Fidelity to all but victims

Two thousand people live in the remote area in the north of Norway. This is a place where sexual violence has become a system

At the end of November, the Norwegian police spoke about the results of a large -scale investigation regarding the mass cases of sexual violence in Tuppjord, a small municipality in the north of the country. The investigation lasted more than a year; The police learned about more than 150 crimes committed for several decades - despite the fact that about two thousand people live here. The reason for the investigation was the publication in the media; The victims repeatedly tried to attract the attention of the authorities, but until recently they could not do this.

Tufjord is a municipality in North Norway, in Lapland. It includes several small settlements located around Tufjorden, the second in the depths of the fjord in Norway (897 meters). This fjord is considered the northern northern habitat of the lobster on Earth, and the lobster is depicted on the emblem of the municipality. About two thousand people live in Tufjord, several hundred of them are Sama . Many locals profess Lestadianism .

The investigation of sexual violence in Tufjord began after the publication in the journal VG Helg (VG is one of the largest Norwegian tabloids) in June 2016. The publication told the stories of 11 people who survived sexual violence. In total, VG Helg interlocutors identified 30 alleged criminals.

One of the women (mentioned under the name Liv) was the victim of sexual violence by his own father, who abused alcohol, beat her and other children. When she was a teenager, he was imprisoned for violence against her and other girls, but this did not protect her from sexual violence by other men, the publication said.

The same article says that some residents of Tufjord have repeatedly tried to attract the attention of the authorities to systematic violence-one family in 2007 even wrote a letter to the Prime Minister Norway Jens Stoltenberg (now-the general secretary of NATO), but the government lowered him to the local level; As a result, a hot line appeared in Tufjord, but many, in their own words, were afraid to call her, because they were afraid to hear the voices of friends.

“All [victims] talk about shame, pain, of serious injuries. About adults who have not intervened. And about fidelity - to all except them, ”wrote VG Helg. One of the victims said that many adults "thought more about their reputation than about the health of their children."

After the material was released, the Norwegian police began not a common investigation, but a large project, whose tasks included both the investigation investigation and the persecution of the suspects and the prevention of violence in the future and an increase in the confidence of local residents to the police and the authorities.

Finally, at the end of November 2017, a report was published with the results of the work of police officers. It reported that 151 cases of sexual crimes in Tufjord were revealed. Among these crimes are 43 rape, 40 sexual ties with children under 14 years of age, 16 with adolescents of 14-16 years old. There were more specific cases of violence, as emphasized in the police, but in some cases episodes in which the same people participated, united in one thing.

The police installed 82 victims (of which 13 are men) and 92 suspects (of which three are women). Several people are mentioned in the list of suspects and in the list of victims.

The age of the victims is from four to 75 years. Only in 39 cases the victims were older than 16 years. In more than 40 cases, we are talking about violence against children under the age of ten, in 29 cases the victims were younger than 14. The age of the suspects was from 10 to 80 years, in most cases these were men aged 18 to 68 years. In all matters, the victims and suspects were familiar.

Most cases relate to events that have occurred in the last 20-30 years (19 episodes have occurred in the last two years), although the oldest of the investigated cases dates back to 1953. The police also analyzed the existing cases for 1997-2016; Given these cases, the total number of famous victims is 144 people, and famous suspects are 122 people.

For ten cases, the court either goes or will begin in the near future, another 30 cases are still being investigated. A significant part of the cases were discontinued-first of all, due to the expired period of statute of limitations. The police report many times emphasizes the need to prevent crimes in the future-primarily because about 60% of the suspects still live in Tufjord. (60% of the victims left this place). The police also notes that she managed to talk very little with her children - despite the fact that it was the children who most often became victims of crimes.

A prerequisite for the prevention of crimes in the police call the cooperation of all authorities and institutions: as investigations show, relatives of victims, school workers, guardians, doctors, church ministers and police officers often knew (but did not report).

More than two thirds of victims and suspects are people of Sami origin. The traditional views on the family, the historical distrust of the Sami in the authorities also played a role in the silence of crimes, according to the police. Often the victims were afraid that the intervention of the authorities would damage their family or the Sami community; Many victims were afraid to turn to the authorities for considerations of fidelity to the family and fear of splitting the family.

The religious aspect, as the police said, also played a role. In Lestadianism, the confession and forgiveness of sins occupy an important place (any member of the church can let sins), and sometimes the conflict was resolved inside the church community: they forgave the rapists. In some cases, cases of violence and their understanding by local residents were associated with traditional beliefs, shamanism - one of the suspects, in particular, called the sexual act a way of communication with the deceased ancestors. To establish confidence contact with local residents (and be able to talk with them about such things as sexual violence and incest), the police needed the help of Sami organizations, the report said.

The director of the local Sami cultural center, Lars Andreassen, said that "the silence of the victims corresponded to the same silence of the authorities." “The point is rather not that the Sami has a problem in culture, but that no one listened to them,” he said.

The head of the region’s police, Nurlanne Tone Wangen, said that "until June 2016, the police work was not good enough." Vangen apologized, noting at the same time that in recent years Norwegian police learned to investigate sexual crimes, but "20-30 years ago they worked in completely different conditions."

Victor Davydov