Women who were transferred at birth in 1965 are suing Norway for human rights abuses

STAVANGER, Norway — In 1965, a Norwegian woman gave birth to a girl in a private hospital. Seven days later she returned home with a baby.

When the baby developed dark curls that made her look different from herself, Karen Rafteseth Dokken assumed she looked just like her husband’s mother.

It took almost sixty years before the true reason was discovered: Rafteseth Dokken’s biological daughter had been accidentally switched at birth in the maternity ward of the hospital in central Norway.

The girl she ended up raising, Mona, was not the baby she gave birth to.

The babies – one born on February 14 and the other on February 15, 1965 – are now 59-year-old women who, together with Rafteseth Dokken, are suing the state and the municipality.

In their case, which was heard at the Oslo District Court on Monday, they claim their human rights were violated when authorities discovered the mistake when the girls were teenagers and covered it up. They claim that Norwegian authorities have undermined their right to family life, a principle enshrined in the European Human Rights Treaty, and demand an apology and compensation.

Rafteseth Dokken, now 78, was in tears as she described learning so many years later that she had the wrong baby, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

“I never thought that Mona was not my daughter,” she said in court on Tuesday. “She was named Mona after my mother.”

Mona described feeling like she never belonged growing up. That feeling of uncertainty forced her to take a DNA test in 2021, which revealed that she was not the biological daughter of those who raised her.

But the woman who raised the other baby knew all along.

A routine blood test in 1981 showed that the girl she was raising, Linda Karin Risvik Gotaas, was not biologically related. However, the woman who raised her did not file a pregnancy lawsuit. Norwegian health authorities were informed of the mix-up in 1985, but did not tell the others involved.

Both women who were swapped at birth have said in interviews that it was a shock to hear about the mix-up, but the knowledge made pieces of their lives fall into place, explaining the differences, both in terms of appearance as behavior.

Kristine Aarre Haanes, representing Mona, said the state “has violated her right to her own identity all these years. They kept it a secret.”

Mona could have learned the truth when she was a young adult, but instead “she didn’t find the truth until she was 57.”

“Her biological father has passed away. She has no contact with her biological mother,” said Aarre Haanes.

The circumstances surrounding the 1965 Eggesboenes hospital exchange are unclear, but media reports from NRK indicate that there were several cases in the 1950s and 1960s in which children were accidentally exchanged at the same institution. Back then, babies were kept together while their mothers rested in separate rooms.

In other cases, the errors were discovered before the children were finally placed with the wrong families, the reports show.

An official from Norway’s Ministry of Health and Care said the state was not aware of any similar cases and there were no plans for a public inquiry.

Asgeir Nygaard, representative of the Norwegian State, is challenging the case on the grounds that the switch took place in 1965 in a private institution and that the Health Directorate did not have the legal authority in the 1980s to inform the other families when they discovered an error.

“Documentation from the time indicates that government officials found the reviews difficult, in part because it was legally unclear what they could do,” he wrote in a statement to The Associated Press ahead of the opening of the trial. “We will therefore argue before the court that there is no basis for compensation and that the submitted claims are in any case time-barred.”

The trial will last until Thursday, but it was not clear when a verdict is expected.

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Associated Press writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.