Articles and Videos - Save Your Children

An analysis of the documentary and news and expert reactions in Norway.

Categories Norway

It’s not just migrant children – how child removals in the US system go wrong by Suranya Aiyar

All that is wrong with the way children are removed from their parents by US state agencies acting for their supposed "protection".

Categories USA

The US immigrant scandal shows children urgently need protection from the State by Suranya Aiyar

The scandal over immigrant children in the USA is part of much deeper problem of over-broad and poorly regulated powers of seizure and custody of children given to state agencies in Western countries. The US government has responded to the migrant children situation by piggy-backing on a system already in place of easy child confiscation by state agencies that is wide open to abuse.

Categories United Kingdom,USA

An Indian girl in Scandinavia: Abandoned by her adopters, betrayed by the State by Mrutyuanjai Mishra

This is the story of a little Indian girl in Scandinavia abandoned by her adopters and betrayed by the State. Statistics are showing that the rate of adoption failure in these countries is quite high, leaving rejected adoptees to be institutionalised and marginalised once more in their adopted land.

Categories India,Other Countries

Childhood Training of Elites of Imperial Europe by Kaustav Bhattacharrya

The European Empires and their nation-states which arose during the 18th and 19th centuries increasingly turned towards the Spartan ideal with its accent towards developing a strong military and a robust state necessitated by the demands of the Empire to possess a cohesive effective ruling class.

Categories General

Children in Imperial Europe by Kaustav Bhattacharyya

Global child rights discourse often turns the spotlight on how children are treated – historically and in present times – in the Third World. But it is also educational to turn the gaze around to study the treatment of children down the ages in the West. In this article we look at the child in Imperial Britain, Germany (Prussia) and France – the three dominant powers of Europe of the time.

Categories Other Countries,United Kingdom

Public health for children: care or control? by Lars-Toralf Storstrand

Parents in the world's leading welfare states are increasingly facing disagreement, hostility and suspicion from public services over their children's medical treatment.

Categories Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom

Indian mothers stand up to US bullying in the name of “child welfare” by Niharika Dass

Will the Govenrment stand by them or cave to the USA?

Categories India,USA

A case exposing the double standards of Norway’s CPS by Jan Simonsen and Marianne Haslev Skånland

A top Norwegian child protection expert, member of the exclusive 14-member national Expert Commission on Children, Jo Erik Brøyn, is found guilty of possessing and sharing about 200,000 pictures and 4000 hours of video showing children subjected to brutal sexual abuse. But the system appears to be very lenient on the question of this child psychiatrist's two young children to whom he is the single parent. Is Norway's child protection establishment reluctant to go after one of "their own"?

Categories Norway

Children and Mothers Victimised by Danish Child Protection Services by Mrutyuanjai Mishra

In this article you hear the voice of children against the Child Protection Services (CPS) - two girls who ran back to their mother after years of forced foster care and a little boy whose cries for his mother went unheeded. Also note the way the child who resists being separated from his family is drugged into submission by the system. This is also yet another story of Western CPS preying on mothers fleeing domestic violence.

Categories Other Countries

Children as State Property in Europe: An Ancient Legacy by Kaustav Bhattacharyya

This article startlingly anticipates the bizarre and tragic drama that unfolded in April 2018 in Britain in the case of Baby Alfie Evans. It would appear that children as state property has an ancient legacy in Europe.

Categories General,Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom

How I lost my grandson to ruthless US child protection authorities by Susan Barringer Wells

They rejected my daughter as a caregiver claiming mental unfitness when it was they who did everything to exacerbate her problems. And they rejected me, the grandmother, as a caregiver, based on my disagreement with them on how to treat her.

Categories USA

The Case of Baby Alfie Evans: The Price We Pay for Modern Medicine and the “Compassionate” State by Suranya Aiyar

Liberals have to face the fact that some of their pet doctrines and big state projects have proven to be mistaken, or atleast need a thorough rethink.

Categories United Kingdom

Norway’s Barnevernet, wrongly taking children by Tomáš Zdechovský, Czech Member of European Parliament

A Member of the European Parliament writes about Norway's Orwellian system of "child protection".

Categories Czech Republic,Norway,Other Countries

Mistaken experiments in child-raising outside the family by Lars-Toralf Storstrand

A case for abandoning utopian communitarian ideals in child welfare for a balanced approach that gives due consideration to family and love in child-raising.

Categories Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom

Denmark’s proposed “ghettoudspil” laws target children of immigrants by Mrutyuanjai Mishra

Danish-based Indian journalist Mrutyuanjai Mishra writes about the proposed "ghettoudspil 2030" law that targets Danish ghetto areas where immigrants tend to be concentrated and under which it would be easier for child protection authorities to remove immigrant children. This appears to be an extension of steadily tightening immigration rules that are even discriminating against returning Danish expatriate's families, particularly those with foreign spouses.

Categories Other Countries

Mistaken Medical Theories are Sending Innocent Parents to Jail by Dr James Le Fanu

A systematic miscarriage of justice entrenched within the legal system over many years.

Categories United Kingdom,USA

Sex, Lies and Child Rights NGOs by Suranya Aiyar

Not only has the child protection industry been ignoring the culture of abuse of children outside the home, they have been guilty of molesting children themselves. What this does tell us is that the child protection industry has not been under sufficient scrutiny to keep to any standards – whether in the character of the people it hires, or in the quality of the work being done.

Categories India,Other Countries,United Kingdom,USA

Plato as the Forebear of Draconian Modern Child Protection by Dr Kaustav Bhattacharyya

In article Dr. Kaustav Bhattacharyya traces key themes in today’s child protection thinking of the West to the ideas of …

Categories General

UNICEF’S RACIST STANDARDS GENERATE RACIST HEADLINES

UNICEF's and international aid-organisations' nation-wise ranking criteria for babies and children are racist and unhelpful.

Categories India,Other Countries

Denmark state welfare agencies punish vulnerable immigrant mother instead of helping her by Mrutyuanjai Mishra

Tales of unending despair from the "happiest" country of the world.

Categories Other Countries

Breaking! UK Snatches Indian Children Over Parents’ Dispute With Local Authority.

Watch this for a step-by-step account of how the UK courts allowed two innocent Indian children to be put up …

Categories India,United Kingdom

All you need is love, except when the State judges families (Part I & II) by Ian Josephs

In this essay we are proud to present British philanthropist Ian Josephs on his work helping families targeted by UK Social Services. In the first part of the essay, Ian Josephs makes the unexpected suggestion that today's grim and severe child protection services are the product of that happiest and most carefree of times - the Swinging Sixties! In the second part of the essay he demonstrates how big money and a low threshold for the removal of children from their families in the UK is causing ever-increasing numbers of unwarranted child removals.

Categories United Kingdom

How I became an advocate for parents accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome by Jeremy Praay

An American activist writes about his involvement in medical misdiagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

Categories USA

And then, Child Protection Services took my baby away (Part I & II) by Vivianna Graham

A family's nightmare with US child protection services.

Categories USA

The Myth of Scandinavian “Happiness” and How Children Pay the Price For Radical Feminism by Mrutyuanjai Mishra

Regardless of where you stand on child protection agencies, with thousands of children being torn annually from their parents in Scandinavian countries, they can hardly claim to be the "happiest" in the world. Do we really have in Scandinavia a unique and historic case of parental dysfunction? Or are parents being misjudged by their system? In this article, Denmark-based Indian journalist Mrutyuanjai Mishra claims that Scandinavia's social welfare agencies are causing a human rights crisis with the systematic wrongful removal of children from parents. He argues that this state-sponsored child snatching is driven by an aggressive version of feminism that views the family as an outdated patriarchal institution which oppresses children who need to be "saved" by being removed from their parents. But the result has been the unfair targeting of the poor, the uneducated, migrants and, recently, fathers in general.

Categories Norway,Other Countries

Is Attachment Theory Always Reliable as a Measure of Child Welfare? by Nandita Chaudhary and Heidi Keller

Professors Nandita Chaudhary and Heidi Keller question the application of Attachment Theory in the field of child development. They point out various settings in which the universalising methods and practices of Attachment Theory would not apply and would lead to an incorrect evaluation of there being attachment failure between a parent and child. This paper has important insights for child protection as Attachment Theory is a key tenet of modern child protection thinking. Child protection agencies are removing babies and toddlers by judging the attachment with a parent (usually the mother) to have ‘failed’ even where there is no actual evidence of harm to the child.

Categories India,Other Countries

Scores of Latvian Children Deprived of their Families in Foreign Countries (Part II) by Julija Stepanenko

Latvian Member of Parliament Julija Stepanenko describes the ground-breaking work by Latvia to regain children of their citizens unjustifiably confiscated by foreign child protection services.

Categories Latvia,Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom

“Stay Strong To Every Loving Parent, Anywhere,” Vaclav Klaus, Jr., Czech MP

Czech MP Vaclav Klaus Jr.'s strong message of support in the struggle against increasing unjust interference in the biological family by the State.

Categories Czech Republic,Norway,United Kingdom

UK court demands return of four Latvian children – report by LSM.LV dated 8 December 2015

See here report of UK courts asking for forced return of Latvian families fleeing to Latvia with their children to escape …

Categories Latvia,United Kingdom

Scores of Latvian Children Deprived of their Families in Foreign Countries (Part I) by Julija Stepanenko

Latvian Member of Parliament Julia Stepanenko describes how large numbers of Latvian children abroad are unjustifiably removed from their families by foreign child protection services.

Categories Latvia

Part 3: Indian NGOs and Child Welfare Committees traumatise Nat children in the name of “child protection” by Madhu Kishwar

Social welfare laws are oppressing the very children they were meant to protect.

Categories India

India Should Not Adopt A Western-Style Child Protection System by Joe Burns

Joe Burns is a prominent international activist and critic of Western Child Protection Services (CPS) from the Republic of Ireland. Over the last decade he has helped numerous innocent families, including many Indian ones, facing persecution by European child protection agencies. Read on for why Joe Burns warns India to develop her own child protection system and not adopt the Western one which is, in fact, abusing children in the name of child protection.

Categories India,Other Countries,United Kingdom

Western Critics of Child Protection Services Are Having To Turn To India To Be Heard – Special Report by SaveYourChildren.In

The Sunday Guardian's series on inhumane Western child protection services makes the news in Norway again. Western critics of child protection services are having to turn to India to be heard against the unjustified removal of children by the state in their countries.

Categories India,Norway,United Kingdom

Governments Removing Children from Families on Inadequate and Fraudulent Grounds by Christopher Booker

Distinguished journalist Christopher Booker writes about systemic dysfunction in Britain's child protection system, which is unfortunately being replicated by governments around the world, including India. Christopher Booker has been reporting the wrongful removal of children by British Social Services since 2009. In this article he describes the widespread commercialisation of Britain's child care system, one-sided inquires in child protection cases that are weighed against the parents every step of the way, and the abuse of children in the custody of foster carers which is causing untold suffering of parents and children targeted by a child protection system that has become "horribly corrupted from the initial high-minded ideals for which it was set up".

Categories India,United Kingdom

Norway and Sweden – where inhuman rights prevail by Siv Westerberg

Scandinavian countries where governments, authorities and courts do not respect the human right of children and parents to a family life together

Categories India,Norway,Other Countries

Part 2: Indian NGOs and Child Welfare Committees traumatise Nat children in the name of “child protection” by Madhu Kishwar

Rescue or Persecution? Well-known academic, writer and human rights activist Madhu Kishwar continues her harrowing description of the mistreatment of children of the impoverished Nat community under poorly thought-out child and social welfare laws. Part 1 of this essay was published last week.

Categories India

Part 1: Indian NGOs and Child Welfare Committees traumatise Nat children in the name of “child protection” by Madhu Kishwar

Well-known academic, writer and human rights activist Madhu Kishwar describes the harassment faced by Nat children under poorly thought-out child and social welfare laws. The Nats are an impoverished community of wandering acrobatic performers, whose performance traditions go back hundreds of years. Rather than uplifting Nat children, the Indian child rights laws along with NGOs and Child Welfare Committees implementing them are compounding the problems arising from their parents’ poverty and lack of work opportunities.

Categories India,Norway

The Brutal History of Child Confiscation by the State by Cristina Nicoli

In this gripping essay, Cristina Nicoli, an Australian of Romanian origin, traces Norway's notorious child confiscation practices to historical instances of state-sponsored child removal. A grotesque picture emerges of brutal episodes of forced child removal over the last century all over the Western world, and its colonies, from Europe to Latin America to Australia, whether in the name of racial cleansing, or educating, 'civilising', integrating, or politically indoctrinating children.

Categories Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom,USA

EU Plays Soft Empire Games With Global Child Rights by Dr. Kaustav Bhattacharyya

Dr. Kaustav Bhattacharyya presents international “standards-setting” as a tactic by the European Union (EU) for exerting influence around the world. He argues that child welfare measures and best practices are an important tool in the EU’s exercise of “soft” empire. Dr. Bhattacharyya cautions that we in India should not blindly adopt the EU’s universalizing measures in child policy as research is showing that they have resulted in discrimination against immigrants, marginalized communities and ethnic minorities.

Categories India,Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom

UNICEF Silent On Hollywood Celebrity Supporter Kevin Spacey Accused Of Sexual Misconduct On 14-Year-Old.

Not only has UNICEF not commented on allegations regarding Kevin Spacey, or any other Hollywood celebrity’s, predatory and manipulative sexual …

Categories United Kingdom,USA

What About Child Rights in Surrogacy? by Catherine Lynch

Australian lawyer and adoptee rights activist Dr Catherine Lynch discusses the ethics of surrogacy, making a child-centered case for the abolition of all forms of surrogacy.

Categories India,Other Countries

Global Child Rights Conventions Misunderstand Children and Undermine the Family to their Detriment by Suranya Aiyar

The Trump Administration should take up the worldwide fight against injustices by authoritarian and anti-family child protection services, a cause already espoused by many in the President's base. The threat of global child rights conventions arises once again for India as the USA mistakenly pressures us to sign the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Hague Convention). Contrary to what US consular officials in India are saying, the Hague Convention is not limited to inter-parental custody disputes. Going beyond parental custody, the Hague Convention grants powers to any “institution” or "other body" to make cross-country custodial claims over children. This would allow child protection agencies to chase both parents around the world to forcibly extradite their children. The Hague Convention is part of an array of anti-family and globalist regulations that aim to give the State supra-custodial rights over children. What Trump supporters in the USA say against globalism echoes with many of us CPS critics as we struggle to understand how the well-meaning effort to help abused and disadvantaged children went so wrong. If there has ever been an example of the folly of internationalism and unchecked state intervention in private life, it is CPS.

Categories India,USA

State Surveillance For Every Child In Scotland?

Scottish activist June Conway describes the controversy around a Scottish law, the “Named Person Scheme”, which appoints a state official to keep all children and their parents under state scrutiny and mandatory reporting from conception till majority. This scheme was developed under the Scottish government’s 'Getting It Right For Every Child' Policy (GIRFEC) which the Scottish government describes on its website as an approach to child policy that "has been built up" from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It is interesting to see how the UNCRC was interpreted in Scotland to develop a plan to keep families under constant and all-pervasive state scrutiny, and how parents were the last to find out about it. Though the UNCRC pays lip service to a child’s rights to its family, not a single country has interpreted its provisions to develop schemes that would strengthen vulnerable families. In practice its implementation in country after country has meant the establishment of laws and agencies that police the family. Its provisions have been used to justify increasingly swift and permanent severance of a child’s ties with its natural family.

Categories United Kingdom

The Global Child Rights Model in India by Nandita Rao

"It is for the first time in the year 2000 with the amendment of the Juvenile Justice Act that the State in India stepped into the lives of families.....committees have been empowered to take any decision that they consider to be in the welfare of the child, overriding even the wishes of the child and the parents.....I have observed that both Child Welfare Committees and Courts, endorse keeping the child with the family as the first option. The decisions are normally to reinforce the family rather then to separate the child from the family. However, unfortunately, there is no mandate in the law to suggest that this should be the first option. It is merely the current social conditioning of the decision-makers. I have also observed that often teenage children who run away from home, within weeks of staying at a State-run institution, choose to return to their parents, and are allowed and encouraged to do so. Acknowledging that often the problems are not irreconcilable, but circumstantial. It is time we reconsider the role of the State in the life of a child."

Categories India

How Norwegian experts came to reject biological kinship as relevant in child welfare policy by Professor Marianne Skanland

Professor Marianne Haslev Skanland writes about how experts in Norway came to ask for the exclusion of considerations of biological kinship – «the biological principle» – in formulating child welfare policy there. Indian readers will be intrigued to see just how far things can go once you set on the path of child rights as envisioned in the developed West today.

Categories Norway

Norwegian MP Tears Into Their Child Welfare System

The most suspect and frustrating of all in child protection cases I hold to be the absence of any requirement of proof, of stated and reasoned cause, or of concrete answers. Allegations are made without any form of documentation, just expressions like “we think” and “our assessment”. The County Committees accept vague, undefined claims and arguments, and do not demand anything in the way of quality control and concrete justification for the CWS’s conclusions....They have in my view become a state within the state, they do not act according to existing laws and rules. It seems to me that they have one goal only: as many children as possible taken into care. This is not how the CWS should work.

Categories India,Norway

Protecting Indian Childhood by Dr. Nandita Chaudhary, 25 September 2017

Cultural psychologist and child development expert, Dr Nandita Chaudhary, argues that blindly adopting child-related measures advocated by international agencies will sabotage the welfare of Indian children. In this paper, she makes the case for India to develop its own model of child welfare, that takes the due consideration of local ideologies, circumstances and ways of living of children and families across the country.

Categories India

When Should a Child be Taken From His Parents by Larissa MacFaquhar, The New Yorker

“The reckless destruction of American families in pursuit of the goal of protecting children is as serious a problem as the failure to protect children,”

Categories USA

Unfeeling U.S. agencies confiscate children from Indian parents by Siddharth Tiwari, The Sunday Guardian, September 2017

Legal experts, doctors, and investigative journalists alleged that the US child protection agencies were biased and used flawed techniques to detect abuse.

Categories India,USA

Eastern Child, Western Custody by Sumedha Sarvadaman, Sirf News, January 2015

This was a report about a Gujarati-origin family whose children were removed for forced adoption by British Social Services in 2015.

Categories India,United Kingdom

Child Protection Amounts to Eugenic Selection? by Dr Kaustav Bhattacharyya, Swarajya Blogs, January 2015

In the name of protecting children from ‘unfit’ parents, the West is going the Nazi-Fascist way to cast future generations in a certain mould — at the expense of the primary social unit called family. Such countries can no longer pride themselves as liberal democracies.

Categories General

The Confiscation of the Bhattacharya Children in Norway, A Case Study

Among the well-known jurists who came to together to work on this study were Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice AP Shah, who had recently retired. The study is based on the County Committee and District Court orders and other official record of the case as sent to the mother by the Norwegian authorities.

Categories India

SAVE YOUR CHILD FROM UNICEF by Suranya Aiyar, August 2015

A study of UNICEF’s biased and false claims about Indian parents

Categories India

Are we taking too many children into care? The Guardian, November 2016

'Why is this happening – and what can be done?" Includes some latest statistics.

Categories United Kingdom

Birth Parents and the Collateral Consequences of Court-ordered Child Removal: Towards a Comprehensive Framework by Karen Broadhurst and Claire Maison, 2017

A wide ranging study arguing for a more humane approach to parents by the care system in First World countries.

Categories Other Countries,United Kingdom,USA

Opening Up the Family Courts: Transparency in the Family Court and Court of Protection, Sir James Munby, 2013

"There is a pressing need for more transparency, indeed for much more transparency, in the family justice system."

Categories United Kingdom

Police ignore judge’s order, to help Latvian family escape British social workers by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 2015

"Over the past three years, mounting alarm has been expressed by the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and various eastern European governments at the readiness of Britain’s social workers to seize an ever-growing number of children from foreign parents working in the UK for what they consider to be wholly misguided reasons."

Categories United Kingdom

Sabine McNeill on Forced Adoptions and Foster Care in the UK, 2014

"1 child every 20 minutes"

Categories United Kingdom

Parents had week-old baby taken away by social services after father heard ‘praising benefits of formula milk’ by Patrick Foster, The Telegraph, March 2017

"A local council has been ordered to pay damages after taking a week-old baby into care because the father expressed “unorthodox” views about the need to sterilise feeding bottles. A family court judge awarded the couple and their son, who is now 15 months old, a total of £11,250 after ruling that Kirklees Council had breached their human rights and misled a judge in a bid to remove the child from their care."

Categories United Kingdom

The Foster Care Business by Corporate Watch, 2015

"Foster care has become a lucrative business. Whether it should be a business at all is another question."

Categories United Kingdom

Why don’t the family courts obey the law? by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 2015

Report of a child care case - Lord Justice James Munby

Categories United Kingdom

British Social Workers Tear Apart Happy Families, Seize Children from Loving Parents by Hans Bader, Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2011

Report here on injustices in the UK child protection system. Includes links to other reports.

Categories United Kingdom

Fostering children is big business by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, May 2016

"Most people would be startled to learn how much of the child protection sector is now dominated by a handful of companies, most of them run by ex-social workers. These companies are paid huge sums by local authorities to make their fostering arrangements."

Categories United Kingdom

The depths of Britain’s ‘worst ever’ child care crisis by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, Sept. 2016

Some statistics-Lord Justice James Munby

Categories United Kingdom

What happened to putting children’s welfare first? by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, Oct. 2016

An article with some recent statistics on UK CPS and some history on their child laws.

Categories United Kingdom

A brave bid to clean up the family courts will soon be over by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, March, 2017

Reflections on the imminent retirement of Lord Justice Munby, a brave judge who, as President of the Family Division of the British Court system that has jurisdiction over child care matters tried valiantly to bring Social Services to book.

Categories United Kingdom

The real scandal hidden by gags is what goes on in family courts by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 2011

Case of a mother deprived of her daughter when she complained to social workers about possible abuse by the estranged father.

Categories United Kingdom

Strange Bedfellows: How Child Welfare Agencies Can Benefit From Investing In Multidisciplinary Parent Representation by Vivek S. Sankaran, Patricia L. Rideout & Martha L. Raimon

Published in 2015. Interesting background reading on how the US child protection system operates.

Categories USA

Representing Parents in Child Welfare Cases by Vivek Sankaran, Law Professor, Univ. of Michigan

"parents typically meet their attorneys for the first time in the courthouse immediately before or just following their initial removal hearing. In all likelihood, the attorney who claims to represent them was appointed (and will be paid) by the same court that authorised the children's removal."

Categories USA

Children stolen by the state, needlessly causing utter misery in one of Britain’s most disturbing scandals by Christohper Booker, Daily Mail, 2012

"the social workers cite vague reasons based on opinion rather than testable evidence — they use terms such as ‘emotional abuse’ the use of which has soared by 70 per cent."

Categories United Kingdom

10,000 Children Ripped From Their Families

Reported statistics on children in the UK care system. Express UK, 2011.

Categories United Kingdom

Child protection: MPs must act on the scandal of seized children by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 2010

"The parents must then wrestle with a Kafka-esque system rigged against them in every way. They find themselves in courts where every normal principle of British justice has been stood on his head."

Categories United Kingdom

Its time to bring family law to book by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 2010

"Having talked at length to the mother, ...I put a series of questions to the council to get their side of the story. The response,,, was to ask the High Court to rule that I should not be allowed to write about the case at all."

Categories United Kingdom

Family Justice: The Secret State That Steals Our Children, The Times, 2008

A number of anecdotes of children taken by UK Social Services.

Categories United Kingdom

Family Courts: The Hidden Untouchables, The Times, 2008

"the child protection system is a sort of secret state....even councillors [who are supposed to oversee social workers] can be kept out of the loop."

Categories United Kingdom

A Conspiracy of Silence, The Times, 2008: Secrecy in family courts and social services

"the child protection system should be accountable and transparent. Shockingly, it is neither."

Categories United Kingdom

Family Justice: Your Word Against Theirs by Camilla Cavendish, The Times, 2008

"I wrote [earlier] about the many desperate parents who have approached me after losing their children to social services. One thing they all have in common is shock at how quickly the system seems to decide against them, and at how doggedly it sticks to that view despite all evidence to the contrary."

Categories United Kingdom

Sally Clark: A Mother Wrongly Convicted of Child Murder Based on Spurious Abuse Theories

Sally Clark, a solicitor who lost two babies within weeks of their death for no apparent medical reason was convicted of murder based on spurious theories of parental abuse. Her conviction was later overturned.

Categories United Kingdom

Justice Out of Balance by Michael Nott

A critique of abuse allegations based on the contested theory of Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy, published in 2004 in Nexus Magazine, Australia.

Categories Other Countries

The Iron Hand that Rocks the Cradle by Marianne Haslev Skanland, The Hindu, 2012

Almost all families attacked by Norway's 'child protection services' are good and loving. Some need help, but most of them need nothing other than to be left in peace.

Categories India,Norway

Foster Care: Its Time to Think Out of the Box by Suranya Aiyar

"We must reject the ideology of the Western child welfare services that makes a split between the interest of the child on the on hand and the presence of parents and extended family in its life on the other."

Categories India,Norway,United Kingdom,USA Tags Bhattacharya case

Understanding and Responding to Child Confiscation by Social Service Agencies

Suranya Aiyar surveys the principles and practices of Western child protection systems. Published in 2012 in Pravasi Today.

Categories India,Norway,Other Countries,United Kingdom,USA Tags Bhattacharya case

Chopping and Changing to Suit Its Ends by Suranya Aiyar

Suranya Aiyar writes: "The blanket confidentiality under which the Norwegian Child Welfare Service (CWS) operates is exceptional in family law and extraordinary for a public authority in a democracy......In the age of WikiLeaks, the Norwegian tolerance for a powerful public authority like the CWS deflecting inquiry by pointing to a confidentiality rule is strange." Reflections on how confidentiality laws could be are shielding the mistakes and bias of the Norwegian child protection agency. Published in 2012 in the Hindustan Times.

Categories India,Norway Tags Bhattacharya case

What Does Gunnar Toresen Know About Children? by Suranya Aiyar

On the removal of children from a Bengali family by Norway's notorious child protection agency in the famous Bhattacharya Case of 2012, Suranya Aiyar writes; "those who speak of racism and cultural intolerance only skim the surface of what is happening here. The question to be asked is what grotesque conception of family, of babyhood, of motherhood is at work here?" Published in 2012 by Kafila.

Categories India,Norway Tags Bhattacharya case

Junk Science Serves Junk Justice: We Can Do Better by Norm Pattis

Article by US lawyer, Norm Pattis, arguing that allegations of Shaken Baby Syndrome are based on "questionable scientific evidence". 2005, Connecticut Law Tribune.

Categories USA

The Sounds of Silence: The Wrongful Diagnosis of Child Abuse – A Master Theory by Dr. James Le Fanu

UK, 2005. Paper by British physician, James Le Fanu on misdiagnosis of child abuse.

Categories United Kingdom

Shaken Baby Syndrome, Abusive Head Trauma, and Actual Innocence: Getting it Right by Patrick D. Barnes, Keith A. Findley, David A. Moran and Waney Squier

USA, UK, 2012. A peer-reviewed academic paper refuting Shaken Baby Syndrome theory as a default diagnosis when certain symptoms are presented by babies and children.

Categories United Kingdom,USA

Smacking and the Law – A European Perspective by Ruby Harrold-Claesson

A critique of anti-smacking laws by Swedish attorney-at-law, Ruby Harrold-Claesson, who is also the President of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, which does extensive work exposing atrocities of child protection services worldwide.

Categories Other Countries

Norwegian Child Protection Hits Immigrants Hard by Aage Simonsen

Based on his experience monitoring child protection cases as member of a municipal monitoring committee, biologist Dr Aage Simonsen argues that the initially positive process of utilising the welfare state machinery to eradicate social divisions, has created an ideology with scant place for difference and a demand for uniformity, especially by Norway's child protection services which view everything departing from a textbook standard as potentially harmful for children. This often results in foreigners and newcomers to the country being singled out.

Categories Norway

The Child Protection Services (CPS) – unfortunately the cause of grievous harm by Prof. Marianne Skanland

Norway, 2006. Article describing the systemic failures of Norway's child protection services. This will give the reader an understanding of how problems with Norway's child protection services are longstanding and pervasive; and that critcism comes from Norwegians themselves, and not only from outsiders.

Categories Norway

The Curious Case of ‘Child Protection’ in Norway by Prof. Marianne Haslev Skanland

Overview of the Norwegian child protection services in the context of the case an Indian family, the Bhattacharyas, whose children were taken into foster care. Published by Pravasi Today in 2012.

Categories India,Norway

Child Prisons? In Sweden? by Siv Westerberg

Article by Swedish lawyer, Siv Westerberg, on the treatment of children taken into Swedish state care. Published in the year 2000 by Nordic Committee for Human Rights, a Swedish non-governmental organisation that has been playing a leading role in exposing the human rights violations by child protection agencies in Sweden and elsewhere.

Categories Other Countries

The Folly of Sweden’s State Controlled Families by Siv Westerberg

Lecture delivered in 1999 on Swedish child protection services by lawyer, Siv Westerberg. Published by Sweden-based Nordic Committee for Human Rights, which does extensive work exposing atrocities of child protection services worldwide.

Categories Other Countries

Foster Children as Lucrative Business by Siv Westerberg

Article on foster care in Sweden by lawyer, Siv Westerberg. Published by Sweden-based Nordic Committee for Human Rights, which does extensive work exposing atrocities of child protection services worldwide.

Categories Other Countries

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