Johanna Sköld

Historical Abuse—A Contemporary Issue : Compiling Inquiries into Abuse and Neglect of Children in Out-of-Home Care Worldwide

Since the 1990s, abuse and neglect in institutions and in foster homes for children in out-of-home care have been reviewed by inquiries and truth commissions in several countries. State and federal or regional commissions have interviewed, set up hearings with, or collected written submissions from people who claim to have been subjected to abuse and neglect whilst in care. In many respects, truth commissions and inquiries into past abuse and neglect share features characteristic of transitional justice processes. However, said inquiries and truth commissions have only occasionally attracted attention in the broad scholarly field of transitional justice. The aim of the article is to compile inquiries into abuse and neglect in out-of-home care that have been conducted worldwide in order to frame the historical context in which these inquiries and truth commissions were set up. Furthermore, this article argues that a comparative perspective can highlight important epistemological issues, such as what knowledge is produced in the inquiry reports and how an historical understanding of past abuse and neglect of children in out-of-home care is framed. The article points out some possible areas for future research that may constitute a new interdisciplinary field within the field of transitional justice.

The truth about abuse? A comparative approach to inquiry narratives on historical institutional child abuse

Abstract In recent decades, the history of childhood and history of education have gained status as political concerns through the establishment of numerous truth commissions and inquiries into historical institutional child abuse. This article discusses the methodological and ethical dilemmas that arise when writing the history of abused children with the objective of both recognising and redressing the victims as well as offering an account of ‘what really happened’. Comparing how inquiry commissions in Ireland, Sweden and Denmark evaluate and approach victims’ oral testimonies and written records from child welfare agencies, the article explores the acts of balancing between different epistemological approaches to the concept of ‘truth’. The results suggest that while inquiries have to address and convince several audiences simultaneously, empiricist positivist methods of inquiry have dominated the approaches to ‘truth’. However, this approach has not been without ambivalence, and there are examples of constructivist approaches as well.

Conflicting or complementing narratives? : Interviewees' stories compared to their documentary records in the Swedish commission to inquire into child abuse and negelct in institutions and foster homes

The Swedish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and Neglect in Institutions and Foster Homes has interviewed 866 people who claim that they were subjected to neglect and abuse during their time in municipal or state care in Sweden. The inquiry has also examined many of the interviewees’ documentary records. This article is based on the interviews and documentary records for 140 individuals and raises questions about the possibilities of corroborating stories of abuse and neglect through documentary records. In this study we found that the interviewees and the records told similar stories about where the interviewee resided during care and the duration of placements. However, in details the sources represented different perspectives on the same individual’s history. Important aspects to take into consideration are that case files seldom reveal anything about abuse and neglect, and the tendency of authorities to make only cautious descriptions of suspected abuse. The study also highlights the differences between practices of recordkeeping which mean that some individuals can read extensive case files about themselves while other peoples’ care histories have left barely any trace in the archives. In this article, these findings are used to question expectations about the possibility of establishing one ‘truth’ of abuse in an individual case by collecting ‘evidence’ from several sources.

Apology Politics : Transnational Features

In September 2013, when the Finnish government appointed a commission to examine the abuse and neglect of children in out-of-home care from 1937 to 1983, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health website noted similar studies in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada (Socialoch halsovardsministeriet, 2014). Germany, Austria and Aland have also conducted investigations, while in Switzerland, the minister for justice apologized for the separation of poor or illegitimate children from their parents, although no inquiry had been carried out (Thomasson, 2013). Such transitional justice processes have much in common, despite their origin in different child welfare contexts. This chapter argues that national processes of transitional justice are linked in a global movement, allowing us to speak of an international, albeit distinctly Western, phenomenon. The Finnish reference to inquiries carried out in other countries illustrates the transnational features of this phenomenon, while pointing to the significance of international comparison in establishing such processes.

Truth-Seeking in Oral Testimonies and Archives

Drawing on their experiences as an inquiry commissioner and archivist of a Financial Redress Board, Skold and Jensen set out to discuss conflicting understandings of truth and reliability that appe ...

After Care: Controlling and Helping Care Leavers in a Community of Foster Care

Contemporary studies of young adults leaving out-of-home care signal that many are highly vulnerable to unemployment, teenage pregnancies, suicide, and poverty. In recent years, the need for broader support for care leavers has been underlined in several policy documents in Sweden and elsewhere. Yet, this is not a new phenomenon; the risk of social exclusion was also debated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within the context of boarding-out organizations. By introducing governmental techniques for monitoring, boarding-out organizations aimed at controlling and helping care leavers after being discharged. However, the care leavers themselves also actively used the organizations for their own purposes and needs. This article explores how a Swedish boarding-out organization—the industrial school of Prince Carl—monitored care leavers after they had been discharged from the organization from 1877 to 1902. It is argued that a stable and continuously operating institution geographically located in the same area for a long time could have been crucial for care leavers’ opportunities to actively use the means of the boarding-out institution as a resource for help and support later in life.

Agentic Subjects and Objects of Political Propaganda: Swedish Media Representations of Children in the Mobilization For Supporting Finland During World War II

Abstract:Children are often portrayed as defenseless victims of war. However, during war periods, issues concerning childrens agency are also brought to the fore. Based on media materials describing one country in war (Finland) and relief efforts from a neighbor country (Sweden), this article identifies both Finnish and Swedish children as committed to Finlands cause in different ways. The article shows that children emerge both as agentic subjects and as objects of political propaganda. It argues that childrens commitment as represented in the Swedish media could function as propaganda pressuring adults to take action.

Marginalized children: methodological and ethical issues in the history of education and childhood

What do children have to do with the history of education? This might sound like a provoking question – of course children are relevant to the history of education, and of course education is essen...