by Steven Bennett
The Norwegian Standard is a documentary, highlighting the policies and practices that are recognised within what is known as child welfare. The film shows how the tradition of State control of the family has deep roots in Norway. In reality, it started long before the first child protection law came into force in the 1900’s.
The positivist school in criminology that originated in Italy at the end of the 1800’s had a great influence on Norwegian conditions, and with its impact, started a new era in the Norwegian State control of children and families.
If Charles Darwin’s Theory of evolution was scientific as applied to animals, the same approach should be applied to ‘man’ as an ‘animal.’ This is biological positivism, part of the positivist school in criminology.
The fast growing movement focussed on poverty and the ‘rescue of children’ and from the mid 1800’s, the Norwegian state demanded the right to be involved through force if necessary in the life of a family that was deemed lower class.
Since the end of the 1800’s to the present day, the goal of the Norwegian child welfare system has always been to weaken the family’s power and freedom. This is carried out in the guise of ‘child protection/child welfare.’ Simply put, it’s a system that exercises social control against any group at any given time that is considered as a threat to the social order.
The world’s first child protection law is a source of pride in Norway but there are some objections against this official version of Norway’s history.
Tove Stang Dahl (9 November 1938 – 11 February 1993) (née Tove Thiis Stang) was a Norwegian legal scholar, criminologist, Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo from 1988 until her death, and a pioneer of feminist jurisprudence.
Her doctoral thesis, ‘child protection and social policy’, recognised that the Norwegian child protection law was implemented from a need for part of the ruling class to exercise social control, instead of protecting vulnerable children from abuse and neglect in the family.
At the end of the 1800’s, the State believed the middle and poor working class were a threat to the establishment. Today, the only difference we see is the State’s need for social control, when it perceives that a group or family is going against its view of public interest.
Nothing has changed in the last 100 years, the mask maybe slightly different, but the Norwegian State still chooses to get involved in families through manipulation and coercion.
From the positivist school in criminology, a number of new professions were introduced to ‘save children from poverty’ and ‘moral decay,’ through a new form of diagnosis and treatment.
The Norwegian government purchased an island in 1898 for 95,000 kroner, and a reform school/juvenile detention centre, 75 kilometres south of Oslo was opened in 1900. Devil’s Island was considered the solution for the problems these poor children represented for society. The reality was that these children hadn’t actually broken the law but they were still deprived of their freedom for years. The State regarded it as a major advance in the field of social policies at the time. The reform school was shut down in 1970 and turned into a prison in 1982.
In 2014, the prison was awarded the 2014 Blanche Major Reconciliation Prize for promoting human values and tolerance. A little bit of marketing and politically motivated, of course, but it still doesn’t hide the fact that nothing has changed, just the tactics for the need to exercise social control. We are seeing in our day the same old Norway, with a different mask and more layers.
Today, it is called a new research in the field of psychology that should help the State in controlling the families they consider as ‘deviants’ at some level. There is nothing new under the sun. The Norwegian Government is introducing even more new laws to make it easier for the ruling class to control and shape ‘unworthy’ citizens.
The seed that was planted at the end of the 1800’s, is fully grown today, finding roots into all areas of Norwegian society.
Every day in Norway, the State, on average, confiscates five children without any prior notice from their biological parents in so called ‘emergency decisions.’ The babies and children are kept very often for an indefinite period of time for ‘treatment’ at an institution or foster home.
The reason for this widespread force by the Norwegian State towards its own civilian population, has not changed since the first child protection law came in to play.
An expert group appointed by the Stoltenberg Government «Raundalen-selection» in 2012 says that one of the main reasons why we should weaken the biological principle and also weaken the family’s power and freedom is that the State has a responsibility to make sure that children in Norway are growing up and being ‘good and productive citizens to the best for the nation.’
As a parent living in Norway, you do not have to break to law, to have your children taken away. There doesn’t have to be any neglect, no abuse in any form. Far from it, your children can be taken away, just because someone in power ‘thinks’ that it is ‘possible’ the children will be neglected some time in the future.
Norway’s CPS, Barnevernet does not need any evidence to snatch your children away, just a perceived idea that something might just happen to them in the future. I can’t stress this point enough. It’s a sick, sick, sick, sick system of terror for families living in Norway. I know, because I have many friends living there.
The ‘Norwegian Standard’ is not as high as some Norwegians would like us to believe, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s a repressive regime which has dreadfully low standards for certain groups and dreadfully low standards for children living in ‘care,’ who are also often abused.
And sadly, for public relations, the abusers are often protected and the abuse covered up to save face for the CPS. Whether there’s abuse or not in an institution or foster home, the child abuse has already taken place, when innocent babies and children are taken away from perfectly healthy families in the first place.
The United Nations has repeatedly asked Norway to investigate the underlying causes of the high number of children who are deprived of the rights to grow up in their own biological family. The UN has also asked Norway to educate both lawyers and judges in human rights.
It is easy to realise that the forced imprisonment of children in Devil’s island was not in the child’s best interest. Today, it’s harder to acknowledge, but the same principle applies. The force and painful torment these children in Devil’s island suffered at the hands of the Norwegian State, is the same force and painful torment that families are experiencing today at the hands of the Norwegian CPS, Barnevernet.
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