Information Note on the Court’s case-law 217
April 2018
Mohamed Hasan v. Norway - 27496/15
Judgment 26.4.2018 [Section V]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Exceptional circumstances justifying adoption of children, victims of domestic violence, by foster parents: no violation
Facts – The applicant and her husband, Iraqi nationals residing in Norway at the material time, had two daughters, born in 2008 and 2010. As the applicant’s husband was violent towards her and their children, she repeatedly spent time in crisis centres and her first daughter was twice placed in an emergency foster home. In late 2010 the authorities placed both children in emergency foster care. In 2011, during a contact visit with the applicant, the children were abducted by two masked individuals who forced their way in and attacked the applicant using an electroshock weapon. The children were later found and the father admitted he had orchestrated the abduction.
Following this incident, the County Social Welfare Board issued an order, which was upheld on appeal, for both children to be taken into care in separate foster homes at secret addresses and no contact was allowed between them and their parents. A further decision was taken in 2014 to keep the children in foster care, remove parental authority and to allow their adoption by their foster parents. The applicant and her husband appealed unsuccessfully. In the domestic proceedings, the applicant acknowledged her children’s attachment to their foster homes and did not request that the children be returned to her.
Law – Article 8: Concerning the decision-making process, the applicant had been present and represented by legal counsel at the proceedings before the Board and the City Court. Each body comprised of a professional judge or equivalent, a psychologist and a lay person with the case being heard over the course of two days. An expert had given written statements and appeared at the hearings to be questioned. The applicant had thus been sufficiently involved in the decision-making process, seen as whole, to be provided with the requisite protection of her interests and fully able to present her case. Moreover, she had also had access to review her case through leave-to-appeal proceedings before the High Court and Supreme Court.
The factors motivating the authorities were clearly the need to protect the applicant’s daughters and ensure that they could be brought up in a safe environment suited to their particular vulnerability by the persons to whom they had attached as carers. The domestic authorities had also had due regard to individual factors relating to each child, such as their age and maturity, as well as the effects of the decision with regard to their cultural background and relationships with relatives.
The decision to remove the applicant’s parental authority and to authorise the adoption of her daughters had been taken “in exceptional circumstances”. The domestic courts had referred to numerous incidents of domestic violence and abuse by the applicant’s husband, as a result of which the children had experienced several broken relationships and become particularly vulnerable. The children had lost their attachment to the applicant and had developed such an attachment to their foster parents that it would have been harmful for them to be removed. Moreover, the applicant would not be able to take care of two children with such a traumatic background and it was improbable that any of the parents would be able to exercise parental authority over them in the future. Furthermore, the abduction risk was of such a nature that even if the children were to remain in temporary care, the applicant could not in any event be given access to them. Given that they had been living under a strict security regime because of that risk, and taking into account their history, it was especially important that stability and predictability be ensured. In that respect, an adoption, compared with long-term foster case, ensured a higher degree of security. While the applicant had established an independent life for herself after the final breakdown of the relationship with her former husband, she would not have been able to protect the children against him and his relatives.
In sum, the decision-making process had been fair. The removal of parental authority and consent to adoption had been justified by exceptional circumstances and motivated by overriding requirements pertaining to the children’s best interests. Therefore, the impugned measures did not amount to a disproportionate interference with the applicant’s right to respect for her family life.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
(See also Strand Lobben and Others v. Norway, 37283/13, 30 November 2017, Information Note 212, referred to the Grand Chamber on 9 April 2018 (see the summary above); and the Factsheet on Children’s rights)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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