Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway: Why Norwegians believe the film can bring about change

My son was taken from us when he was a little over three. He is now 13 and in foster care. For the first six years, I was allowed to see him twice a year for a total of four hours. Now it is up to three times in a year till he turns 18. He has developed learning and concentration difficulties and other psychological problems, and has little chance of higher education. By the time he is 18, [I fear] he will not have any social relations," Ove Dag Knarvik tells mid-day over a video call from alesund in Norway. The retired Norwegian naval architect and marine engineer lost two of his children to Barnevernet or the Norwegian Child Welfare Services, a public agency responsible for child protection in Norway. Barnevernet is the same agency that had back in 2011 taken NRI couple Sagarika and Anurup Bhattacharya's children away for "improper parenting". What followed was an arduous battle for custody, accompanied by diplomatic exchanges between the two countries and widespread media attention. The story is also the basis for the upcoming Rani Mukerji-starrer Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway.

What many hope the film will shed light on is the fact that these are not stray cases. Critics term it part of a larger systematic injustice that has been underway in the country for years. "Since 2018, Norway has been convicted 15 times for human rights violations connected with cases of childcare in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which is more than the rest of all of Europe put together," Marius Reikeras says. The human rights lawyer, who has debated Norway's human rights violations in more than 50 countries, has in the last 13 years been involved with child protective service cases and is expected to arrive in India to lend his support to Bhattacharya and others like her when the film releases. He hopes to participate in public discussions around the subject while here. It took a while, he admits, due to Norway's reputation for being a small developed country in the north with no glaring social issues or human rights encroachments. "But in 2013, thanks to a lot of international pressure, we managed to get some attention and European institutions like the ECHR and the European Parliament realised that there was something severely wrong going on in Norway."

Ruby Harrold-Claesson

Reikeras draws attention to the fact that a majority of the Norwegian Child Welfare Services' actions are directed against immigrant families. "We have seen over and over again that Norway is basing these decisions on cultural differences. It is not permitted in Norway to stick out from the ordinary Norwegian system," he explains, highlighting that once children are taken away from immigrant families, it is almost impossible to get them back.

"Sagarika was lucky," he insists. "In most cases they have to wait until they [the children] are 18 to get in touch with them." Moreover, it turns out that it is not the cases themselves that dictate the possibility of the child's return. "There are no actual differences between the ones [parents] who get their children back and those who don't. It's a lottery," he says, pointing out that while the government wins most of these cases, they cannot withhold all the children being taken into public care. "A small number have been able to get them back but who gets them back and who doesn't is accidental." He suggests that the wisest thing for most families who are in trouble with the service is to flee to another country. He says several families have chosen to flee to Poland, which has been critical of this system.
The main reason, Reikeras believes, why Sagarika, who is now settled in Kolkata after she separated from her husband, got her children back was because of the political pressure from India. "The then Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre who is now the Prime Minister of Norway had specific instructions for Gunnar Toresen, Head of Child Welfare Services in Stavanger, where the family lived," he says, asserting that Toresen has been known to have particularly extreme methods of taking children into public care. "It is interesting to see that his name is coming up again now with relation to this movie."

Marius Reikeras

Most distressing of all and repeatedly evident in testimonies is the profit motive at the heart of Norway's CPS system. "Norway is a rich country with only five million people, which generates more than $3 billion every year into its CPS system, more than any other country in Europe," says Reikeras. As a result, he explains, a lot of citizens have a vested interest in maintaining the system as is. "The more children you take, the more money is generated."

Ruby Harrold-Claesson, lawyer and co-founder-President of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, For the Protection of Family Rights in the Nordic Countries (NKMR/NCHR), speaks of the harmful nature of these mercenary practices. Social workers in affluent countries like Denmark, Finland, England, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland and the USA have built child protection systems which claim that children from poorer families will be "better off" in wealthier families, she says, with developing countries also given incentives to follow the "leaders" in the so-called "first world countries". "They claim that it is ‘in the best interests of the child' but the economic incentives and the industries that have been built up for ‘child protection' is damaging, to not only for the children and their families, but for the countries involved."

Actor Rani Mukherji seen here in a still from the movie Chatterjee vs Norway, which releases March 17

"Everyone who deals with you after they have taken your kid away [lawyers, psychologists, social workers, judges] - is part of the system and they are financially dependent on this removal, because the children are often traumatised and need follow ups as they begin to struggle in school and daily life," Knarvik agrees. The kindergarten, school and health authorities are obliged to file reports to Barnevernet and they do it, he says, without following the law. Knarvik highlights other corrupt practices from children being allocated to well-paid foster parents who are known and related to CPS workers, to the force that is used by the police on older children who protest and confiscation of their phones and laptops if they try to escape from the institutions they are relocated to. There is also the potentially devastating emotional and psychological toll that early separation from parents takes on the children. Several of them develop learning, social and psychological difficulties, dropping out of school, running away and using drugs. There are also high rates of arson, institutionalisation and suicide associated with these cases, with Reikeras informing that statistically these children are 10-15 times likelier to end up in devastating situations than those that remain with families. "I am not saying that no kids should be removed from their parents," clarifies Knarvik. "There are some parents who are bad enough, but even in those cases Barnevernet is not doing the right thing - these kids should not be placed with strangers but with grandparents or relatives whom they know and trust."

With his own children, an adoptive daughter who was taken into public care and later got sick, and then his son, Knarvik experienced first-hand, instances of system-employed psychologists giving false testimonies in court and fabricating reports where he feels undue emphasis was placed on his age which they saw as reason for his inability to understand the needs of his son, along with other accusations of alcoholism and violent behaviour.

The maternal grandparents of children who were taken away from their parents by Norway's Child Protection Services (CPS), after the agency deemed that the toddlers were not receiving proper care, during a demonstration outside the Norwegian embassy in New Delhi in 2012. The parents Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya were in Norway at the time fighting the battle to return to India with their children. Their story has inspired the upcoming film Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway. Pic/Getty Images

Rune Fardal who started Family Channel, a network on Facebook comprising frequent interviews with parents and psychologists about childcare cases with the aim of urging the system to follow scientific and legal tenets rather than arbitrary ideas, says that there is a lot of subjective thinking behind the claims and decisions made by Barnevernet. "There are diffuse reasonings behind why the CPS gets involved in the first place," he says. "These could be anything from an angry ex-husband making a false claim against a mother who then has to defend herself to a school mobbing where the blame is directed at the child's home whereas in reality it points to a problem within the school environment. The school alerts Barnevernet and then the parents are investigated whereas it is the school that should be investigated."

Harrold-Claesson agrees: "There has been an array of accusations brought against parents by the CPS, ranging from: not intelligent enough, mentally ill, not mature enough, too poor, too demanding on the children, ill-treatment, home-schooling, not adjusted to the society - any accusation that the social worker can conjure."

Ove Dag Knarvik, parent who lost two of his children to the Norwegian Child Welfare Services

But Barnevernet's controversial operations notwithstanding, there is palpable hope thanks to the upcoming film directed by Ashima Chibber, also starring Neena Gupta and Jim Sarbh. "The only way for the victims to draw some attention to what is going on in Norway is through this film," Reikeras believes. "The movie will have a bigger impact than people realise because it shows how Norway has gone under the radar for so long and why it is important to focus on the fact that this is not about child welfare but about profit." The film is scheduled to be screened in several Norwegian cities and those following the developments around the issue say that official worry is evident in the already visible efforts to discredit the production.