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18 May 2018
Updated 26 May 2018
Crime and assessments in child protection circles in Norway
– A court case, comparisons, and implications
By Jan Simonsen and Marianne Haslev Skånland
••••••••
A shorter version of this article by the same authors, "A case exposing the double standards of Norway's CPS", was published on 12 May 2018 in Sunday Guardian in India, and on the websites SaveYourChildren and MH Skånland's home page on 14 May 2018. A summary report by Jan Simonsen, Top child psychiatrist and child protection expert convicted for child abuse, was published on 4 May 2018.
The court judgment of the case, also containing testimony, referred to in the article is publicly available and states explicitly: "No limitations on the permission for re-publishing / public rendering". The judgment is expected to be published on the official website Lovdata.no (Legal Data) soon.
The translations into English are by the authors.
Jan Simonsen is a Norwegian journalist who was also for 16 years an MP in the Norwegian parliament Stortinget. He has been a member of the Council of Europe's Committee for Legal Affairs and Human Rights, and for 8 years a member of Stortinget's Justice Committee.
Marianne Haslev Skånland is a professor emeritus of linguistics. She has worked with analysis and criticism of science in the areas of linguistics, psychology and child protection, and has functioned as an expert witness in some child protection court cases in Norway and in Sweden, criticising the psycho-social sector's misunderstandings concerning child language and biology.
••••••••
The criminal proceedings and sentencing of a child protection expert
A top expert in Norwegian child protection, 56 year-old child psychiatrist Jo Erik Brøyn, has downloaded and stored on his computer about 200,000 pictures and 4000 hours of video films showing sexual abuse of children. More than 5 months of continuous video-viewing 24/7 would be required just to look through the film material.
Acquiring, keeping and/or passing on such material, generally known as 'child pornography', has for a number of years been a criminal offence under Norwegian law. It is a feature in many prominent police cases, is therefore well known to the general public as criminal activity, and is of course even better known to be so in the state's child protection services (CPS, in Norway known as 'Barnevernet'; the official title in English is Norwegian Child Welfare Services).
The indictment reads: "Pictures and video show sexual abuse committed by adults against children, sexual acts between children, and children performing sexual acts on themselves."
The Norwegian police were notified of Brøyn's possession of this material as far back as 2014, from the Swiss police. However, Brøyn was not stopped from continuing as an expert and child psychiatrist in the CPS system for several years thereafter. He has been downloading abuse material from 1997.
The legal proceedings in Oslo District Court took place in April of this year, in part run with open doors, including Brøyn's own testimony. He was on 23 April 2018 found guilty and was sentenced to one year and 10 months in prison.
Some parts of the judgment will be referred by us.
In the judgment Brøyn was found guilty of downloading, storing and sharing enormous quantities of pictures and videos of children subjected to sexual abuse, of varying degrees including brutal. He was also found guilty of having illegally stored an unregistered pistol in his home. One of the lay judges (the court consisted of one legal and two lay judges) dissented in that she wanted the sentence to be more than 2 years.
At the same time Brøyn has been working as a child psychiatrist for the CPS. He has for many years been a very active, supporting participant in the child protection system in Oslo and the neighbouring county Akershus, carrying out, in several municipalities, evaluations of parents from whom the CPS intends to remove children. He has recommended 'emergency' taking into care of children, and placing them at secret addresses, never to be allowed back to their parents but committed to forced adoption or foster care until they are adults. And make no mistake about it: all this against families with parents who have done nothing criminal and mostly nothing wrong at all against the children, such as the internationally well-known case of the Bodnariu children who were taken because the parents slapped the children for being naughty and gave them an upbringing with 'Christian indoctrination'. There are on average 5 new children taken into CPS care in Norway every day, and about the same number of children in care seek to flee and escape from CPS care every day.
Details from the case against Brøyn, and holding Brøyn's actions and expressed wishes up against the sort of CPS case he has himself been active in as an expert on children and parents, would be of little interest, were it not for the fact that they are actually symptomatic of the Norwegian CPS system and our authorities' attitude to it. They show up the scandalous state of the CPS establishment in Norway generally, and the lack of action on the part of the authorities to do much other than cover up and continue as before. The Court in the case against Brøyn, however, seems to have taken a somewhat stronger stand.
The central issue of great general concern is not an analysis of Brøyn as a person or a criminal, nor to use the case as a sensational stepping stone to another debate about abuse pictures, homosexuality, pedophile tendencies or activities, or surrogacy. The central matter is what people in authority in this country do and say in relation to the legislation they themselves promote and through which they exercise power.
Brøyn's family life when arrested and jailed
In open court Brøyn stated that he is homosexual but has had trouble accepting it, and admitted that he has pedophile leanings, being stimulated by sexual pictures and films of boys.
The newspaper Aftenposten wrote back in 2010 that Jo Erik Brøyn, then 48, had become the single father to two babies by means of a surrogate mother in India. When he was arrested more than a year ago, these children were at first allowed to be placed with his sister. This is considerably more lenient than is usual in many ordinary CPS cases. The CPS generally shows intense resistance to kinship placement, claiming various reasons why such placement is 'not possible in just this case'. No doubt they know that placement with relatives would cancel out their power and expose their separation of the children from their parents as fraudulent, by ensuring that parents and children did not lose contact with each other. Foster parents who are family are far more independent and critical of measures the CPS tries to impose.
Before Brøyn was released from custody, his two children were on 9 February 2017 moved by the CPS to non-relatives. However, the County Board (an administrative committee which functions as the first instance decision-maker in care proceedings), decided that they should be returned to him, so they have been back with him since the summer of 2017. Again, the liberal attitude of a section of the authorities, here regarding a confessed pedophile father living alone with his children, is somewhat unusual.
The prosecutor asked the Court to sentence Brøyn to pay costs, which is usual. However, the Court has not sentenced him to pay costs, since he is now out of work and is to serve a lengthy prison sentence. This decision, too, is according to what is usual. Nevertheless, our thoughts go to the parents whose children are taken from them by the CPS. Many of them are attacked by the CPS because they are badly off from the start, and they are further reduced financially both by various actions of the CPS, and also because they are made to pay towards the maintenance of their children in foster homes.
Contrasting treatment
The contrast to most child protection cases is remarkable. A couple out of the literally thousands there are to choose from:
1
In the Bodnariu case, the five children of the Romanian-Norwegian family were taken from their parents without warning and were not allowed to communicate with them at all for some months. They were evidently told by the CPS that they 'were to receive new parents', and the girls concluded that it must mean that their parents were going to die. It certainly meant that the CPS planned to separate them from their family for good. The shock to the girls of this cruel treatment was of course tremendous. The parents had committed the offense of at times slapping the children when they were naughty and of bringing them up to be good Christians. The reaction of psycho-social thinking to the parents occasionally slapping the children when they misbehaved: that light slapping warrants 'protecting' the children against the parents by separating them forever, is quite well established in Norwegian ideology by now, although physical punishment in the upbringing of children has been illegal for less than a generation.
2
The children of a family were taken from their parents because of an untrue incest accusation. The children were placed in different foster homes. They were desperately unhappy and depressed and would not show carefree joy when sent out to play with other children. This was interpreted by the foster parents taught CPS 'science' to mean that the children had had a terrible life at home and 'did not even know how to play'. The youngest boy A was 5 years old when he was taken. He became so 'difficult' that the foster parents sent him back to the CPS, which then placed him in an institution.
The parents had been found innocent in court and had received comprehensive redress and restitution. Still, the children were not allowed to go home. The elder reached their majority after some years and were free, and went to their mother. (The marriage had not lasted; this quite often happens to parents who go through a long nightmare of CPS actions against them and their children.) The youngest was kept in forced institutional care even 10 years after he had been taken from his parents without factual reason. When he turned 15, he had the right to take up the case on his own initiative and with his own legal representation. He did so together with his mother, and after a long-drawn procedure the County Board finally let him get his freedom to go to his mother.
The care in the institution had been of a kind where the personnel locked their own doors at night, thinking that he was dangerous. At the 'assessment' before the county board case, the CPS tried to force their own psychologist on him. When the boy very wisely refused to speak to or be 'observed' by this psychologist, the psychologist wrote a letter to the County Board in which he claimed that A must be kept under CPS control until he was 18, otherwise he would turn into a dangerous criminal (cf item 56 in Skånland (14 March 2012)). Some of the lay members of the County Board did not want to let him go 'until he had finished school'. His school results so far were dismal and would not qualify him for anything, so why keep him there? When he at last was set free, he moved to his mother, his sister also now living close by. His school results improved greatly.
So for A it was ten years, from he was 5 to 15, of forced separation from his entire family, for no respectable or humane reason and under almost prison-like conditions.
In court Brøyn asked for a for a sentence of community service for himself, with reference to his two children's needs, so that he could avoid jail and separation from them.
The judgment:
"The Court is of the opinion that the purpose of the punishment is against a punishment served in liberty, and that in this case a partial sentence too would be contrary to the general sense of justice."
His request stands in considerable contrast to the long-lasting separation which he has been an instrument in imposing on families in CPS cases. As an alternative arrangement, he suggested that if he had to serve in prison, his two siblings could take care of one child each. Our thoughts again go to the thousands of cases in which the CPS and their psychologists have insisted not only on depriving children of their biological parents, but have, to protect their own power, rejected out of hand entirely capable carers such as grandparents, uncles and aunts, grown-up siblings, cousins, or close friends of the family, from being considered as foster parents.
3.
From 2011-2012 we recall the resistance to allowing the children, Indian nationals, in the Bhattacharya case, who were taken in Stavanger, to be placed with their extended family, until the Indian government intervened. They were at last placed with their father's brother in India, Norway trying to force the mother to sign a statement that she was not entitled to go to court in India regarding the children. She was, however, able to get them back later, after a proper evaluation and legal procedure in India, whereupon the CPS chief Gunnar Toresen in Stavanger declared to the papers that he would not again allow any child in the hands of Norwegian CPS out of the country.
Brøyn's children, however, will in any case have quite a different experience from the 10 year incarceration of A. Brøyn's children will be separated from him for about one year, if he is made to serve his prison sentence and unless the CPS removes the children in the way they do from ordinary families. Within this period, there are also possibilities of Brøyn being given leave of absence from the jail at intervals, to be at home with his children.
4.
Such an arrangement was, for instance, made available to one Souhaila Andrawes. She had in 1977 participated in highjacking a German plane and murdering the captain. In 1991 she moved to Norway with her husband and daughter, was eventually tracked down here, prosecuted, and allowed by the consent of Germany to serve part of her sentence here. During her prison sentence she was allowed leave to be at home, apparently every week-end, for the good of her daughter.
Andrawes said to the media: "My daughter needs to have her mother with her." She was supported by Trond Viggo Torgersen, a medical doctor working mostly as a comedian on tv, who was the Norwegian children's ombudsman at the time. He demanded quite loudly and publicly that the whole conduction of the courtcase and a possible sentence should be subordinated to the daughter's needs. To hand the mother over to Germany and jail her there would put the daughter under great strain affecting both the present and future physical and mental health, he claimed.
No doubt it is correct that forced separation from the parents is a burden on children. No such argument, though, is heard in ordinary CPS cases, which are formally run more like civil cases and might therefore be expected to give the private party greater privileges. Regarding people like Andrawes and Brøyn, the attitude seems to be that their actions are not negative for their children, therefore their relationship to them must be maintained. While on the other hand, if parents are not judged by a criminal court but 'evaluated' by the CPS, assessed to have 'moved house too much', to have insufficient ability to 'mentalise', not to 'stimulate' the children's language development sufficiently, to lack care ability because they themselves have been in care, then it is held to serve the child's best interest that the bond parent-child be broken off completely. One particular argument frequently advanced by the CPS for forcing children away from their family is that the parents 'put their own needs before the needs of the children'. We may well contemplate whose interests have been central to Andrawes and Brøyn when carrying out their criminal actions. From the court case against Brøyn:
"The psychiatrist, who says that he today runs his own private business and has not been working since he was arrested in the case, says that he has tried to understand why he did downloading.
– Has it been for your own benefit? the district court judge Ring asks.
– Yes, you can say that, says the man, pointing out his own satisfaction."
Brøyn has also held a high profile in the media, being active in several debates about social issues and giving his opinions about children and psychiatry (VG, 11 April 2018).
Norway prides itself on being egalitarian. But it is hard to see any trace of that in the indulgence towards psychiatrist Brøyn, who has made a very good living out of the CPS system, acting as one of the professional experts devastating so many families who try to cope in much more humble and hard-pressed circumstances than his own. Rather, there seems maybe to have been a certain hesitation in the County Board, sending Brøyn's children back to him, to subject one of 'their own' to the treatment usually meted out to families who possess little social and professional prestige?
More about separation
Again, the CPS involvement in Brøyn's case is considerably different to what they do in other cases. For example, it is not so rare for Norway to take the children of asylum seekers away from their parents, with accusations that they inflict illegal, physical punishment on the children or simply that they 'have insufficient care ability', or some other 'deficiency' the child protection workers find or invent. Then the asylum-seeking parent(s) are refused asylum and are forcibly evicted from Norway. The children, though, are kept in Norway, equally forcibly, in foster homes or institutions, the idea being that all that matters in child raising is 'having the ability to care' and that a very large number of biological parents lack this, while foster parents recruited by the CPS by definition have it.
5
The country which has reacted most sensibly to this is probably Nigeria. They say, "Yes, we will receive our nationals back, but only if Norway lets their children come with them. We will not issue travel documents to the parents if you keep their children back."
Most Norwegian politicians find it all right to kick the parents out but refuse to let the children go, among them a prominent MP for the Christian Democratic Party, Olaug Bollestad, who has described this practice as 'taking care of the children'.
One case is described in an article, A system that wears people down. The Norwegian state is now going through the court instances to adopt this Nigerian mother's daughter away forcibly, against the mother's every wish, to the daughter's two male homosexual foster parents. So Norway is liberal towards homosexual foster parents and adoptive parents, and they intend to practice their liberality by force on a child and mother from Nigeria, a country where homosexual practice is punishable by many years of prison. Norway is certainly not equally liberal towards the Nigerian biological mother. It is not difficult to imagine what the reactions of the mother's relatives in Nigeria will be.
6
A number of Norwegian families have fled abroad with their children. However, legislation now makes it a criminal offense to do so the minute the CPS notifies the County Board that they want to take the children into care, and of course if they flee later.
Such families, and other Norwegian families whose children other Norwegians abroad get 'worried' about, are pursued by Norwegian police and CPS, with the help of Interpol, Norwegian repesentation and facilities abroad, such as Norwegian schools and churches in other countries, cancelling their passports, use of the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, attempts to freeze any economic means they may have, and so on. The aim of the Norwegian authorities is to force the families back, the parents to be taken into custory and face criminal trial for kidnapping, the children to be put into foster homes or institutions, (cf Prison and foster home – this is what the system is like).
7
A Canadian-Norwegian family, having moved to Norway for economic reasons not long ago, decided to home-school their son temporarily, because he was harassed and ran into trouble at school. The CPS came along with the police and carried the boy off.
The family was allowed to have him back only if they surrendered their passports, to make sure that they did not go back to Canada. Also, the CPS would be in charge, and decide which school he shall go to (Norwegian–Canadian child taken by the CPS (Barnevernet) in Norway).
Lenient towards himself, trivialising his offences against children
In court Brøyn has made excuses saying he has not passed the abuse pictures of children on to others, only looked at them himself, which according to him has made sure that they could harm nobody. Save the Children does not agree and on this question their reasoning seems to the point. They have worked for several years to have politicians and the media stop using the term 'child pornography' and call them 'abuse pictures' instead. "To be in possession of such pictures contributes to maintaining a market which presupposes abuse of children. For the child, it is a new instance of abuse that the pictures are spread around. It is also serious because possession of abusive material can work to normalise abuse of children", says Line Hegna, director of communications in Norwegian Save the Children.
Nor is it possible for a person taking part in the activities of some web-facilities which Brøyn has made use of, to prevent pictures from being passed on to others.
"The case concerns extensive material and has pictures and videos of a crass character", police lawyer Jens Johannes Andenæs at Oslo Police District stated to ABC Nyheter before the court procedure started. According to Andenæs the accused had 'largely' confessed to being guilty of the charges.
Regarding confession of guilt, the court judgment says:
"The accused has taken exception to the most serious material, which he claims not to have downloaded consciously. The Court finds, however, that the accused to a certain extent trivialises his own actions. He has explained his erotic interest for young boys to be associated with his homosexual tendency. The accused appears remorseful, but reflection seems to have come only after he was caught out. In court he has explained that he has considered himself not to be harming children since he does not take part in the production, nor participates actively together with others, and that the pictures exist anyway. He views this differently today after the exposure of the case. The Court finds it serious for somebody with his special expertise on children to express that only now has it struck him that he has subjected these children to grave violation. The Court furthermore sees it as serious that a professional who is supposed to be the 'protector' of children and young people has placed his own satisfaction and desires first in this manner.
..... His confession came only after the police confiscated the material and has been of insignificant value for the clarification of the case."
Brøyn himself seems to understand nothing of the implications of this case for his work as a child psychiatrist with access to children in a position of trust, authority and responsibility. He has stated in court: "My sexual predisposition has led me into this situation." This is not the case. It is no crime in Norway to be homosexual, and mere feelings and desires are of course not punishable. It is Brøyn’s actions that have led him into the present situation, not his sexual predisposition.
Brøyn and other respected child experts
Until the court indictment was a fact, he has had no thought of his own law infringements and his sexual tendencies possibly making him unfit for work as a child psychiatrist in the function as expert in individual cases and evaluating the expert work of others (cf below about the ECC).
The newspaper VG refers from the Court:
"District Court judge Ring wanted to know if the psychiatrist thought that his profession and his responsibilies are compatible with that which he is accused of and has admitted to.
He makes a long pause before answering:
– It makes a very bad impression, so to say. I understand that it contributes to lessening the confidence in the work I have done. It is liable to weaken the confidence in me as a professional person.
He says he has been involved in making important decisions about people's lives.
– It is then important that people can have confidence in me and that people can believe that these decisions have been made on a correct basis. My opinion is that my sexuality has not been my focus all day long. I hold that I have made correct and good decisions and that it has not interfered with my work otherwise, says the psychiatrist."
It seems that many of these professional people in the psycho-social sector believe that having studied human tendencies like bias, they themselves are free from them. Such lack of insight into their own functioning, in a field like psychology, is certainly insufficiently professional and does perhaps throw some light on their clinical activities. Brøyn exposes his ability to judge himself and others in a way that can hardly be said to be anything but extremely weak.
In connection with the court case against Brøyn this year, once again an expert has been appointed to assess the possible consequences to his own two children. The judgment quotes this expert's opinion:
"The expert considers X to have the ability to regulate his own feelings and actions so that the children in a situation of care are not exposed to offensive sexual experiences beyond the ordinary risk in a home with adults having a sexual life. The expert points out that X, despite time and focus spent on downloading, does not seem to have neglected his tasks of care for the children. It is not considered likely that this practice will change in a continued care situation. Rather, this expert considers that the consequences of father's illegal downloading activity will place a burden on the children in that he may be given a prison sentence and that the CPS has intervened in the family."
So this publicly appointed psychological expert's evaluation of the situation of his/her fellow expert's children is that the father is trustworthy, that he is not likely to be any danger to them although they will shortly be of an age which has been the preferred age group for his picture and video searches, and that it is the penal system and the CPS which will be harmful to them? These observations are interesting, since the army of psychological professionals employed by the CPS normally hold the interference of the CPS and themselves into families to be a trivial burden, or no burden at all, on children and parents alike 'if the care is found on investigation to be good'. Likewise, they normally hold the removal of children from their parents' care to be utterly good for the children if the psychological experts and the social workers 'think' so.
It seems an example of how evaluations and prognoses in the CPS sector are frequently self-serving in the extreme.
Brøyn's still thinks that his expert decisions which have contributed materially to destroy family life for many, have been correct and good, but 'understands' that people 'can' be less confident now. As a psychiatrist and specialist on children he has all the same delivered expert reports in dozens of cases, maybe hundreds, leaving in his wake crying and broken-hearted parents who, because of his practically unvarying support for Barnevernet, have lost what is most dear to them, their children. As early as before 2008 he was reported to a black-list by an organisation critical to Barnevernet, listing psychiatrists and psychologists whom parents were warned to try and keep out of their cases.
Will the authorities let Brøyn's previous work against families stand?
In the court case against him, Brøyn asked for closed doors on account of his own family life, but this was refused by the Court, stating in its decision: "The Court places decisive emphasis on the nature of the case and its social interest, seen in the light of the important duties and tasks which the defendant has had in relation to his work with and for children and young persons through many years."
Norwegian mainstream media therefore had the possibility of being present in the court and there have been several articles (cf the list below) around the time of the trial and some before. These have been informative, as far as they go. Until now, however, the press has been almost as silent as our CPS and other authorities about the general implications of the case.
Back in January 2018, the police lawyer Mr Andenæs said: "There is nothing in the criminal investigation pointing to the criminal matters with which he is charged having influenced on his work in any way." Are the police referring to their not having found evidence of Brøyn having spread abuse pictures around to colleagues or families under CPS evaluation, or do they really have insight into the kind of psychological theories, beliefs and attitudes practiced by the professionals active in recommending children taken into care?
Brøyn has been a member of the national Expert Commission on Children (ECC; a better updated version in Norwegian: Barnesakkyndig Kommisjon). The ECC is a committee of psychological experts, each appointed by the Ministry of Children and Equality to evaluate the psychological reports of other child experts in cases relating to children, to make sure that reports are 'of the required quality'. The work of the ECC is mandated to be an authoritative guide for the work of all implied instances, including county boards and courts. It has direct consequences for the outcome of each individual CPS case.
Brøyn was a working member of the ECC right up to the time the police charged him and the ECC was compelled to exclude him. After he was arrested back in January 2017, his medical licence was suspended as well, by the Board of Health Supervision (Helsetilsynet). This Board is organised under the Ministry of Health and Care Services, and also has a top level responsibility, shared with the Ministry of Children and Equality, for the child protection system.
So far this is, apart from the court case, all we have seen from Norwegian authorities regarding Brøyn's professional activities. There is no sign of any question regarding whether this case has a bearing on the general way the CPS is regulated and run, or regarding the reliability and scientific basis of the work of the Expert Commission on Children.
Have no experts in the ECC or other colleagues been aware that he has kept up nefarious activities relating to children for twenty years? He has in several periods himself been going to therapy relating to his problems with sexuality and his pedophile predisposition. In the middle of it all, he has got for himself two children by surrogacy because he, as he has declared, is homosexual and so does not relate sexually to women. He does so to children, however. Has nobody in the professional set been in the know?
Psychological professionals are often thought, because of their training, to be particularly astute in judging their fellow men and penetrating into people's minds, and they have done little to counter such ideas. If nobody, particularly in the ECC, a body of 14 grey eminences from the field, has known or suspected, regarding this colleague working close to them and regarding precisely a major issue in their work, it seems something of a sign that the reputation of their professions as insightful and proficient has far less basis than is guaranteed by their public certification, a certification handed out to them by the state to make people comply with their investigations and demands.
The alternative is that some of Brøyn's colleagues in the psychological or social professions have indeed positively known or suspected what he was doing. If so, these professionals are themselves guilty of breaking the law, having done nothing to inform the police.
Either way the silence of the professional psycho-social milieu stands in some contrast to the propaganda overflowing us from those quarters in our media daily, urging especially people in public employ to report to the CPS any suspicion, however vague, of something worrying concerning the care of children.
If Brøyn has told his therapists about his illegal activities, it is possible that they, too, should be indicted. In CPS cases and other cases concerning possible offences against children, the legislation has set aside confidentiality between patient and health personnel, and obliges doctors and others to report what they know to the CPS and/or the police, even if it is knowledge obtained in confidence. Influential groups in Norway have been leaning heavily on religious ministers as well, to report to the authorities any crime divulged in a confessional or similar circumstances.
The ECC should over a year ago have started going back to every case in which Brøyn has taken part at any time, either as a CPS evaluator or as a member of the Expert Commission on Children approving or rejecting reports by others, applying a much sharper attitude to the work Brøyn has already carried out. The ECC should have seen to it that the cases were reopened, the families concerned should be notified, be given the possibility of having their cases reassessed, this time with primary trust being given to the families' version of the case. In cases where Brøyn may have contributed negatively to a family being destined to be demolished, compensation should be paid to the affected children and parents, and care orders be lifted.
The first action of the ECC now ought to be to recognise that Brøyn's evaluations cannot be given any credence. He has known of his own tendencies for several decades, but has assessed himself to be a fit carer for two surrogate children, in striking contrast to how he has assessed ordinary biological parents who love their children enough to fight for them for years against the CPS system.
Any activity by the ECC itself in which Brøyn has taken part must be regarded as unsafe unless the ECC provides proof positive that Brøyn's attitudes and own life have not in any way influenced on his part in the work and in the ECC's conclusions.
The ECC should likewise go carefully into the question of whether Brøyn has been involved in cases of e.g. young boys in institutions or in other contexts which may have given him access to them when they were not protected by their parents.
If the ECC does nothing, then are the Ministry of Children and Equality and the Ministry of Health and Care Services going to do an open and thorough investigation of the ECC, not only checking formal superficialities but going properly into the foundation of the kind of clinical psychology and other attitudes they build on?
The suspension of Brøyn's medical licence and his exclusion from the ECC imply official recognition that such work must be prohibited to someone carrying on pedophile actions. If nothing further is done about the system which has allowed him to go on, what does that say about the entire system of 'child expertise'?
So far, the silence from the two ministries and the ECC has been almost deafening.
On the other hand, we hear daily from the government: Of converting the county boards to specialised child courts, with the present board leaders as judges. Of expanding the education of CPS workers from 3 to 5 years, up to a Master's degree containing more of the same kind of content they are taught already. There will be more emphasis on psychiatry, perhaps monitored by somebody like the ECC, because it has been observed that a considerable proportion of the children and youths in CPS care have psychiatric problems (why, what constitutes efficient treatment, and who is going to give it?).
The authorities also run continuous campaigns to recruit ever more foster homes, and they finance ever more research. In reality more than enough research exists already showing dismal results of CPS management, foster home care and institutional care away from the biological family. But the CPS wants their own people to do 'new' research, and hopes to show that what we already know is wrong and that the CPS system is excellent.
**
Some newspaper articles etc of relevance for the case
En av to: OK med surrogati
Mer enn halvparten av den norske befolkningen mener det er greit å bruke surrogatmor for å få barn.
(One out of two: OK with surrogacy
More than half the Norwegian population think it is all right to use surrogate mothers to have children.)
Aftenposten, 23 October 2010 / updated 7 February 2018
Fant 193.000 overgrepsbilder hos barnepsykiater
(Found 193,000 pictures of abuse at a child psychiatrist's)
abc nyheter, 24 January 2018
Psykiater tiltalt: Skal ha oppbevart 200 000 overgrepsbilder
En barne- og ungdomspsykiater i 50-årene er tiltalt for besittelse av store mengder overgrepsbilder av barn.
(Psychiatrist charged: Is supposed to have stored 200,000 pictures of abuse
A child-and-youth psychiatrist in his fifties is charged with keeping large quantities of abuse pictures of children.)
NRK Norge, 24 January 2018
Tiltale: Psykiater oppbevarte 200.000 overgrepsbilder
En mannlig psykiater i femtiårene er tiltalt for å ha lastet ned ulovlig materiale fra internett over 29.000 ganger.
(Indictment: Psychiatrist kept 200,000 abuse pictures
A male psychiatrist in his fifties has been charged with having downloaded illegal material from the internet more than 29,000 times.)
TV 2, 24 January 2018
Barnepsykiater med overgrepsbilder jobbet for barnevernet i Bærum
(Child psychiatrist with pictures of abuse worked for the CPS in Bærum municipality)
Asker og Bærum Budstikke, 29 January 2018
Oslo-mann tiltalt:
Skal ha lastet ned titusenvis av overgrepsfilmer og -bilder i 20 år
– Dette er et betydelig materiale, sier politiadvokat.
(Oslo man charged:
Has apparently downloaded tens of thousands of abuse films and pictures over 20 years
– This is a considerable quantity, says the police lawyer.)
Dagbladet, 14 February 2018
Psykiater tiltalt for besittelse av overgrepsbilder ba om lukkede dører – fikk nei
(Psychiatrist charged with possession of abuse pictures asked for closed doors – was turned down)
Document, 10 April 2018
Rettssak i dag:
Alarmen om den kjente psykiateren gikk i Sveits: I Oslo fant politiet enorme mengder overgrepsbilder av barn og en ulovlig pistol
(Court case today:
The alarm about the profiled psychiatrist was sounded in Switzerland: In Oslo the police found enormous quantities of abuse pictures of children and an illegal pistol)
Dagbladet, 10 April 2018
Psykiater i retten: - Min seksuelle legning har ført meg opp i denne situasjonen
(Psychiatrist in court: – My sexual predisposition has led me into this situation)
Dagbladet, 11 April 2018
Psykiater erkjenner å ha oppbevart store mengder overgrepsbilder
(Psychiatrist admits to have stored large quantities of abuse pictures)
Dagens Medisin, 11 April 2018
Psykiater erkjenner oppbevaring av overgrepsbilder
OSLO TINGRETT (NRK): En barne- og ungdomspsykiater i 50-årene erkjenner straffskyld for besittelse av store mengder overgrepsbilder av barn.
(Psychiatrist admits to have stored abuse pictures
OSLO DISTRICT COURT (NRK): A child-and-youth-psychiatrist in his fifties admits to be guilty of being in possession of large quantities of abuse pictures of children.)
NRK Norge, 11 April 2018
Psykiater erkjente straffskyld for besittelse av overgrepsbilder
(Psychiatrist admitted guilt for keeping abuse pictures)
abc nyheter, 11 April 2018
Oslo-psykiater tiltalt for oppbevaring av overgrepsmateriale: Jeg har skammet meg veldig
(Oslo psychiatrist charged with storing abuse material: I have been very ashamed)
VG, 11 April 2018
Siden 1997:
Paykiater dømt til 22 måneders fengsel for overgrepsbilder av barn
Jobbet selv med barnevernsaker i Oslo og Akershus
(Since 1997:
Psychiatrist sentenced to 22 months of jail for sexual abuse pictures of children
He himself worked with child protection cases in Oslo and in Akershus County)
Dagbladet, 24 April 2018
••
Rune Fardal:
Barnepsykiater dømt for barneporno
(Child psychiatrist found guilty of child pornography)
(Video)
Family Channel – Focus on Family & Human Rights in Norway, April 2018
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