Sweden to probe years of abuse in children’s homes

Thousands of Swedes who say they were subjected to physical abuse and cruel treatment in state children’s homes and foster care for decades from the 1950s won the promise of an official inquiry on Thursday.

A cabinet minister said the probe would investigate the cases, which peaked in the 1940s and ‘50s when Sweden’s zeal for social engineering included making children of single women or poor people wards of the state.

It could result in an apology and compensation similar to that given in the 1990s to around 60,000 women who were forcibly sterilised between 1936-76 after being deemed unfit for motherhood because they were handicapped.

Alleged abuse includes attempted rape and forcing children to keep their heads under icy water.

“I have spoken to so many people in the last week who are in living hell, who have been stigmatized for so long with nobody understanding their problem or even recognizing it,” said Birger Hjelm, who presides the charity “Society’s Fosterchildren”.

“Women and men aged 70 have called me crying like kids on the phone, speaking about these matters for the first time in their lives,” he told Reuters.

Proof of widespread abuse of minors in state care would embarrass a country better known for subsidized childcare and respecting human rights. Today’s Social Democrat government was pushed into action by a documentary on state television.

It prompted floods of calls to a charity for former foster children and to state archives housing their childhood records.

Gun-Britt, a woman born in 1953 in Gothenburg to an alcoholic mother, was sent away aged eight to a foster home she remembers as a “work camp”. She suffered “both physical and mental torture” and attempted rape by her foster father.

Kjell, now 55, said children were “forced to put our heads under ice-cold running water until the warder said it was enough. It felt like my head was going to shatter into pieces”.

His classmates went “from children’s home to jail, alcoholism, drugs, mental hospital, ruined marriages”.

“I don’t understand how grown-ups can treat children so badly. I heard in the TV report that the warders didn’t want to be interviewed because they were ashamed. I really hope they are, but they can’t be suffering like we did.”

Social Services Minister Morgan Johansson said he was “anxious to find out what really happened during those years. I would also like measures to be taken to help those burdened with terrible memories from that period”.

He has promised to study Norway’s payments of compensation to people abused while in state care, but Hjelm said monetary compensation was “secondary” to giving the victims redress.

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