he arrived in the foster home. This, they hold, is due to 'lack of stimulation' and other 'care failure' on the part of the biological family. The CPS plans comprehensive analysis, evaluation and assistance.
Later the boy tears the wall-paper in his room to shreds, and he cannot have a sheet on his bed, because 4 years old he has tried to hang himself and to strangulate himself in his sheet. We should note: These are not accusations from the biological family. They are facts related by the foster mother, in a court case brought by the biological family about visitation rights. The foster mother gives these details as examples of how impossible he is and says it stems from damage inflicted on him by the biological family. The foster mother does not want any visitation at all, because the boy is very difficult each time his mother and grandmother have been to see him. (What child would not be, being allowed to meet its family for a short while and then having to part once more? It is tantamount to having a glimpse of paradise when the road back to it is blocked by foster parents acting as jailers. – After 4 years this boy still longs for his family just as strongly as when he was taken away from them.) The foster parents furthermore say that the boy is such a burden that they must be relieved of him at intervals. This is paid for by the CPS, so the boy is often sent somewhere else while the foster family takes a holiday from him. These are foster parents highly valued by the CPS and everything is done to cough up new accusations about the dangerous and evil qualities of the boy's biological family and see to it that he is not allowed to go home.
c)
A mother does not want her 4 year old daughter to be in kindergarten for more than half time every day. The kindergarten decides that the girl is to be with them full day; she is too 'dependent' on her mother and is to be liberated. When the mother chooses instead to take her daughter out of the kindergarten, the kindergarten personnel tell her that if so, they will notify the CPS about her failure to care and recommend forced transfer of care to the CPS (18). The case has been taken up in a discussion program on tv.
d)
A father whose wife dies, is left with three small children. He has difficulties taking care of everything alone, both the practical tasks and the economy, so he asks for a home-helper. No, the CPS will not give him any help, they remove his children by force. The foster families of these children receive very liberal remuneration for extra this and that. The father says to the CPS: "Why on earth do you not give me just a fraction of this and let the children stay at home with me?" Their angry and hostile reply is: "Oh, so you don't think it a good thing that we spend money on your children?"
Illness and handicap
The CPS is especially vicious towards sick or handicapped children and sick or handicapped parents.
e)
In 1994 a daughter is born to a couple in the Bergen area. Not many hours after the birth, the mother has a strong brain haemorrhage and for a long time her life is hanging by a thread. In this situation the local CPS should of course come to her husband's aid, change and wash and look after the baby for him in his home and assist him at the hospital, so that he could be with his wife as much as possible without worrying how the baby was faring. What happens is instead this: "He felt overwhelmed by sorrow and desperation. At the same time Arne had to prove to the CPS that he could have the parental responsibility for his newborn daughter. 'Do you really feel any joy about her?' The question was put to him by a social worker, who wanted to investigate his feelings for his daughter. At this time he did not know if his wife was going to survive; Ingeborg was literally on her deathbed. At the same time he had to deal with a social worker who did not think he showed enough pleasure over the child." (translation from the newspaper article (19). The translation is mine.) Probably the social worker wanted him not to demonstrate any feeling for his daughter. That would be a strong argument for the CPS to demand to take the child over and babies are popular with the CPS and their foster parents (20).
f)
Two sons are born to a mother, in April 1999 and December 2000, both of them born prematurely. Premature children are at birth not fully developed in every way and can therefore be more liable to illness and can have a slower development than usual. It was so in this case. One son has a lung which ruptures and a hernia, so he has to be operated on as a baby. He also has trouble with both legs. His mother does not think the hospital takes sufficient notice of partly acute dangers. (The hospital has later been criticised by the medical supervisory authorities for their lack of treatment of the boy.) The mother criticises the hospital. Instead of taking care of the boy's medical needs, the hospital directs attacks at her. She 'is to learn the role of a parent'. They order her to change and care for the child herself, and she is denied the right to 'leave of absence' to go outside the hospital at all.
Later the mother moves back to her home district. The hospital reports to the CPS where she is now living that she is a bad mother, and the CPS attacks her. One of her sons is to be sent to kindergarten, the sick son is by force to be placed every day with a day-carer, a local woman who gets paid for this. Both are to be observed and assessed by the CPS psychologists. Pediatricians (at a different hospital) have instructed the mother and the grandparents about the condition of the sick boy. For one thing, exposing him to cold weather can be life-threatening, so he should not be outside at minus 5 degrees or colder. The day-carer will not listen to this, she drags him around on a kick-sled in all kinds of weather and strong wind in wintertime. When the boy's mother and grandparents tell the CPS that they must stop this, the CPS brushes them aside and calls them hysterical. The boy is seriously ill several times and nobody but the family tries to do anything about it.
The CPS also ignores the boy's legs, and only when the family wins through with their complaint about this higher up in the health services, the CPS comes bustling around officiously to take care of it. Then the mother is told to accompany her son to some special treatment he needs. She has started on an education and wants to let the grandmother accompany the boy. But oh no, the CPS claims that this proves she does not understand her son's needs and places her own needs before his. They dictate to her that she is to break off her education, the grandmother is not allowed to take the children instead of her.
The CPS also decides that the mother is to be observed in her home in order to investigate her ability to give care. She is taken to be the cause of the somewhat slow development of the children and to be harmful for them. The 'observer' arrives in the home, plants herself in a chair in the sitting-room with a writing pad and pencil, and sits there for 8 hours every day, writing down everything the mother says and does. Or rather: it is the CPS version of what the mother says and does. ((21) and (22) describe a parallell 'investigation' of parents on the island of Averøy, the mother suffering from epilepsy and the expressed intention of the CPS being to take their daughter. They pushed the mother quite literally to the edge of death. Nothing has been done afterwards to get the family restitution and compensation or to bring to the criminal court the dangerous perpetrators.) I do not believe it takes too much of an imagination on the part of my readers to understand what a terrible strain it is to have one's tormentors carry out this kind of torture and all the time with a threat of their taking one's children hanging over one? Likewise, we can understand what it is like for children to be followed around and bothered by psychologists and kindergarten teachers who all the time look and sniff around for 'faults'?
Then the CPS says that everything is wrong with the home and the mother, the children are not happy and do not have the 'right development'. They start a case of forced taking into public care. The family understands how bad the CPS is and goes into action. Mother and children go to Spain and establish themselves there. The CPS wants them brought home by force, alternatively they want to run the case before the county social board without the mother and have a verdict of forcible bringing home, or they want all the records and reports and other papers called 'documentation', more than a thousand pages, translated into Spanish and then demand either that the family is extradited or that Spanish CPS takes the children into care. The lawyer of the municipality, hired from a private lawfirm, writes one of the dirtiest written pleadings I can remember having seen, in which he characterises the flight from Norway as a proof of irresponsibility coming 'in addition to the serious care failure' which he holds has already been proven. However, the county social board, against intense pressure from the municipality, dismisses the case, since there is no legal basis for continuing. (In other cases Norwegian authorities have, at the request of the CPS, carried out illegal actions against Norwegian families abroad and pressured or tricked them into returning to Norway.)
The family is now doing very well, they have a quite different, good life and both children are very lively and healthy. The children are doing fine in a Spanish shool.
On a general basis, Norwegian authorities wish to 'establish' Norwegian CPS abroad as well as at home. They come up with suggestions that families with children who wish to go abroad should have to be assessed by the CPS first and that the police should take the passports away from people who are under 'investigation' by the CPS.
g)
Around year 2003: A school-boy has his back hurt in the physical education class, in a sort of wrestling match arranged by the teacher. The boy has to go to hospital and is unwell for a long time. The teacher will not listen to the parents who say that the boy cannot take further part in that kind of exercise. The parents therefore go to the head master and ask him to put the teacher in his place. Instead, the head master reports the parents to the CPS saying they are impossible and threatening. The CPS writes in a letter that the parents are to come to a meeting with them two days later, and that they intend to start a case of investigation. The parents answer that they can come but not the next day, since they are both working. The CPS immediately gets angry and hostile and says the parents have to come. By and by they 'are allowed' to come a few days later.
The family during a couple of days manages to find out what others who have been attacked by the CPS can tell them. They are immigrants and understand that the only solution is for the wife and son to go back to their poor and war-ridden country right away, while the husband for a while continues to work here and wind up their life here. With his family safely gone, the husband rings the CPS and tells them that a meeting is no longer of any interest since the family have moved. The CPS gets openly angry and suggests that this is illegal. Later they write to the father, saying in a letter as mild as milk that they know that many are afraid of the CPS but that there is no reason to be. They hope that the family will return and the boy will at any time be welcomed back by the school. Probably the family very wisely does nothing of the sort. (If a child has been taken into care by the CPS, there is little hope of it ever being allowed back to its parents, even if it holds foreign citizenship and ties (23, 24).)
h)
Around 1996 I was invited to give a talk about the CPS to an association for parents of children more or less diagnosed with ADHD or similar conditions. In the interval I asked how many families there had had the experience of negative behaviour, suspicion or direct obstruction on the part of the CPS. The answer turned out to be 35 % of the families. In other words: In a group of parents who were very concerned for their children and who made a strong, sustained and important effort to help their children, a third of the member families report that the CPS works against them.
Attachment theory and other ideas
My readers should not trust to the cases described above, or the elements in them, being special or unusual. I have on the contrary had difficulties, for the purpose of this article, choosing among many similar cases which to include to illustrate different points the best. CPS cases are rich in unbelievable, revolting details about all sorts of curiosities cooked up by the CPS and their helpers but the main trends are boringly predictable from one case to the next: Everything which parents want in the way of sensible, down-to-earth things for their children the CPS tries to work against or block: – A single mother works in an institutional kitchen, she likes it and wants to train as a cook. The CPS tries to hinder it. Some parents in CPS search-light are relatively alone. The CPS uses this against them, they 'lack a network'. Others can mobilise a large extended family as willing helpers. The CPS forces the extended family out. In the Averøy island case (cf above), the CPS made it an issue that the child turned its head 'the wrong way' when the father bathed her ((21) p 106). They also forbade the grandmother to help her daughter or the baby in the home. The CPS wants one thing only: to get children away from parents. There must be some explanation for this uniformity.
Yes, there is. The actions of the CPS are based on their education and ideology. It is maintained through the fact that it is an industry of many billions of crowns being spent each year, with very many interested parties.
The major source of the reasons they give for why they act as they do, is found in psychological speculations. Psychology fashions change quite often and the speculative trends suit social units best, being so unclear and incapable of verification that they can easily escape from serious criticism and turn up again in new costume. These trends have, in other words, very limited scientific standing or none at all. Freudianism is central, preferably in new versions called 'psychodynamic method'. The scientific analysis of Freud has been comprehensive and none of his ideas have been able to survive criticism. This has not precluded their popularity in clinical psychology and social work, precisely because this allows the psychologist to state just about anything about the person being 'analysed' without the 'analyser' having to face any kind of investigation. It also opens up for innumerable new variants of speculations called 'theory'. As a result, we see many victims of the CPS being branded with psycho-babble diagnoses with no basis in reality, diagnoses against which the 'diagnosed' are helpless.
'Attachment theory' is further speculative guesswork dominating today's child protection. It is based partly on the studies of Konrad Lorenz, but what is current in popular child psychology stems first and foremost from John Bowlby (25), a psychoanalytical disciple who in my view was also a well-meaning doctor combining advice on an everyday common sense basis with high-flying speculations. The theory's hypotheses of how attachment is created and how it functions have not found support in empirical studies. It is not difficult to find self-contradictory passages in his writings. A fundamental assumption is that 'attachment' between individuals is created mechanically by stimulus-response mechanisms, through being together, being dependent on each other, taking on 'roles' and functioning as 'role models', when these relations are judged to have a particular measure of success. The idea stems from e.g animal behaviour in species where mother and offspring see and smell each other directly after birth, and where this typical post-natal behaviour of seeking sight and smell stimuli, if it takes place between a newly born and a totally unrelated individual, can lead to the unrelated adult being imprinted on the young as its 'mother'.
But, first of all, studies of animals nevertheless show that there is a high degree of individual ties own mother-own child; mistaken identification of the mother as well as adoptions are fairly rare mistakes, imperfect matchings, not the norm. Probably ritualistic actions like mother and offspring looking at each other, hearing each other's voices, smelling each other right after birth, do not create attachment but confirm it, making sure that those who belong together are supported in their understanding of who it is they should stick with. The evolutionary function of this is easily seen ((7) paragraph 8). In humans too, children can differentiate their mother's voice from those of others; they have heard her voice already before birth. They know her heartbeat and her smell and they also acquire a sense of belonging together with the father quite early. This would hardly have been the state of affairs if it was biologically irrelevant which children grew up with which adults (8). Secondly, human beings have language, which is not like a ritual available only in the situation of birth but makes it possible to communicate at any time about who belongs with whom.
The reigning ideas of attachment practiced by the CPS and clinical psychology have no room for any understanding of this. Maternity nurses in hospitals who are schooled in the same psychological ideology make it a big issue that mothers giving birth should look into their baby's eyes and make the baby look at her directly after it is born, and they claim that otherwise mother and child 'will not be attached' to each other. CPS workers believe that no attachment exists in 'dysfunctional families', for instance between parents and children who are in some conflict, or when parents are too poor to be able to provide attractive assets and surroundings, or when parents and children have been separated for a long period. The CPS holds that family ties can be eradicated easily and that such ties can equally easily be prevented from being created, e.g by preventing parents and children from embracing during those visits the CPS are not able to stop altogether. It does not necessarily follow logically, but the CPS anyway believes that a child can easily 'attach itself to new caregivers', viz foster parents, by being forced to live with these persons.
Attachment theory, freudianism and a lot of other speculative thoughts in CPS circles are naïve, primitive behaviorism, a deterministic and mechanistic belief in the sole importance of the environment. Practitioners carrying out these ideas are not aware of this and do not know of the criticism which such beliefs in the social sciences have long since been met with. Being child and parent is not socially constructed role-play. The correlation between illness, criminal record, general asociality on the one hand, and having been taken away from one's own parents on the other, is striking and shows in all studies of such phenomena (26). The sufferings and the behaviour and actions of parents and children if they are forced apart show clearly that attachment theory is a cul-de-sac. It cannot explain why both adopteds and foster children in large numbers intensely seek to go back to their own families. It is obviously not enough to 'know about one's roots', one wants to live near them, have contact and dialogue with them. The instinct of belonging together has evolved through evolution and manifests itself through very deep feelings and reactions. While pair relationships - the closest relationship we know of between unrelated people - are dissolved in large numbers and need strong sanctions and concrete, common interest to last, cases of relationships parent-child in which these part company with an equal degree of enmity or indifference towards each other are so rare as to be practically non-existent in comparison. Child protection workers, caught in their own belief in the importance of the environment, the milieu, are blind towards the importance of growing up in one's own biological milieu.
A newspaper notice some years ago told the story of four Polish firemen having been arrested. There were difficult times in Poland and they had been afraid of being laid off from work. To prevent this, they had started fires, which they then turned out to fight, this demonstrating how necessary they were. – Because the ever more expansive measures of the CPS go in the wrong direction and are not based on ever more deficient parents, they cost ever more, without corresponding results (26). Social workers of the CPS are therefore in an analogous situation to the one of the four Poles: The money they spend maintains their own income and that of their allied professions, while causing great damage to the population they should serve. They cannot turn back now, however. That would be tantamount to admitting that everything has been wrong and that they are to blame for the results of their earlier actions. Politicians are equally afraid of saying no to the continued budget drain and face accusations of not wanting to protect children. Neither politicians nor CPS workers seek insight into the real situation. Therefore, they have not faced the fact that actually we do not have any child protection in Norway. The unit of that name is busy putting into practice their untrustworthy theories and precisely for that reason it does not act adequately in cases of real child abuse. Because of their ideology the professions involved are blind to the widespread abuse and neglect of children taking place in foster homes and institutions. The answer to people who say "But we must have a child protection service" is therefore that the industry passing under that name today causes so serious damage that our population would perhaps be better served by even having no child protection service at all – which is saying quite a lot.
*
Marianne Haslev Skånland:
The Child Protection Service (CPS) – unfortunately the cause of grievous harm
Part 1: First encounters with the system and the court procedures
24 September 2012
References
The references include the first 11 references in part 1 of the article.
(1) Lennart Hane (red) (1993): Rättvisan och psykologin – en studie över psykologins makt i domstolarna [Justice and psychology – a study of the power of psychology in the courts].
Stockholm: Contra. ISBN 91-86092-29-4
(2) Marianne Haslev Skånland (2006/1995): "Alexander Aminoff's linguistic proficiency in childhood. An analysis of claims made by the Swedish social services in connection with the forcible removal of him from his mother".
MHS: home page
(3) Samfunnsmagasinet: "Barnehjemskandalen" (artikkelsamling) [The Social Magazine: The scandal of the 'children's home' (Norway) (collection of articles)].
Previously found as: http://www.sfm.no/Barnehjemskandalen.htm
(4) Samhällets styvbarn (nettsted) [The stepchildren of society (Sweden) (website)].
(5) Radio Godhavn (nettsted) [Radio Good Haven (Denmark) (website)].
(6) Siv Westerberg (1995/2006): "Child Prisons? In Sweden?".
Forum.r-b-v 2006
(7) Marianne Haslev Skånland (2005): "Child abuse which the child protection authorities do not want to know about – 2: Violence against step-children compared to genetic children – Daly & Wilson's research".
MHS: home page
(8) Sverre Kvilhaug (2006): Atskillelse barn og foreldre [Separation children and parents].
Isdalstø: Cita. ISBN 82-303-0532-3.
(9) Joar Tranøy (2004): "Rett informasjon? Om bruk av tilgjengelig informasjon i sakkyndighetsarbeid" [Correct information? About the use of available information in expert assessment work].
BarnasRett 2004
(10) Åge Simonsen (2003/1996): Håndbok for klientutvalg og barnevernsofre, kapittel 4: "Barnevernets behandling og vurderinger" [Handbook for client boards and victims of child protection, ch. 4: Treatment and assessments made by the Child Protection Agency].
BarnasRett 2003
(11) "Liv Wiborg Karlsen, leder av Horten Barneverntjeneste" (oversikt over sakskompleks og bl.a brevskriving til Universitetet i Bergen) [Liv Wiborg Karlsen, leader of Horten Child Protection Agency (overview of case complex and e.g letter written to The University of Bergen)].
Likestilling.com 2004
(12) The European Court of Human Rights: Johansen v. Norway, judgment of 7 August 1996.
NKMR 1996
Also: http://www.echr.coe.int/echr
(13a) Lennart Sjöberg (2002): "Tvangsadoption? Psykologer om en mors olämplighet, och om barnets 'anknytning'. Yttrande till Borgarting Lagmannsrett, Oslo, september 2001 (Saken Adele Johansen og hennes datter Signe Marlene f. 1989)" [Forced adoption? Psychologists about a mother's unsuitability and about the 'attachment' of the child. The case of Adele Johansen and her daughter Signe Malene born 1989].
BarnasRett 2001/2008
(13b) Lennart Sjöberg (2002): "Adele Johansen vs Norway: A mother fighting for her child".
NKMR 2002
(14) Adele Johansen & Elin Brodin (1991): Papirdukker. Om barnevern og barnevold [Paper dolls. Of child protection and child violence]. Oslo: Aschehoug. ISBN 82-03-16597-4
(15) Marianne Haslev Skånland (2012): "The assessments made by the Norwegian child protection service (CPS)".
MHS: home page
(16) "Kari Killén – sentral leverandør av lærebøker og foredrag til de barne'faglige' profesjonene" (artikkelsamling) [Kari Killén - sentral producer of textbooks and lectures for the professions of child 'experts' (collection of articles)].
BarnasRett -2009
(17) Marianne Haslev Skånland (2004b): "Human Rights in Norway – as Low as they can Go".
MHS: home page
(18) Bernt Blomquist (1996): "For god mor for Marie" [Too good a mother for Marie]. Dagbladet 07.02.96
(19) Hilde Heian (1996): "Håpet om helbredelse" [The hope of regaining health]. Bergens Tidende 13.10.96
(20) Frank Haugsbø (1996): "Barnevernet lovet bort baby" [The CPS promised away a baby]. VG 19.03.96
(21) John Hollen (2005): Formynderterror. Historien om en barnevernsak [Terror from the authorities. The story of a CPS case]. ISBN: 82-92400-16-8. Communicatio Forlag
(22) "Averøy-saken" (artikkelsamling) [The Averøy case (collection of articles)].
BarnasRett 2004-2006
(23) "Får ikke ta datter med hjem til Bosnia" [Is not allowed to take daughter home to Bosnia]. NTB, Aftenposten 25.03.98
(24) "Foreldre forsøkte å ta tilbake sønnene sine. Stavanger/Tyrkia-saken" (artikkelsamling) [Parents tried to take their sons back. The Stavanger/Turkey case].
BarnasRett, 2006-2009
(25) John Bowlby (1965): Child Care and the Growth of Love. 2nd edition. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-013458-1
(26) Marianne Haslev Skånland (2004c): "Kommuneøkonomi og barnevern" [Municipal finances and child protection].
BarnasRett 2004
(27) Tore Bollingmo (1996): "Ville kjøpe seg fri fra barnestrid" [Wanted to buy themselves out of child conflict]. VG, 09.08.96
VG (1996a): "Staten tilbød Adele 300 000 kroner for å trekke saken" [The state offered Adele NOK 300,000 if she would withdraw the case]. VG, 09.08.96
VG (1996b): "Psykolog kom på besøk" [Visited by psychologist]. VG, 09.08.96
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