23 December 2015
Here comes the charge of violenceLate in the evening of 21 December, the newpaper Firda (a local paper in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, where the Bodnariu family lives) published an article on their web page saying that there is now a charge against the parents with violence. The article is closed and can only be read by subscribers, but from the listing done by mylder.no (a search motor of newspapers and some other sources) it was clear that the family concerned are the Bodnarius.
Siktar foreldre for familievald (Charges the parents with family violence)
Firda, 21 December 2015
However, NRK, the national broadasting company, had an open article yesterday 22 December, with Firda as one source:
Foreldrepar sikta for familievald (Parents charged with family violence)
Ein foreldrepar i Sunnfjord er fråtekne borna sine og sikta for familievald. Dersom dei blir dømde kan dei risikere opp til seks års fengsel. (Parents in Sunnfjord have had their children removed and are charved with family violence. If found guilty they risk up to six years of prison.)
NRK Sogn og Fjordane, 22 December 2015
"- Foreldra er sikta for å ha utøvd fysisk vald mot borna sine, seier politiadvokat Sissel Kleiven til avisa."(The parents are charged with having committed physical violence towards their children, says police lawyer Sissel Kleiven to the newspaper.)
What I assumed might be the case, then, cf my posting above (the original in Norwegian was written in the morning of 21 December), turned out to be so: "In the present case it is quite likely that the parents may have punished the children physically or limited their freedom for disobedience."
There are at least three - four things which should be noted in connection with the actions and our other authorities:
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Firstly, in my experience it is impossible to know on the basis of what the CPS claims, whether alleged violence means parents having given the children a few light spankings on their bottom or having grabbed their arm hard and taken them to their room if they have been naughty, or whether they have in fact used serious, dangerous violence. Quite independent of the law forbidding any hitting og beating of children, I do not believe it to be a good thing regardless. But that is not the same as the opinion spread through Norwegian society being any better: that almost any "touching" of children is violence in accordance with the intention of the law.
In one case the mother was said to have used violence against her son, by "beating" him with a comb (she had probably slapped the comb on his head, telling him to stand still so that she could comb his hair).
Around 2003, the criticism of psycho-babble cases in the CPS was fairly strong, so that it was "decided" at an open policy meeting that the CPS should from then on cut down on (read: shut up about) these "difficult" cases and instead go out publicly with allegations that violence among parents was rampant; this was thought to be more easily accepted by the press and the Norwegian population.
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Secondly, one can never trust a charge of violence to be based on truth. In one case in which I functioned as an expert witness, the municipality suddenly came up with an allegation of violence, which they wanted to be "investigated". It was close to the finish of the court procedure and the municipality very likely understood that the case wat not going their way. The allegation was pure psycho-babble without any basis in reality.
In
the Bhattacharya case the mother, Sagarika, had once raised her hand and pointed at her son in order to prevent him doing something wrong or dangerous. The CPS were present and they made a big issue out of this and would have it that the mother was violent in general. Our authorities managed to spread the belief among the naïve Norwegian population that the case was about very serious violence. They succeeded quite effectively in this, one reason being that people will not believe that the CPS takes such a drastic step as taking children away from their parents on the basis of pure fabrication.
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Thirdly, police lawyer Sissel Kleiven of this Sunnfjord case expresses herself in a completely parallel way to that used by Norway in the Bhattacharya case: she says that the case is
not about that which has primarily upset people abroad:
"Saka har vekt stor oppsikt og engasjement i utlandet, der det er gjennomført protestar utanfor fleire norske ambassadar. Noko av bakgrunnen for dette er at det i sosiale medium og i internasjonale aviser blir hevda at barnevernet har teke hand om borna på bakgrunn av kristen indoktrinering.
Politiadvokat Kleiven avviser dette overfor Firda, og seier at det ikkje er relevant i deira vurdering av saka."(The case has drawn great attention and concern abroad, where protest demonstrations have taken place outside several Norwegian Embassies. Some of the background for this is that in social media and in international newspapers, it is claimed that Barnevernet has taken charge of the children on the basis of Christian indoctrination.
Police lawyer Kleiven dismisses this to Firda, saying that it is not relevant i their assessment of the case.)
Well then, in the Bhattacharya case Norway kept saying that the case had
nothing to do with the CPS criticising Sagarika over having fed her son by hand (usual in India), nor over the children having slept in their parents' beds (also usual in India), nor over Sagarika not using a special table for changing the baby's nappies (she did what is much safer: put the baby on a low bed). All of these arguments can, however, be read in the case documents.
It is not unlikely that the allegations of violence in the Bodnariu case have been associated with some view of "punishment" in conservative Christianity. That does not mean that that the CPS do not include Christianity itself in its reasoning. If this finds no resonance, they can still say that their criticism does not concern Christianity.
This whole way of conducting a case is unfortunately well-known in child protection cases: The CPS comes up with various arguments; when these arguments get attention and are criticised in public debate, the CPS and their allies wave them away as irrelevant and say that there are totally different, very serious facts in the case.
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Last of all, we must take seriously a more fundamental question: Is transfer of care, with permanent dissolution of the family, in these children's best interest? Not least must we ask what burdens of stress and despair it lays on the two little boys, and what effect it has on the baby, who was still being breat-fed and now suddenly does not have its mother near it.
It is not primarily a question of whether the parents should be punished or not, it is a question of whether the children are to be punished by having their family destroyed. Cf what
Mani Shankar Aiyar says, something which is probably quite representative of good understanding of parenthood around the world:
"Snatching children away must be limited to 'grave abuse'."The CPS repeatedly "inform" the public that they carry our "advice" and give "help", e.g so that people can "master their parental role better". In reality, the CPS are instead keen to get hold of the children. Their advice and guidance is a continuous burden on parents, often comprising meaningless measures which anyone can understand are of no help irrespective of what the family's needs may be. The result is that the parents are worn down and then the road is open for the CPS to declare that the parents "do not have the ability to give care". When children have already been taken by the CPS, the CPS are
not interested in helping parents to improve whatever it is that is lacking, so that tha children can return home as quickly as possible. On the contrary: the CPS fight tooth and nail
against the children
ever having any positive contact with their parents. They do this through talking big about "attachment theory", which they blieve shows that the children
are not attached to the parents but rather to foster persons or CPS personnel at institutions etc; they do it also through brainwashing the children about how bad and despicable the parents are. Editor Vebjørn Selbekk is therefore fundamentally ignorant
when he claims that the children have
temporarily been taken away from their parents. Cf especially the last part "The situation today"
here here concerning
the Malaysia/Sweden case, a case where the parents had punished their children physically.
If now the parents Bodnariu have in fact punished their children physically, do the CPS and the police intend to take them seriously to task and, independently of any trial and sentence, teach them to understand that this is both illegal and can actually be harmful and even dangerous, and that the whole life of the family is at stake if they do not change their behaviour? – Not likely. Rumours referred have it that the Bodnarius have instead already had remarks flung at them by CPS people saying that they are trash, to be discarded forever. A statement made by the CPS to the children's mother as early at the 17 November: that the four oldest children had been placed in two different foster homes and were already "integrated" there and did not miss their parents, does not exactly signal any understanding in CPS circles of how important parents are to their children.