Tag Archive | Denmark
07/05/2023  

943. Take Care

Take Care was a group home located in Maribo on the southern island Lolland in Denmark. In 2021 and 2022 the media published several articles questioning the use of force against the youth placed at the facilities. Late 2022 the police in Denmark charged 6 employees for the use of unnecessary force against the youth.

Also the question about the economy was questioned as the facility charged the social services DKK 75,000 per month for treatment of the youth while the facilities donated an amount of between 150,000 and 200,000 to care abroad.

The facilities were closed by the authorities in 2022. The management is trying to reopen the facilities under new names. Ubasen seems to be one of them.

Later a trial against 6 employees were started. They were charged with various accounts of assault.

Sources:

12/03/2023  

935. Herlufsholm

The boarding school was founded in 1565 as a a boarding school for “sons of noble and other honest men”. It was a male-only boarding school until 1960 for day-students and since 1985 for the students attending the boarding school.

The students wear uniforms. There are special uniforms for Half Galla and Full Galla.

Over the years the prefect rule has been modified due to criticism. Older students spoke of a very strict ruleset being controlled by the prefects. Also the sleeping quaters has been the focus of the authorities. On several occasions students have been charged with rape. Only in one case was a student convicted. Numerous cases of bullying has been reported to the media and there have been produced a number of documentaries about the boarding school. The student body is for a large part been put together by children of the most wealthy families in Denmark. Lately even the Royal House of Denmark has sent students to the school but in wake of the revelations of the alleged abuse the Royal house of Denmark cut their ties with the school

Being victim of bullying and in some case attempted rape makes it safe to conclude that it not always can be fun to be there as a student.

Sources:

15/01/2023  

927. Faderhuset

Faderhuset is a cult with roots in Denmark. Officially it has been disbanded but Danish new media have found traces of it located abroad in countries like the Czech republic where the Danish authorities cannot get an agreement with the local authorities to protect the children.

The cult was founded around 1990. They started a school in Copenhagen in 1994 which was closed by the Danish authorities due to the use of an ACE-based curriculum which is found as totally inadequate as curriculum in a civilized society like Denmark is.

They became involved in the political intrigue and basically used as tool by the authorities against Ungdomshuset which was a public house for youth culture in Denmark that was teared down resulting in citywide riots for a full week.

They etablished themselves in a village on the southern Danish island Lolland and took over a hotel in the village of Bandholm. When the local child protection services and the media became concerned about the welfare of the children, the cult declared itself closed and official dismantled. The hotel was sold and went bankrupt because the workers now had to be paid instead of serving for free for the good of the cult. However, the children disappeared and in 2019 the children was tracked to the Czech republic which is known to have housed cults like the infamous WWASP school Morava Academy before.

The Danish child protection services are investigating the cult but they live in protection in the Czech Repulic due to the local authorities lack of interests.

It cannot be fun to live in a cult like Faderhuset if you are a child.

Sources:

Update 2023

A recent article suggest that they were sided in Greece near the village of Melissohori near the city Thessaloniki. However they seemed on the move and is no longer residing in the region.

Source:

A mysterious sect that came and swiftly left (Ekathimerini)

13/11/2022  

918. Godthaab

Godthaab was a children orphanages located in the town of Frederiksberg in Denmark. It opened in 1876 and closed in 1984. Part of the orphanage was operated with use of corporal punishment. The care was based on so-called Christian values. The boys had to keep their hands over the bed sheets so they did not “abuse themselves”. Bedwetting resulted in forced labor in the cellar.

Some of the children were lured into participation in medical trials financed by CIA in the United States. The aim of these medical trials were to investigate schizophrenia and were published in secrecy at the University of Copenhagen by doctor Fini Schulsinger. The involvement of the children in these trials were a possible violation of the Nürnberg Code of 1947 as the children were not old enough to grant consent and the parents of the children were not informed.

It could not have been fun to be there as a child.

Sources:

23/10/2022  

915. Gravenshoved Kostskole

Gravenshoved Kostskole was a boarding school for children in need. It was located in the South of Jutland. It opened in 1964 and closed in 1992. Despite the stay being paid for and the children referred from various departments of social services in Denmark, the supervision of the facility and welfare of the children during their stay were not monitored by employees of the department who saw to that the children were sent to the school.

As result the children suffered from various forms of abuse subjected on them from the hands of the employees. The department of social services learned about the abuse in 2009 but properly out of concern of the careers of the employees who neglected their duties, the reportings were not handed over to the police before newspapers started to investigate the closed boarding school in 2021.

Only almost two decades after the school closed the police started their investigation which is still ongoing. It could not have been fun to be there as a child.

Sources:

Update 2023

A report concluded that there could be basis for criminal charges if they can manage to put them together before they come too old to conduct a trial according to Danish law. Also human rights violations were judged to have taken place at the school.

15/05/2022  

892. Fulton

Fulton is a three-masted schooner built in 1914 and also the name of a behavior modification program established in 1970 by Mogens Frohn Nielsen. The purpose was to change the behavior of at-risk teenage boys by letting them work at sea.

Unfortunately corporal punishment was used and this had been outlawed some years before leading the the firing of Nielsen in 1987. The program was slightly changed and continued under new management until it went bankrupted in 2013. Today the ship is still sailing run by another foundation.

It could not have been fun to be there as a teenager exposed to beatings and other forms of corporal punishment.

Sources:

08/05/2022  

891. Ocean Life

In 2008 newspapers in both Spain and Denmark reported about an arrest of a Danish captain who commandeered a ship with troubled youth. The reason of the arrest was abandoning a teenager on the island of Islote de Lobos. Marooning is an ancient form of punishment which had not been used in recent decades. The Island while not having any permanent inhabitants were guarded by some officials and by pure luck the boy was picked out. He was not dressed to a life on his own.

The Spanish authorities were shocked by the discovery and arrested the Dane responsible for the act.

In Denmark an inquest was conducted by protected by the social services who had referred the boys to the program but nothing happened as it properly would have embarrassed the case workers who referred the children to the program for not investigating properly what the public funds was use for.

It could not have been fun to be there when they use punishments like this.

Sources:

21/11/2021  

867. The Becker children

Back in the 1975 South Vietnam was about to fall due to attacks from communists in North Vietnam. The peaceful democracy would not exist longer and in this chaos a Danish journalist Henning Becker sought to save about 200 children from his private founded orphanage, he created back in 1967 when he saw many children suffering as part of the awful aggression from North.

So he arranged for temporary visas and a plane. In Denmark the Danish authorities never had experienced such an arrangement before, so very fast they arranged for the children to be placed in empty buildings which two decades before had housed the infamous Kellerske Anstalter (detention centers for men and girls with too much appetite for sex and relationship, who were sterilized before released to the society. The girls facility is listed as number 153 on this blog, the boys facility number 247).

While the children were happy to be in safety from the war, the Danish authorities struggled with their future. Could they send the children back so they would be tortured and raised as communists? (Before the second world war, the Danish authorities saw no problems sending jews back to Germany). Could they provide the children with Danish passports and raise them as Danes?

Problem is that no families in Denmark live together with 200 members and almost everyone of the children saw Henning Becker as their father. The uncertainty of their destiny began to take the toll on the children. Some tried to escape the island and one boy downed. It could not go on.

So the Danish government issued Danish citizenships to all the children. Now they just had to see how the children could be integrated into the Danish society. The minister Eva Gredal took action. With help of the police the children were forcefully removed from the control of Henning Becker and placed in foster families and group homes all over Denmark.

Despite this hardship the religious values the children possessed enabled them to build their future in Denmark. Most of them live in Denmark today. Not fully integrated because while they were separated, they were still allowed to write each other and once they became adults they moved together in small communities in Denmark. So they learned to co-exist. However some of them left Denmark for other European countries because they believed, that they were robbed from their parents twice. First as result of the war in Vietnam and then by the Danish authorities, when they were removed from Henning Becker who had become their new parent.

The lesson learned by the Danish government was not ever to take children to Denmark alone. Today in the year 2021, small children born by parents with Danish passports remain in refugee camps in Syria because their parents fought for ISIS. “We do not want future terrorists to come to Denmark” the Danish politicians say. Some of the children are only 3 years old. How can the Danish politicians predict their future now?

So overall it is bittersweet story to read about the Becker children. On the surface a success-story, but both its legacy and the hardship they faced in the hands of the Danish authorities, is hard to read about.

It could not have been fun to be among the 200 children, who came to Denmark in 1975.

Sources:

31/10/2021  

864. Højer Design Efterskole

Højer Design Efterskole is a so-called Continuation high school used as a gap year for Danish students between form 9 and 10 before they either leave the school system for work or continue in Gymnasium (High School). The students stay for a year with about 10 weekends off.

The school was founded in 2008 and is known to have expelled a large percentage of its students. In 2008 only 58 out of 90 students finished the year. In 2009 it was 49 out of 75 students. Some were expelled due the suspicion of have consumed alcohol just because they were in a happy mood (Alcohol is allowed for Danes aged 16 or high as long as the alcohol percentage is below the safe limit of 16.5.

The policy of expelling students seem to continue even this year.

It cannot be fun to be there as a teenager if your cultural origin dictates another way of living.

Sources:

26/09/2021  

859. Kikhøj

The group home Kikhøj was located in Holbæk Denmark. In 2019 it closed after the authorities investigated the group home and found violations of rules regarding the use of restraints.

The group home was mentioned in a 2021 TV-documentary on the Danish TV2 called “Nødråb fra børnehjemmet” (Emergency call from the orphanage).

It could not have been fun to be there as a child.

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