She checks that the front door is locked. This is the third time she has slammed the door. Locked. She enters the bedroom, where she picks up a duvet and pillow and casts a new glance at the front door. She forces herself not to check again and enters the living room. As usual, she rides up on the sofa and slams the patio door shut. She lays the woolen blanket by the door and goes to sleep on the sofa. She closes her eyes. There they stand. Ready to take her. It does not help to lock the door. She looks around. There is no one else in the room. Cold air seeps in from the open patio door. If they come, she has the escape plan ready: She will wrap herself in the blanket, run out on the terrace, jump to the ground and run away. It would not be the first time she escaped from them. The days are easier than the nights. She manages to get up and go to work, of course she does, she who has survived serious violence. She is a fighter, not one who lays down and gives up. At a party she jokes and laughs out loud afterwards, she is the one who talks to everyone without small silences. One that can go with headbands and Adidas clothes and look relaxed and cool. She no longer uses the name her parents gave her. On the advice of the police, she has changed. news does not use her new or old name in the article. After conversations about her safety, with both the police and the assistance lawyer, we call her Lisa instead. This new name is on the mailbox and in the passport. Where the mailbox is, and what her real name is, it is dangerous to tell. According to Kripos, more than 700 people in Norway live at a secret address. Around 300 of these live with one of the police’s strongest protection measures: Code 6. With the exception of a few security-cleared persons, code 6 persons do not exist in the tax lists or in the population register. This is how Lisa’s life has been in recent years. Where she is is a secret. Living on Code 6 is strict. The reason is the threat practitioners in these cases, according to Kripos. Lisa can never leave the address she lives at. Neither at the local fitness center, Yellow Pages or Zalando. – The police do not know how all the algorithms in the big big tech companies work, and are not done to the letter, there is a risk that something geolocalizing will come out, says head of intelligence and joint operations services Ole Jørgen Arvesen in Kripos. When we leave the address online, you tick a box where you agree that the address is stored in a register. – Thus, the address is no longer secret. Then the victim risks having to move and break up. Therefore, those who live with a blocked address can never share where they live and thus not shop online, order a taxi home or get home delivery from Ikea, says Arvesen. Those who live on code 6 often have to break many, or even all ties to the past. Most have been exposed to violence and threats, from family or a partner. It is considered risky to have contact with family, friends and acquaintances from the past. Does that mean Lisa has to live alone and in hiding for the rest of her life? Lisa thinks every day about those she needs to be protected from; mom and dad, who long ago hummed night songs on the edge of the bed and made sure she wore a jacket on cold days. It’s been several years since she had anything to do with them. But she still remembers the pain. Welcome to Norway Shortly after it was decided that Norway would accept more quota refugees, Lisa’s family was on their way to the new country in the north. It was not long before the family spoke Norwegian and went skiing with cocoa in their backpacks. But gradually it became important for the family how they were perceived in the Muslim community. A family member has been convicted of violence against Lisa. The verdict states that the violence was offensive, and lasted from she was a child and for several years. As Lisa challenged the family’s social control, the violence became more and more serious, according to the verdict. All her life she had heard that she was going to marry a cousin, Lisa says. It was said in a silly way. But was it really a joke? As she got older, her family wanted to take her on a vacation trip. Lisa had a suspicion, which grew over the holidays and in the end she saw it clearly. She was going to her home country, where her cousin and wedding guests were waiting. Quickly she flushed forward in her head: She saw herself, married, in full-length clothes and her children running around. NO, she thought. She secretly launched a plan to escape. Every occasion where the family was busy, she worked on the plan to get home to Norway. She texted a friend and asked for help. Call the Norwegian embassy, the friend answered and sent her the contact information. She called the embassy in secret. Do you have a passport? they asked. Passed, where was it? She had not seen it since they landed at the airport. One morning she was left to herself for a few minutes. She looked for the passport. In the safe, in the bedside table drawer, in bags and bags. Eventually she found several passports, but her own was not there. She took a breath. There was no time to look any further. She stuffed her mobile phone and wallet in a bag, got into a taxi and went straight to the embassy. Here she received travel documents and help to get to the airport. At the airport, she began to think that the family could come after her, it was just a matter of buying a plane ticket to get through the security checkpoint. During the hours she was waiting for her departure, she hid. Only when the plane had taken off did she think she had managed to get away. At the same time, it was only now that she realized what she had done. Escaped from his own family. What now? The cold, dark time A few months later, she was in a whole new city, without knowing anyone. Light chains and Advent stars testified that it was soon Christmas. That sleet and on the roads there was a brown mixture of sludge and slush. Without snow, the city was virtually darkened. Here Lisa would rather sit inside an apartment all day. She was advised to change her name and to live under a protection measure: Code 6. When the security situation so requires, the police recommend both a name change and a hidden address. She herself chose the first name, and she was recommended a surname. At the beginning of her stay in the new city, Lisa did not have internet, TV or bank card. Only a mobile phone with a prepaid card. She could not be on social media. Twice a week someone came and bought food for her. There were measures that were supposed to protect her, but that made her feel like a prisoner. Right after she escaped home to Norway from her family holiday abroad, she had tried to live a more normal life. First, she ended up in a shelter for a while. Then she moved for herself. As she began to lower her shoulders, she met an acquaintance of the family in the upstairs where she lived, first once, then again. Maybe it was random, maybe not. She called the policewoman she had been assigned as a contact person in the police. Hi, this is Lisa. I’ve seen someone who knows the family. The alarm went off with the police. Now she had to move to another part of the country, and it was urgent. And that was how she had ended up in a whole new place, with the message to stay inside as much as possible. I did not sacrifice my whole life to sit at home, she thought. It is not so easy to get an answer as to why these months became like this. The general manager of the municipal service who was responsible for Lisa, states that all the employees from that time have left. She can therefore not comment on Lisa’s experiences. Both the municipal service and Kripos say that they work in a different way today, with emphasis on giving people with code 6 status the opportunity to have the most normal life possible. – Today, greater emphasis is placed on those who are exposed to threats, not having to limit their freedom unnecessarily, says Ole Jørgen Arvesen in Kripos. The job had been Lisa’s therapy, but now she went inside with her own thoughts. She had too much time, too little to do. At night the anxiety came, when she first fell asleep, the nightmares appeared. She received new ID cards and a new passport with the new name. Now she had to introduce herself as Lisa. Lisa-Lisa-Lisa was everywhere except in her own head. In her own head she was still called the name her parents gave her. She often said the old name when introducing herself. A cover story was needed. She said that there were so many at school who had the same name as her, and that she therefore used a middle name, which she had now left again. Using the middle name had since become a habit. The story just hung on. She could not tell anyone where she grew up or what background she had. She felt people became suspicious. And who had she really told what to? Through support groups for people in similar situations, she eventually managed to make friends. Ideally, she should stay indoors, especially in the evening. But she did not succeed, she had to go out to meet people. Two young women who also lived with code 6 measures became her close friends. Slowly but surely she managed to carve a life together. Jobs, housing and friends eventually fell into place. Life 2.0 Today Lisa is working full time. In addition to her job, she improves her grades from high school. She envisions starting studies in a couple of years. She sits on the same couch she sleeps on at night when she is scared. The brown hair is attached in a loose elastic. She is wearing a spacious fleece sweater and jeans that end in the middle of the leg. It takes a lot to live on code 6, but she is grateful for the security it provides. The worst thing is to lie to others, even those she is close to. One year ago, she started dating a man. Should she tell about her background? After much deliberation, she decided not to. She had a boyfriend before, one she thought she could tell about her past. But it became too much for him, and he ended it. A while ago, the new relationship also ended. He still knows nothing about who he was actually with for half a year. In everyday life, it is small tangles she notices the most. She is tired of the mail coming over a week later than other people’s mail, because it has to be sent via a mailbox owned by the police. Or that she can not order a taxi or packages home. The address can never come out. There are places she never goes, where she risks meeting someone who knows someone. Looking over your shoulder has become a habit. She takes a snuff and looks at her watch. She’s going to work soon. She has only been on sick leave from work for one week in recent years. She refuses to let the background and security measures prevent her from living the life she wants. She regularly goes to a psychologist to process the traumas. And one more thing has happened that has helped her. She pulls up her cell phone and shows me a picture of an adult couple. They are holiday brown and smile at the camera. – This is my new family, she says. Slalom and board games A few years ago, when she was standing completely on bare ground, coincidences meant that Lisa had a kind of foster family. A kind, because it is not formalized and the foster family does not receive support from the government. The couple heard about Lisa’s situation and wanted to get in touch with her, maybe they could help? It was the start of family dinners, Christmas dinners and holiday trips for Lisa, the foster parents and the new sibling group. Now she has just returned from a skiing holiday with the whole family. The foster father, who is a racer on the ski slopes, does not give up on her, even though there are a lot of ups and downs. In the evenings they play Uno and Alias. Then it is Lisa who usually wins. The family has provided her with all the winter equipment and warm clothes. When she moved into her home, it was her foster parents who drove back and forth to Ikea and helped her for two days. For the first time, she understood what it means to have a family. – They do all this without getting anything in return for it. It’s so unusual. Although she is disappointed with the family she grew up with, she misses them too. Often the good memories can be just as difficult to deal with as the bad ones for people who live in hiding. The loss of those you need to be protected from often triggers shame and grief, according to the Crisis Center Secretariat. – I do not understand that people can do that to their children, Lisa says quietly. But despite everything she grew up with, she still has confusing thoughts about her biological family. – I wish I only felt hatred, but I struggle with a bad conscience that I got a family member convicted. At the same time, I miss them, because they are still my family, she says quietly. The new parents call Lisa their daughter and would like her to call them mom and dad. She thinks they are the kindest people in the world. But she does not manage to call them mom and mom.
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Life on Code 6 – Documentary
