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Danish dark past thread

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Oscar:
Antigen posted a thread on the Irish past.

Some asked if I could come clean on the Danish dark history of troubled teen handling. I have no problem by this. While we have traveled a long way and have relaxed laws regarding alcohol consumption etc. there are areas where we certainly can do better. Also I have to say that things have not always looked that bright.

Asylums in Denmark were something left behind in the 18-century up to 1979. Before 1979 clients adult and juvenile were not allowed to wear their own clothes. They often received clothes left behind by those who were discharged or died in the system. We are talking 1979 - not 1879.

The use of mechanical restraints was almost mandatory so the residential treatment facilities could use almost no staff by night. Normal people who did pose no risk of violence were put in leather belt before sleeping as a daily routine.

Teenagers or in some case children who were taken in by the authorities were often beaten during their stay. The Danish version of Tranquility Bay was Godhavn. While it still exist before 1976 the use of corporal punishment were widespread. The children were sleeping in large dorms with only their bed as private. Education was sparse and they were expected to work in the fields or in other projects which could support the business of running a group home.

But we are not stopping here.

For naughty girls or girls who were not functioning as fast as their peers, we had "The Kellesker Asylum" on the once remote island of Sprogoe. Today the island is connected to the mainland but before 1962 the island was a holding place for teenage girls. They were restrained, beaten and treated against their will. Some were subjected to Lobotomy.

Their only hope of release was that a family could take them in as servants or someone stepped up wanting to marry them. In fact fishermen from the surrounding towns often were the one who knew where they could find an obedient wife and not so few young men were allowed to sail the boat of their family close to this island in the hope of “rescuing” one of the girls.

Lobotomy was in Denmark used up to 1980. Many were fooled into accepting the procedure as a condition of release from the residential treatment facilities. They were told how wonderful the procedure would be, freeing them from medication and how it would enable them to live a normal life. Today we all know how many who died from the complication and how many who actually got worse as result of this procedure. It is just awful stuff.

Are we then perfect today? No we are certainly not. The main problem today is the heritage of 1990’s politic in the US. Today there are politicians in Denmark who want to lower the age of criminal responsibility, they believe that boot camps are the new manna to deal with troubled teenagers and there are a few public run group homes who believe that teenagers should be confronted and restrained even by the first outburst.

Second we support a large public sector. I guess you will be unable to find another country in the world which has so many youth counselors and small treatment facilities with 7-10 teenagers living in them. On every school there are at least 10 people who have no dealing with the normal schooling. They are assigned to find problem families so their colleagues down in the department of social security can get new clients. Every time a case of neglect is reported in the media the labor unions for the personal employed in department of social services are all over to ask for more money. I can only give one advice. DO NEVER ASK FOR HELP from our department of social services. Your home will be taken over by a changing staff of people who want to “help” your children and no matter how perfect you are as a parent they want at least one of the children put into a residential group home. You just have to decide which one of your children you want to give up.

It doesn’t stop here. Your children cannot get pregnant in Denmark. They have to leave the country because their names will be stored on a warning list if they have been in the system once as a child. Once they announce their pregnancy to a doctor or to the hospital the department of social services is noticed by a email and they will demand that the mother and the child live in a special group home for new mothers for the first 6 months while the ability of the new mother to do her job is evaluated. The new mother will be offered holiday from their own child so she can get a free weekend every month. The goal is to get foster parents to be standby by letting them look after the child from time to time.

There are no help or no offers from the department of social services in Denmark – only orders. They are a state inside the state in Denmark. Avoid them by all means.

Secret Prisons for Teens is only one organization among those who are working for better conditions for the 14,000 Danish children in the system.

Our main problem as an organization working to improve the conditions for families and teenagers in the system today is that the system protects themselves with lawyers suing everyone who want to expose awful conditions in Denmark.

One of the whistleblower sites were forced to move their site to a foreign server. It is called Det Sorte register (The black filing-cabinet).

We do very seldom write a lot about Danish facilities on our webpage because we cannot afford a trial. We send our information to our Swedish partner. Instead we publish a lot of their stuff. This kind of exchange was the main reason for our partnership. They have created a whistleblower site called Minder fra en hård tid (Memories from a hard time).

Another organization called Danmarks børn (The children of Denmark) discovered awful conditions at a certain group home and published what they learned. They were sued and they lost. Some years later one of children told his story to the newspaper Information and now everybody can see that the trial was wrong.

Two employees from the group home Åhuset (House by the river) near the Danish town of Odense told newspapers about neglect they saw at work. They were sued and they lost. It was a witch-trial with the goal of scaring every employee from ever stepping up trying to protect the children.

Presently we are trying to break this order of silence. There are too many children in the system and in Denmark you are not allowed to get legal protection free until they have removed the children. Often you as a parent are offered a deal where they take one of your children in exchange for you to get home visits every 14 day from day 1 and during holidays.

I hope this gives some insight in our dark past and what kind of problems we are facing today.

Sources:

* http://http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=24357 (Sprogoe - the danish Roloff home)
* http://http://minderfraenhaardtid.wordpress.com (Memories from a difficult time)
* http://http://www.detsorteregister.info (Det black filing-cabinet)
* http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprog%C3%B8 (Sprogoe - Wikipedia)
* http://http://historypsychiatry.com/2010/10/01/book-announcement-history-of-danish-lobotomy/ (Book announcement – History of Danish Lobotomy)

Ursus:
Thanks for that synopsis, Oscar... It would appear that state-run social services organizations are not only corrupt, but destructive the world over. It seems their primary objective has more to do with social control and manipulation of the population, than anything to do with children's needs or best interests.

In the U.S., one aspect of all this that I find quite interesting is the intersection of, and "cooperative work" of these agencies with the Department of Defense. Is there something analogous to that in Denmark?

Oscar:
Rotsne constructed this Fornits Wiki Datasheet about the facilities in question. It is a dark spot in our history but we have no interest in covering the Danish participating in the eugenics fashion in the 1920s up, so the page was made.

Reddit TroubledTeens:
Thank you, Oscar, for putting together all of this info. I had no idea things were so bad there, especially with the suppression of information. I'm just aghast that your voices are not allowed freedom of speech. I have always considered Denmark to be far more advanced in social causes than the states (esp after visiting Copenhagen). I saw an article about Danes being outraged by a kid who was tethered to a wall in an institution and was impressed that your society could recognize the abuse. Here in the states we tie children to beds for so long they are forced to defecate on themselves and no one seems to care.

I've posted this to several areas of reddit:

/r/troubledteens
http://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/c ... stitutions

/r/denmark (http://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comment ... stitutions

and my list of worldwide information:
http://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/c ... _worldwide

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