How Norway will undermine Czech intentions for the family, for the protection of children, and for human rights

The Lower Chamber in the Czech parliament has passed a resolution containing good principles for family, children and child protection. This was done in connection with the violations committed against the family of Eva Michaláková in Norway and other Czech citizens.

The Czech principles are in accord with the UN and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but diverge markedly from the ill-considered actions of the Norwegian so-called child protection system – officially named the Child Welfare Services (CWS) – and their deviant reasoning about the principles on which the use of force against families and children should rest.

In addition, the Czech parliament recommends that the president and the government of the Czech Republic take the initiative to an international agreement with Norway which will establish the mutual obligation of the parties to inform one another about all administrative cases and court cases concerning the other country's citizens who are minors, and to make involvement possible in such cases. It would then also be possible for Norway to be involved in matters within the Czech Republic.

If one knows the Norwegian system of child protection well, one can easily see how such an arrangement would be abused by Norway.

There are, furthermore, several legal issues involved, e.g. the question of the obligation of confidentiality. Such obligations are violated continuously in Norway, from municipal level all the way to international. The public party's allegations are held to be the unquestionable Truth. For refugees from Norwegian child protection it will be dangerous if Interpol and different nations treat allegations as real proof. It is furthermore problematic that statutes can be stretched and that bureaucrats can have a practice of breaking them. But I will lay legal matters more or less aside.

There are at least two ways in which Norway will abuse the mentioned arrangement:

Refugees from child protection
A mutual agreement will be used by Norway to demand children back to Norway from parents (Czechs and others) who flee from misunderstood child protection. The justification on the part of Norway will be the one-sided and deceitful documents of the Norwegian CWS, as well as the opinions they claim to be scientifically based expertise. There is good, illuminating research available which shows both these kinds of documents and such claimed expertise to be spurious.
Custody disputes between parents
Norwegian CWS will demand children back e.g. from Czech mothers whose children have Norwegian fathers. They will hold such a claim to be based on expertise (but hardly backed by solid evidence), and justified by the afore-mentioned kinds of documents, second-hand witnesses, undocumented assertions written down as truths, etc. We can compare this with the procedure in criminal cases: The accused is entitled to read his explanation as written down by the police, and can sign it. In child protection cases ONLY the CWS's account is considered valid. This account the CWS often tries to hinder the private parties from reading, in clear violation of the Norwegian law pertaining to public administration. Nobody in the CWS is made to answer for this.

A small digression about the CWS and breaches of the law: If one googles with the Norwegian words "barnevern" (child protection) and "lovbrudd" (breach of law) [1], there are several tens of thousands of hits. That is quite a lot for a small country like Norway. Among the hits one finds everything from official reports and legal articles to the writings of desperately unhappy people.

The methods: Spreading information from sub-quality documents, plus not documented allegations
An arrangement whereby information and people are handed over will in other words be utilised for conveying the arguments of Norwegian CWS, arguments whose truth content is strongly opposed by the other party.

Several Nordic researchers have done research on CWS documents, with results embarrassing for the CWS. [2, 3, 4]

The prevailing methodical fault may be illustrated by Danish significant research showing that children under the CWS had several times worse prognosis than children of drug addicts. [5] The Cinderella effect, from Daly and Wilson's research, shows the importance of biological belonging. [6, 7] (Many interesting references are found in the English Wikipedia article. [8] The article about Daly and Wilson's research by professor emerita Marianne Skånland can be recommended. [9])

How far away the "expertise" which the CWS practice is from real scientific research, may be illustrated by reference to a psychologist on a Norwegian (debate) forum, who claimed that "Children don't give a damn where they live". The CWS hold that children can be just moved to new "parents" and will attach themselves to them. If they do not form attachment to these new "parents", it is due to a reactive attachment disorder created by the biological parents. Children's deep despair is re-interpreted as psychological problems created by the parents. This is then used as an argument that the biological parents are useless. The whole set of ideas is so crazy that outsiders have problems believing it. The CWS generally make use of ideas low on an evidentiary scale, and the CWS use such ideas in an amateurish and cynical way. A pointer is the miserable statistical results of the CWS's care for children. (An example is that children in CWS care have an 8 times higher suicide rate than average. [10])

The belief that the CWS's ideas are plain Truth is a heavy trend today. But in states under the rule of law the truth is something to be proved, on the basis of reliable science. Judges and courts are not to function as "useful idiots" for the ideology of professions, for moralism, trends and plainly wrong contentions.

The systematic support which our form of child protection has in the media [11, 12], the County Committees and courts, combined with the confidentiality practiced as well as the dishonour heaped on people who are "clients" of the CWS, all go to create a power culture which is quite formidable. It has been allowed to keep on and develop over several decades and the CWS organisation is now large enough and strong enough to dare attacking people of resource and social standing as well. The corruption which power lends to this profession is noticeable for the large majority of those attacked and run over. The fact that people accuse the CWS and the County Committees of lying has NO consequences for these establishments. People speak to a stone wall of ignorance and complete power. An illustrative description was given in a comment by Czech journalist Adela Knapova from the Czech magazine Reflex: "In Norway there is a wall. Here it seems as if the state owns the children. It sounds like communism and we have had communism before." [13]

In Norway, it is near impossible for politicians to have a career and at the same time criticise the actions of the CWS. The press and others will immediately attack them furiously. There is a striking logical discrepancy when compensation to CWS victims is granted. It is then acknowledged that CWS care was so and so bad BEFORE ( - 25 years back or more). But when it is a question of the system NOW, the CWS personnel are practically heroes and white knights. To question anything regarding them is to attack The Ultimate Good. But there has never been any revolutionary change in the CWS!

NIBR-report 2006:7: Hjelpetiltak i barnevernet – virker de? (Assistance to families in the CWS - does it work?)
"Det synes som norsk barnevern sliter med et paradoks: Barnevernet bruker i stor grad tiltak som vi har lite systematisk, forskningsbasert kunnskap om og som vi ”er usikre på” eller ”tror på” mye ut fra tradisjoner. Disse tiltakene har vært brukt i årtier, og man har verken klart å finne ut nøyaktig hvordan de virker eller klart å sette noe annet i stedet (”nye tiltaksformer”)." [14]
("It seems that Norwegian child protection is struggling with a paradox: The CWS to a large degree make use of remedies of which we have little systematic, research-based knowledge, and which we are "uncertain of" or "believe in" very much based on tradition. These remedies have been used for decades, and no-one has been able to find out exactly how they function, nor managed to put something else in their place ("new initiatives").")

In dealing with Norwegian child protection matters, Czech authorities will meet an old discipline full of pretence, with New-speak and impressive titles, poorly substatiated assumptions about human beings, and with a high degree of rationalisation and whitewashing of the situation in Norwegian child protection of today. This, Norway will attempt to use to obtain and maintain a deceitful power which violates nature's most important bonds of love - the family. This will come from Norwegian authorities and professionals who should be real child and family experts, people who hold a fanatical belief in all that is going on in Norway in the name of child protection.

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