On Monday, a unique case began in the Oslo District Court. It is about two women whose babies were mistaken for each other in the maternity ward of a hospital in Herøy municipality.
One of them is Karen Rafteseth Dokken. On February 14, 1965, she became a mother for the first time. When she left the hospital a few days later, she accidentally took the wrong baby with her – it wasn’t her daughter, but a girl born a day later.
– It is very difficult to describe, it is completely unreal, she says NRK.
Discovered after DNA testing
The other mother was alerted that all was not right when her daughter took a blood test in 1981, 16 years later. The test showed that the mother could not be the daughter’s biological mother, says Norwegian TV2’s crime reporter Thea Ødegården in Efter fem.
– They started contacting the health authorities in Norway, both the municipality and the state, but got no help, she says.
The mother was advised not to proceed with the case.
The mix-up was discovered in 2021, when one of the daughters took a DNA test and entered the result into the genealogy app “My heritage”. She then got in touch with the other family.
Taking the state to court
Now Rafteseth Dokken and the two daughters go to court. They are taking both the Norwegian state and Herøy municipality to court for violating Chapter 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which deals with the right to family life and biological parentage.
They are demanding damages and an apology from the authorities for depriving them of the opportunity to get to know their biological families, reports Norwegian TV2.
However, both the municipality and the state have disclaimed responsibility in the case. The state refers, among other things, to the fact that the hospital where the mix-up took place was run by a private organization at the time.
According to Thea Ødegården, it is unlikely that those involved will find out what happened in the maternity ward in 1965.
– Many of those who worked at the hospital are not alive today and cannot testify in the courtroom. There are suspicions that the staff bathed the children together in a tub without noticing them, so there may have been a mix-up there, she says.