SWEDEN: 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 yesterday.
A cabinet minister said the probe would investigate the cases, which peaked in the 1940s and 1950s 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 during 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 stigmatised for so long with nobody understanding their problem or even recognising it," said Birger Hjelm of 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 added.
The 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".
Social services minister Morgan Johansson has promised to study Norway's payments of compensation to people abused while in state care.