Sweden to probe years of abuse in children's homes
By
Stephen Brown
Reuters
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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Thousands of Swedes who
say they were subjected to physical abuse and cruel treatment in state
children's homes and foster care for decades from the 1950s won the promise of
an official inquiry on Thursday.
A cabinet minister said the probe would investigate
the cases, which peaked in the 1940s and '50s when Sweden's zeal for social
engineering included making children of single women or poor people wards of
the state.
It could result in an apology and compensation
similar to that given in the 1990s to around 60,000 women who were forcibly sterilised
between 1936-76 after being deemed unfit for motherhood because they were
handicapped.
Alleged abuse includes attempted rape and
forcing children to keep their heads under icy water.
"I have spoken to so many people in
the last week who are in living hell, who have been stigmatized for so long
with nobody understanding their problem or even recognizing it," said
Birger Hjelm, who presides the charity "Society's Fosterchildren."
"Women and men aged 70 have called me
crying like kids on the phone, speaking about these matters for the first time
in their lives," he told Reuters.
Proof of widespread abuse of minors in
state care would embarrass a country better known for subsidized childcare and respecting
human rights. Today's Social Democrat government was pushed into action by a
documentary on state television.
It prompted floods of calls to a charity for
former foster children and to state archives housing their childhood records.
Gun-Britt, a woman born in 1953 in Gothenburg
to an alcoholic mother, was sent away aged eight to a foster home she remembers
as a "work camp." She suffered "both physical and mental
torture" and attempted rape by her foster father.
Kjell, now 55, said children were "forced
to put our heads under ice-cold running water until the warder said it was
enough. It felt like my head was going to shatter into pieces."
His classmates went "from children's home
to jail, alcoholism, drugs, mental hospital, ruined marriages."
"I don't understand how grown-ups can
treat children so badly. I heard in the TV report that the warders didn't want
to be interviewed because they were ashamed. I really hope they are, but they
can't be suffering like we did."
Social Services Minister Morgan Johansson said
he was "anxious to find out what really happened during those years. I
would also like measures to be taken to help those burdened with terrible
memories from that period."
He has promised to study Norway's payments of
compensation to people abused while in state care, but Hjelm said monetary
compensation was "secondary" to giving the victims redress.
Sweden
to probe years of child abuse in children’s homes
By Steven Brown
Demand for compensation for care-order
victims
By Lennart Hane
’Missing’- A transcript of an Australian
Broadcasting Corporation documentary
By Kirstin Garrett
Eugenics and the Welfare State
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland
Gunnar Broberg, Nils Roll-Hansen
Child
Abuse: The Waterhouse Report
By Simon Regan
Hyacinth
Österlin’s letter to the NCHR. An emigrated immigrant's views on the Götene
Case
E-mail letter to the NCHR - November 21, 2002.
The Folly of
Sweden's State Controlled Families
Siv Westerberg's lecture to The Family Education Trust, London, 19/6 1999.
Spectre
of Children's Gulag haunts Sweden
By Chris Mosey
Swedish
couple enduring USA poverty to keep son
By John Brinkley
Taking
children into care in Sweden
By Linda Ärlig
Rebecca's Christmas.
A tale of evil from real life
By Ann-Louise Hansson
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