Norway: Parents Against the State Our World

investigate allegations that the country's child protection

Down the road to a tiny village came at power that tore a young family

apart. I saw two black cars and won't continue driving on the main

road and one came on our farm. They lost four of their children and then

the fifth. I told Marius said they were going to take the children and

there was nothing I could do. This is Norway, proud of its record in

protecting children, but now accused of campaigners abroad and at home of

a brutal campaign of taking babies into care without any reason. Not

one single bad case and it is a simple with bad cases all the time.

Norway's child protection services says it does all it can to keep

families together. We don't have any self interest in taking the children

with us. But parents battling the state believe all the odds are

stacked against them in a system that has gone mad. They will win

just to win and they hate to lose and be proven wrong because no one

can be wrong. It is

a house that had five children. Their father plays one of his

favourite songs - not to entertain For news if he and his wife will

ever get them back. Ruse has been at the police station again. Trying

desperately to convince the authorities that she and Marius are

good player -- parents. Blast out was three hours -- last night. I

knew what the kids had said to the child protection services and to the

police and I hope that they believe me. But it is hoped against hope.

Their two girls aged eight and ten, their two boys aged two

and five and their baby were taken away in November.

And Ruth and Marius's world fell apart.

I was waiting for the girls to come home from school.

And it passed ten or 15 minutes and they didn't come.

I saw it came, two black cars, one continued driving on the main

Inside the car was a child protection officer.

She said the two girls had been taken away in

the other black car and two older boys were being taken away too.

She said I had to come to the police station for interrogation. I was

shocked and I asked what was going on and she did not want to answer

that. And she said that she had my two girls and that she wanted to

take care of the boys while I was at the interrogation. I said it is not

necessary because they can stay with my mother and she can watch them.

And then I understood it was very serious. For children gone in one

day, they still have the baby. They still had the baby,

but not for much longer. It was the second day in the evening

we saw two cars driving here and two black cars again and I said,

they have brought the kids home. Were you excited, you got really

excited when you saw those cars? Then I saw four policemen

coming out of the car. I told Marius, I think they're

going to take the baby. So the baby just disappeared down

the road. Yes. And then we found they drove three and a half hours.

With the baby they drove that night to Bergen. They wrote that the baby

cried the 30 minutes and they watched the baby cry on the road.

Marius and Ruth thought this while Dali was an ideal place to bring up

the family. But even here there are rules and something one of the

children said first alerted the authorities that Marius and Ruth

might be breaking the law. In Norway it forbids any corporal punishment.

We were questioned about violence in the

We admitted spanking the kids, but not...

Not every time when they would do something bad.

They didn't find any physical marks or anything like that when they had

It's very clear until the smallest detail.

It is not allowed for any physical correction.

Their lawyers wouldn't let me ask any more questions,

because they're still under investigation and the authorities

aren't allowed to discuss this or any other individual case to protect

Beginning on November 16th when the Norwegian authority for

child protection, the Barnevernet, had taken away the five children...

Claims that Marius and Ruth's kids and hundreds of others have been

taken without reason have triggered demonstrations all over the world.

Even if the protestors can't know all the facts.

The campaign's strong abroad, because Marius is an immigrant

from Romania and the couple belonged to an evangelical Christian

But in Norway today, there are solid members of the establishment who

also think the country's child protection system is out of control.

Ingla is head of state archive in the city of Bergen.

I grew up believing that the Norwegian system was the best

Appointed personally by the king to guard thousands of documents. But

now his faith in the system is badly shaken.

I grew up believing that the Norwegian system was the best

The UN are stating that all the time.

Then suddenly I discovered that this cannot be the case,

and that was because of things that happened in my own family.

Because of what happened to this little girl, his grand daughter, who

The Norwegian child protection service known as Barnevernet said

But that is not how it looked to Ingla.

So this was the passive, non-sounding child.

How long is this before she was taken?

This is in the middle of November, so this is is basically two months

She was put into emergency fostering, because the child

protection service said she was suffering serious psychological

harm, because her parents count meet her emotional needs.

They said her mother, who is from China and has now gone back there,

was depressed and her father, Eric, was simple, though he has never been

diagnosed with any condition, other than a slight lack of short-term

I did everything, I changed nappies, I change nappies

So what did you do to play with her? Just the small toys and at first we

often played with hands so maybe a tickle on the tummy.

Just days before child protection started their urgent assessment

of the family, a doctor at the local health clinic found the little

girl was developing normally, but Barnevernet said later that even if

they had known that it wouldn't have affected their conclusions.

And his anger at the court held up the report and they agreed.

We put forward a huge report on my son's psychological strength

They haven't mentioned that by one word.

So they're closing their eyes and they say that we can only rely on

the assessments that these persons working for Barnevernet have made.

Him and his wife press the authorities to let them take care of

the little girl but the child protection services said that would

mean too much uncertainty as things have gone wrong with the child while

the grandparents were living in the same house. Many parents have lost

children I say that Norway is less keen on letting the children stay

with other members of the family. But they say they are kept within

the wider family. For the last five months Marius and

Ruth have lost their five children have spent much of their lives on

the road. It is been an eight hour round trip for them to get to

supervise meetings with the baby and their little boys. The children were

split up between three different sets of foster parents. The age of

has this impression that we are going to die and that is why she

cannot be with us. And the five-year-old was asking a lot for

his father and asking why he cannot meet us both and he told us that he

dreamt that we would be together. He had this dream that we would all be

together. For now all that Marius and Ruth can do is wait between

meetings in a friend 's flat. They say they have offered to fix what

ever needs fixing as the way they behaved as parents but the chart

protection did not even want to discuss reuniting the family. So

this is the baby in mother's tummy. Yeah she tried several times to draw

me in the tummy. He wanted it to be perfect. Said this is mum, dad and

me. They write down their own account with a meeting with the

children because they don't trust the social workers to report

fairly. We don't know when we are fighting to show our feelings

because for the bigger boys we're told to not show any sorrow because

we make the kids sad. So we try to keep every tear inside and we keep

them for ourselves until they are out of the door, at least.

Of course, parents whose children are taken into care

in any country are nearly always angry with the system, but I'm

It devotes more resources and attention to children and their

rights than almost any country on earth and child protection usually

just provides guidance to parents with problems, it is only in what

they regard as extreme cases they they seek care orders.

I would like to get the other side of the story from the tiny authority

that took their kids but they cannot talk about individual cases. We have

approximately 110. I had to go to another part of Norway to meet HR

protection officer. This man does not look like the kind of evil child

snatcher that aggrieved parent to portray. As he says, they usually

just provide guidance to Paris with problems and it is only with what

they regard as extreme cases that they seek care orders. Our

obligation is to keep the children out of danger. That is our main goal

and it is to make that possible through the parents and with the

parents and makes them able to give sufficient care for their children.

If there is conflict between those two we have to take sides with the

children. And you don't think you are too powerful? We often

criticised because we're not doing enough or we're not doing it early

enough and not enough children are giving sufficient time.

The number of children taken rose by 70% in the recent five-year period.

That was partly a reaction to the state's failure to protect and

eight-year-old boy who was beaten to death by his stepfather in 2005. But

if the authorities overreact? It is hard to work out whether Norway is

better in its child protection practices. In England it would be

very unusual for children to be taken away without parents being

contacted first and without serious attempts immediately afterwards to

engage with the family. Maybe the cases we're looking at our very

unusual in Norway two, but Norwegian experts don't think so and that

perhaps is the most significant point in the story. -- Norway too.

Almost 150 Norwegian professionals, psychologists, or -- lawyers, have

written a letter to say that the child protection services is a

dysfunctional organisation that makes the seriousness calculation

is, with serious consequences. This man is one of the authors of the

open letters to the government. There is a lack of a human factor in

the system. A lack of empathy and really providing an atmosphere so

people can learn and can have a good discussion about what's happening.

It is more like police interventions, more like we have to

find out what's wrong with you. The vast majority of cases, where

custody of the child is disputed, the state wins and parents lose, but

not always. In this hospital in the far south of Norway there is a

little girl who was taken away from her parents what they've now on back

custody. Hello, nice to see you. Very nice to see you. This is your

daughter? How long has she been in for, overnight? From 7pm until

10pm. 15 hours? Yes. She has had almost 100% kidney failure from just

after she was born. She could die at any time. Now she goes home for a

few hours a day between dialysis sessions. But when child protection

took over custody, she stayed in hospital round the clock. In the

beginning it was like because they said that the doctors from hospital

are scared to send her with us at home, that we would hurt her, we

were a risk for her. Later, the child protection also said that she

hadn't bonded with her mother or father, Robert. But the fact that

she spends much time in hospital helped them to prove that it wasn't

true. It meant that there were regular medical records confirming

their story, that the court could refuse to consider. The mother, who

is from the Czech Republic, and the father who is Norwegian save the

child protection even accused them of saying they wanted their daughter

to die, to spare her a lifetime of pain. But the records show that

actually intervened more than once with suggestions that saved their

daughter's life. We have a patient diary since every day she was born.

We have every day written things from doctors and nurses. You wrote

everything down? What did that show? It shows that the child protection

is writing the opposite. In the diary it was written that she was

smiling to see her parents. They never talk with anyone, have never

been in our house, they've never seen us with Nikita. They saw the

run on -- saw her on one occasion. This has fuelled the protest in the

Czech Republic, protests backed by the state. So how does the Norwegian

government feel about all this anger at home and abroad? We don't have

many children in care, compared to other Nordic countries. So why there

is so much attention to the Norwegian system? We don't have a

good answer to that, but I understand that these cases raise a

lot of feelings and emotions. There's lots of evidence that

parents say isn't accepted. That's a concern we are looking into and

that's why we want to look into a broad review of the child welfare

cases to see what goes wrong and also learn from best practice. Good

children be taken off parents -- could children be taken off parents

simply because the parents had exercised mild corporal punishment?

I can't comment. This could be several other aspects from one case,

but it is important we have programmes helping parents, avoiding

the use corporal punishment in their child's upbringing, and that's the

answer to your question. But parents have to know the law and live by the

law in Norway, regardless of background.

Ruth and marry us' background is religious. -- Marius's. Bowral

Pentecostals and he is Romanian. Their supporters think they are

victims of discrimination and in Norway children with an immigrant

parents are four times more likely to be removed by force from their

families. Thank you. But there's no of knowing if cultural factors were

present in this case. We can't be sure exactly what is going on in

this family, but now Ruth's routine of taking bags of frozen breastmilk

twice a week to the baby is finally over. Since we filmed with the

couple, their baby son has now unexpectedly been returned to them.

But they still fear that got a long fight ahead for the other four

children and many more longer journeys to those agonisingly short

meetings with them, laden with unspoken emotion. What do you think

about before these meetings? We would like to explain to them their

situation and convert them, but we cannot do that, since we cannot talk

about the case. They say they are crying in the evenings, crying

themselves to sleep. Of course I would like to... To convert them and

tell them how to not be afraid. -- comfort them. But of course it is

hard to do that when she is afraid herself.

For many of us on Saturday it is not really going

It will be quite chilly, with air coming all the way from the Arctic.

By the early hours of Saturday morning there's even a chance of