Norway's Silent Scandal
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The conviction of a prominent expert in Norway's troubled child protection system - for downloading images of child sex abuse - has put the organisation under scrutiny once again. In April this year a child psychiatrist was convicted of downloading thousands of the images on his computer. Up until his arrest he played a key role in decisions about whether children should be separated from their parents for their own good. But there has been no public discussion in Norway about the implications of his conviction, no outrage in the newspapers, no plans to review cases he was involved in - even though the country's child protection agency, Barnevernet, has been much criticised in recent years for removing children from their families without justification. In April 2016 Tim Whewell reported on the story for Crossing Continents after Barnevernet attracted an international storm of protest over its child protection policies. Tim now returns to Norway to report on this extraordinary twist in the story and to find out why child protection in one of the world's wealthiest countries appears to be in crisis. Produced and Reported by Tim Whewell. (Image: A row of family shoes. Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading this podcast from the BBC. I'm Tim Hewell and this is a program I recorded in Norway. |
| 0:06.4 | It goes against quite a lot of what many people imagine about the country. |
| 0:10.0 | And I should warn you there is some disturbing content it's called Norway's silent scandal |
| 0:17.6 | hello this is assignment on the BBC World Service I'm Tim Hew, in a Norwegian wood on a mountain high above the capital |
| 0:26.2 | Oslo. |
| 0:27.2 | There's a rutted track here running between the high birch and fir trees and towards me along the |
| 0:34.8 | track a woman's running a lean-tanned blonde woman in her 50s in bright pink running |
| 0:40.2 | shorts she's called Cecilia and she wishes that she was running not alone but with her daughter. |
| 0:47.0 | Wishes she could undo a winter's day years ago when two unwelcome visitors came to her airy wooden house just down the hill. |
| 0:55.0 | So we're going to go back nine years now. |
| 1:00.0 | Yes. |
| 1:01.0 | To a day that was really important for you, Cecilia. |
| 1:07.0 | So what happened that day? |
| 1:08.0 | Yes, what happened? |
| 1:10.0 | Actually, I remember that when they came, I let my daughter open the door, so she greeted them. |
| 1:20.0 | They came inside and they asked where we were going to have the interview. |
| 1:24.1 | So there were two of them, there was a man and a woman. |
| 1:27.0 | Yes. A psychiatrist and a psychologist? |
| 1:28.8 | Yes. |
| 1:29.8 | You were really nervous? |
| 1:30.8 | Yeah, well I was quite nervous. I mean, I was, I mean, I think most parents are quite scared when they have these kind of experts come to their house. |
| 1:40.0 | Why had they come? Well, they had come to make a report to write how I was interacting with my daughter and see if I was qualified to be a mother for my daughter. |
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