Responsibility by public servants – an impossible task
One of the most important news in June 2011 was the judgment in the Broenderslev case where parents neglected their own children in a very serious way.
We are talking corporal punishment. It is not allowed for parents to hit their children in Denmark. We are talking poor housing standard and clothes not suited for the weather conditions. We are talking of children starving. We are talking of sexual molestation of the oldest girl – which at the end was a young woman aged 20.
They were not foster parents so they are by Danish laws upheld to the strictest standards. They cannot just kill their children like the foster parents from Klarup where the husband wrote the death certificate whenever one of the children left for a better place. They cannot hit the children like the foster parents in Mern (Maybe it is illegal but as the case has been lost somewhere, it has not yet got to the trail phase despite numerous witnesses) and of course they cannot have sex with children in their care. There have been cases in the foster care system like the case with 3 sisters near the town of Skaelskoer where they were molested by their foster parent and the official didn’t believe them because children in foster are presumed to lie by default.
The parents were convicted but because the media continued to ask why this family wasn’t discovered before their case were extreme, the system was forced to analyze why it went wrong.
Everybody in the system have done their best to remove their involvement in this case so the earliest mention of this family was some 5 years back when they already had 6 children and were living in a house close to collapse down at Lolland. The police has visited them and noticed the standards. They had photographed their house and sent the photos to the child protection services (CPS). The people from CPS vent for a visit but the father wouldn’t open the door so they left again - End of that!
Reports came in. The children didn’t always attend school and when they did they came in dirty and worn-out clothes. The CPS visited once more and once more they were not let in.
So it went for some years. The family got more children. Then at some point the CPS stated that they wanted to make the report-50 on the family. It is a serious matter. It could end up with the removal of the family or it could mean that therapists either move in with the family or the family has to move into a center where they would be observed 24/7 by therapists.
When the report was finished it recommended massive support for the family. Then the family did choose to leave down and the report was archived somewhere.
However in the new town (Skanderborg) they were not welcome. It has partly something to do with our history. In the old days whenever people was out of the job they were offered a one-way ticket to one of the larger towns so they would not be a burden the local community. There they could hide without bringing shame to their family name. Now where people are obligated to take whatever job they are offered the traffic has reversed. If you live where there are no jobs you cannot be put into one. Skanderborg doesn’t want to belong to the part of Denmark called “The rotten Banana” so when people start talking of poor newcomers in their community they sent out their own SWAT team of social workers demanding all kind of improvements so families are stressed to move. You cannot close the door on them. They have some kind of loophole in our laws so they can force themselves in without a court order (There are according to sources 78 ways authorities can avoid the constitutional right for a Dane to have privacy on their own property. One of them is to inspect whether there is a television in the house).
The family left Skanderborg after only 4 months during the night. They left no forwarding address but they rented a house in Broenderslev. Up there the houses are of general poor standard and they are often rented to poor people from the cities that are hiding from work or because they have gotten some work-related injury – such cases usually take 10-15 years to handle and most people have to declare bankruptcy before they can get the aid they are entitled to.
After some 4 months the authorities in Bronderslev discovered that the family was living there. They got the reports from Skanderborg but for some reason they disappeared - properly because they were filed correctly. In another case where the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb by mistake up in Greenland the workers who were exposed to radiation couldn’t get compensation for their illnesses because the reports disappeared until many years later where the reports were discovered to have been placed where they were supposed to be –archived correctly. By then most of the workers were of course dead and it is believed that this trick saved millions for the Danish state.
We don’t know what the report was archived. We do know that social workers from Broenderslev visited the family months later when neighbors and the school made the same kinds of complaints as down at Lolland. We also know that the social workers were not allowed entry to the house. They didn’t do more hoping that the family would leave. Putting 9 kids into foster care would increase the tax percent by one or two point forcing the entire community to suffer.
But then the oldest girl – now a young woman escaped home to her birth mother. What she revealed that she had been molested the police arrested the parents and the children were taken into foster care. But now the ugly part of the story started. Who should pick up the bill?
After a long dispute the state ruled that Lolland pay because they did just as little as Broenderslev but they were first. However regardless of the fact that Lolland has to pay it is still called the Broenderslev case. The town has down a lot to make it go away as fast as possible. They have split up the siblings to a number of facilities and foster families hoping that the children will forget their family and history. They have torn down the house the family lived in. They have promoted the social workers who visited the family, so they could not do the same mistake another time and finally they fired some member of the administration down at the city hall so they could say that some are responsible.
People are angry at the handing but for what reason? They get what they pay for! None wants to pay more in taxes. Then the district attorney wants to investigate if they can charge some of the social workers for not doing their jobs. Bad idea! Next time a family has a problem and it could be dealt with by some therapy the social workers would charge in and remove the child because they rather would be safe than sorry - of course not because they care about the child but because they wouldn’t risk criminal prosecution
Let me state it rather clearly. It is a case which only deserves to be forgotten. We cannot place every child in foster care which needs it.
First of all because it would not benefit the child. There are many cases every year where children at group homes or therapeutic boarding schools or even normal boarding school are molested once every 14 day on average. Search for Fenskaer which is an “Efterskole” (boarding school) for children with special need. One of the children got a lot of things put into his behind and the manager of the school knew about the toxic environment but failed to do something about it, because it is so normal on every single of the schools.
Second of all there are the cases where foster parents go too far. Most of the cases are hidden by case workers and it took 12 years for the case from Mern to get the attention from the police.
Third of all because foster is until you are 18. Then you are kicked out on the streets and your only option is then to return home regardless of how the conditions are.
Can you not make at least someone responsible?
No because the responsible parties are the voters. They choose who is member of the parliament. They choose who runs the cities. They want this level of responsibility as long as they have to pay for it and as long they don’t need services. Once they do they realize their mistakes but then it is too late.
