Abuses of young refugees in Denmark
THE first of the asylum seekers, five shy African boys, arrived in July 2014, just days after authorities on this small Danish island were granted permission to open a shelter for children.
Local organisers hurriedly opened as many as 20 shelters housing more than 3,200 refugees, an act that blended humanitarian generosity with an economic lift for the poor community, as the new shelters drew millions in government subsidies.
But it was too much, too fast. Two years later, Langeland’s network of shelters has been riddled with problems and abuses, including arson, fights, rape and sexual molestation.
The scandals have called into question the wisdom and motivations for such a rapid expansion. But they have also pointed to dangers across Europe, where many countries have been similarly ill-prepared for the surge of migrants and the large numbers of unaccompanied minors.
“Across Europe, child protection systems are failing children on the move,” Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for UNICEF in Geneva, said. “There is an assumption that everything is under control when they arrive on the European shores, “but it’s actually just the beginning of a new phase of their journey”.
In November, UNICEF reported that 22,775 unaccompanied minors had arrived in Europe from Africa since January. That is close to double the number in 2015. It found serious problems in the care of asylum-seeking children across Europe.
“In parts of Germany, some of the centres for families are not suitable for children,” Crowe said. “They fall victim to violence and abuse and the staff lacks proper training. We are working to harmonise the standards.”
Human Rights Watch expressed similar concerns in June about Swedish asylum centres. French and British authorities also came in for criticism of their care of unaccompanied children at the vast migrant camp, known as the Jungle, in the French port of Calais.
The European Union’s Criminal Intelligence Agency, Europol, said in January that at least 10,000 unaccompanied minors had gone missing after arriving in Europe.
Presumably, they have fallen through the cracks of the asylum systems of various countries, or reunited with family or friends, but what exactly has become of many of them remains a mystery.
The lesson of Langeland, some now concede, is that caring for vulnerable refugees fleeing conflicts in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea requires special skills that many staff members at asylum centres do not have.
On Langeland, two employees at a centre in the village of Tulleboelle are charged with having sexual intercourse with minors and having engaged in other sex acts with seven young refugees, ages 16 to 18.
At a different centre, Praestekaergaard, also operated by the Langeland municipality, as many as 12 refugee children may have been victims of sexual abuse by other refugee children. The abuses happened last year but did not become public until November.
Ulrik Pihl, who ran the asylum program, has been relieved of his duties, after criticism that he did not inform the Danish Immigration Service of the episodes.
In November, the government announced that Langeland and another municipality would be barred from hosting unaccompanied minors in the future.
“I very clearly want to dissociate myself from the abuse,” Pihl said in an interview. He regretted not promptly informing authorities, but insisted the problems were unavoidable.
“I don’t think we could have prevented it,” he said. “There wasn’t anything in the police records of those employees.”
Yet Pihl acknowledged that, facing high numbers of new arrivals and many new centres in a hectic period of fast growth, he had no time to educate staff members. A memorandum from the municipality on the episodes at the Praestekaergaard centre acknowledged that the facility had “way too few staff” but added that more funding had arrived from the Danish Immigration Service to address that.
Government documents ob- tained by Denmark’s Radio24syv revealed that the national Immigration Service had received repeated warnings from the Danish Refugee Council, a nongovernmental group, of mistreatment of children by staff members as early as December 2014.
The warnings cited suicidal tendencies among some children, and said that staff members had awakened children by spraying cold water on them or by removing a mattress from underneath them. But the warnings were followed up by just a single phone call to the Langeland municipality, the documents said. Last week, the government said it is going to strengthen the supervision of asylum centres.
On a recent afternoon, the only light burning in the offices of Langeland’s town hall was that of Kurt Habekost, the recently appointed temporary asylum director.
“I’ll concede that we’ve been too slow on the uptake,” he said, referring to the training of staff members at the shelters. “But when you establish a centre in 48 hours, it’s going to take some time to educate the staff.”
“Perhaps we should have paid more attention with the children’s facilities,” he conceded. “But recruiting is difficult because most people know it’s a temporary job.”
With the troubles, and fewer asylum seekers arriving in Europe now, eight of Langeland’s centres have closed, seven will close in the coming months, and 82 staff members have been dismissed.