A mother and her three children were found lifeless in the sea at Fagereng in Tromsø on 2 December 2019. Only one of the children, a little girl, survived. The family was from Sudan. The police investigated the case, and charged the mother with murder and attempted murder. The case was dropped by the Attorney General, because they are sure that no one else but the woman was to blame for what happened. The girl who survived suffered serious injuries. Today, she goes to kindergarten, and is dependent on support and help in everyday life. Through her assistance lawyer, Erik Ringberg, she has applied for victim compensation. She has now been awarded an amount of one million. This is confirmed by the legal aid attorney for news, without being able to comment further on the case. According to Nordlys, the police and the University Hospital of Northern Norway should have been briefed in writing about the outcome last week. On the afternoon of 2 December 2019, a pram was left on the footpath at Fagereng in Tromsø. One of Tromsø’s busiest roads passes by. But exactly where the pram was, there were no pedestrian crossings or bus stops. Photo: Jonas Høylo Fundingsrud The Fagereng tragedy Photo: Rune Stoltz Bertinussen / NTB scanpix The police in Tromsø received a report on Monday 2 December at 17.28 about a baby carriage lying on the road near Fagereng in Tromsø, and that there were footprints in the snow down to the lake. The police arrived at the scene and found four lifeless people eight to ten meters out in the sea, a woman in her 20s and her three daughters. According to the police, there is deep water at the scene. All were sent to hospital. That same evening, a girl born in 2012 died in the hospital in Tromsø. Later that evening, the mother also died. Two girls born in 2015 and 2018 were admitted to Rikshospitalet in Oslo with life-threatening injuries. The oldest of them died, the youngest survived. The family is originally from Sudan and had temporary residence in Norway. The father came to Norway in 2015, and the mother came for family reunification in 2017 together with the girls aged one, four and seven. No one in the family is known to the police, and they lived together. The police in Tromsø are investigating the mother for murder and attempted murder. On 17 August, the case was fully investigated and sent to the public prosecutor. Children’s boots and pram found Olaf Jacobsen was one of the first to the scene when the mother, a woman in her 20s, and her three daughters were found in the sea. – I found an abandoned pram in an unnatural place where there is no driveway or parking spaces. Then I thought I have to check this, Olaf Jacobsen told news after the incident. Olaf Jacobsen was cycling past Fagereng in Tromsø when he happened to see an abandoned pram. Photo: Pål Hansen / news A short time later, another lady passed by. Jacobsen asked if she could help him. The two quickly noticed the tracks on the other side of the road. – We saw that the tracks led down to the shore. There were several tracks together and we walked next to the tracks. Jacobsen notified the police. He and the woman then went in separate directions and began to search. – The woman I was with suddenly found two children’s boots in sizes 36 and 31. Then I immediately thought that there must be someone in the lake. Vulnerable, “forgotten” group The National Commission of Inquiry for the Health and Care Service (Ukom) investigated the Fagereng tragedy in the aftermath. They concluded that women who come to Norway for family reunification with refugees are a very vulnerable, “forgotten” group. Ukom’s risk assessments after the Fagereng tragedy There is a risk that neither the municipality nor the spouse is sufficiently prepared to accept family members who are resettled with family reunification. There is a risk that no one knows about the challenges that family reunification has. There is a risk that the services will not catch and accommodate family reunified people who need help. There is a risk that the refugees will not reach out with their needs for help because they do not know who can help. There is a risk that the introduction program and the integration plan as a whole entail too high expectations at the start. There is a risk that the attendance requirement is too strict in the establishment phase, as it does not allow for individual adaptation. There is a risk that participants in the introductory program will not reach the goals, and this may be experienced as an additional burden in a difficult phase. There is a risk that refugees experience an overall pressure to perform that affects their health. There is a risk that the current system does not take into account the knowledge that refugees experience more health problems after a while and does not take into account that refugees experience stress linked to migration. There is a risk that refugees do not seek help because they do not trust and understand the services. There is a risk that women do not put words to experiences that are difficult to cope with alone, and one reason may be fear of being labeled as crazy. There is a risk that the refugee women do not know that there is a mental health service. There is a risk that the ordinary services do not have sufficient knowledge of how refugees fare after a period in Norway. There is a risk that refugees who need help will not be caught. There is a risk that refugees will not receive the necessary follow-up when there are no available health and care personnel in the introduction programme. There is a risk that the competence in and interaction with the refugee health team will be deficient when dimensioning and organization vary over time. There is a risk that the families will not receive equal health services if they prematurely have to make use of ordinary services with insufficient knowledge about refugee health There is a risk that GPs do not have enough expertise in refugee health and that this can be demanding for both the refugees and the GPs . There is a risk that GPs do not have enough expertise in refugee health and that this can be demanding for both the refugees and the GPs. There is a risk that the GP does not have sufficient time and resources to find out whether refugees have concerns they need help to deal with. There is a risk that the women do not ask health nurses for advice and support for fear of showing a lack of coping skills and for fear of child protection. There is a risk that refugees’ fear of the child welfare services in Norway means that they withhold information that is necessary to be able to help them. There is a risk that healthcare personnel do not use an interpreter, even if there is a need for it. There is a risk that the patient will not be sufficiently informed when the spouse acts as an interpreter. There is a risk that the fragmentation of services means that no one has a complete overview of the life situation of the individual refugee. There is a risk that refugees do not know who to turn to with various questions. There is a risk that the actors will not meet the refugees’ needs if they strictly adhere to their mandate, and thus have too limited an understanding of their own role. There is a risk that the potential of the voluntary organizations is not well enough known and the refugees will not benefit if there is no formalized collaboration with the municipality. They found a risk that newly arrived refugees with special psychosocial burdens and a need for health care are not caught. “In particular, there is a risk that the service offer is not adapted to the women who are granted residence in Norway with family reunification”, the report states.
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The girl who survived the Fagereng tragedy receives millions in compensation – news Troms and Finnmark
