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Norway: Parents Against the State

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investigate allegations that the country's child protection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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can be wrong. It is

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

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

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

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desperately to convince the authorities that she and Marius are

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

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

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

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

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and five and their baby were taken away in November.

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And Ruth and Marius's world fell apart.

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

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

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

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Inside the car was a child protection officer.

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She said the two girls had been taken away in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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children said first alerted the authorities that Marius and Ruth

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

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We were questioned about violence in the

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We admitted spanking the kids, but not...

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Not every time when they would do something bad.

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

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It's very clear until the smallest detail.

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It is not allowed for any physical correction.

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

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because they're still under investigation and the authorities

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

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Beginning on November 16th when the Norwegian authority for

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

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

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taken without reason have triggered demonstrations all over the world.

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

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

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from Romania and the couple belonged to an evangelical Christian

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

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

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

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I grew up believing that the Norwegian system was the best

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

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now his faith in the system is badly shaken.

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I grew up believing that the Norwegian system was the best

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The UN are stating that all the time.

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Then suddenly I discovered that this cannot be the case,

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

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

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The Norwegian child protection service known as Barnevernet said

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But that is not how it looked to Ingla.

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So this was the passive, non-sounding child.

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How long is this before she was taken?

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

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She was put into emergency fostering, because the child

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protection service said she was suffering serious psychological

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harm, because her parents count meet her emotional needs.

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

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

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

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I did everything, I changed nappies, I change nappies

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

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

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Just days before child protection started their urgent assessment

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

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

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

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

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

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They haven't mentioned that by one word.

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

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the assessments that these persons working for Barnevernet have made.

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

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the little girl but the child protection services said that would

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

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

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

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

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the wider family. For the last five months Marius and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Of course, parents whose children are taken into care

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

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It devotes more resources and attention to children and their

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rights than almost any country on earth and child protection usually

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

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they regard as extreme cases they they seek care orders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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enough and not enough children are giving sufficient time.

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

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

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

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

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

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very unusual for children to be taken away without parents being

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contacted first and without serious attempts immediately afterwards to

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

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

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

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

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

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dysfunctional organisation that makes the seriousness calculation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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true. It meant that there were regular medical records confirming

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

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

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child protection even accused them of saying they wanted their daughter

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

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actually intervened more than once with suggestions that saved their

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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simply because the parents had exercised mild corporal punishment?

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

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but it is important we have programmes helping parents, avoiding

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

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

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law in Norway, regardless of background.

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

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Pentecostals and he is Romanian. Their supporters think they are

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victims of discrimination and in Norway children with an immigrant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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children and many more longer journeys to those agonisingly short

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

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

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

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

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

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

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hard to do that when she is afraid herself.

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For many of us on Saturday it is not really going

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

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

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