Czech woman meets son in Norway after one year

The case of the two boys, who were taken into care by Norwegian authorities in 2011, has caused public outrage in the Czech Republic, with Czech President Miloš Zeman comparing Norway’s policies to Nazi Germany’s Lebsenborn adoption system. 

 

Eva Michalakova told the agency she had spent an hour and a half with her younger son, who is six years old, in Norway on Friday, playing Lego, drawing pictures and reading from a book. 

 

The boy mainly spoke Norwegian with her, although she also used some Czech words. 

 

Social workers did not allow the elder boy, who is nine to the meetings, as they claim he has “negative reactions” to meeting his mother. 

 

Michalakova is now demanding another meeting, claiming Norwegian social workers violated an agreement saying she would meet both boys simultaneously. She also objected to the presence of the boy’s foster parents at the meeting. 

 

Norway’s Child Welfare Service took the boys into care in May 2011 after their kindergarten reported the family after one of the boys told a nursery teacher that his father had “groped inside his pyjamas”. 

 

Police halted the investigation without bringing charges, but the Child Welfare Service nonetheless took the children into care. The couple has since divorced and Michalakova is seeking custody of her children. 

 

Her attempts to push the authorities to reexamine the case have been repeatedly rejected, although the final decision on the most recent appeal, from December 2014, is not expected until the middle of this year. 

 

It is not the first time that Norwegian foster care has made international headlines. In 2012, two Indian toddlers were taken into care, allegedly because they were eating with their hands. In two separate incidents, a Polish private investigator “rescued” two children from foster care, bringing the children back to their parents in Russia and Poland.