You've downloaded assignment from Norway's Frozen North and this is also a chilling tale

of sexual abuse that stayed secret for decades. It's by no means an easy listen but it is I think

a testament to human resilience and inside the awfulness there's now hope. It'll be interesting

to hear what you make of the programme so do write us a review and rate us with your podcast

provider if you get a chance. This week's assignment on the BBC World Service comes from Norway.

It's a story about sexual abuse, survival and rebuilding a tiny community in the home of the

Sami Indigenous people. I'm Linda Pressley.

I was visiting my father and had some whistler of some friends and I think it was like 10, 11,

12, it happens over years. With the same men? Yes. And they were friends of your father? Yeah.

And so on those occasions those friends of his they kind of separated you from your dad and from

your family did they manipulated the situation? Yeah, it could be on in the hallway and he was in

the living room so it was just to close the door and it weren't long.

I'll call this 20-something hilder. Her thick hair frames her Sami features high cheekbones and

arm and shaped eyes. The Sami are some of Scandinavia's original inhabitants living in the north

of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. And hilders one of 11 who spoke out about sexual abuse

in one remote Arctic municipality. Tisfield has two main centres, drag on the western side of the

fjord and chupsvik on the east. Together it's home to just 2,000 people, half of them Sami.

And it's the numbers that make this story so stark. In this minute community, a police report

published last November detailed 151 cases of abuse involving 82 victims and 92 perpetrators,

the majority of Sami heritage. The earliest cases date from the 1950s, the most recent from 2017.

Like so many survivors of sexual exploitation, as a child, hilder kept silent.

Do you feel like ashamed and you don't want to talk about it?

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