On a day in May 2024, Petter Gunnerud stands in a small wooded area beside what appears to be an old farm. There are now wrecked cars and rubbish on the property. In one corner stands a climbing frame with a slide. There are several houses on the site. Every couple of hours, a man comes out onto the steps of one of them for a cigarette. Then he goes back inside. Otherwise, there is no activity.
Petter returns several times. He spends the night in the woods. He sees his own daughters come out into the yard. This is their emergency foster home (beredskapshjem).
The girls play on the slide for hours. A compulsive kind of play, their father describes it as. There was no joy in it, only something they did to pass the time. They are living at a concealed address, and there are no other children there. Their parents are allowed to see them for only a few hours each month.
Contact under strict restrictions
During contact visits, parents and children were subject to strict restrictions. The child welfare services (barnevernet) were present to monitor them and listen to what was being said. Among other things, the parents were not allowed to ask how things were in the emergency foster home, Petter says. If they did, the visit would be terminated.
Nevertheless, “fragments of quite serious things” emerged, according to him: that the children took part in no leisure activities and did not attend school. They were given only a few books intended for home instruction. “But I do not understand any of them,” the eldest girl is said to have told her father. “Then perhaps you could ask the foster mother for help?” he wondered. “No, that is not possible.”
The father says they had to change the subject so that the visit would not be interrupted.
Then it emerged that the emergency foster father “had many children”. That alone was enough for Petter to want to find out what conditions were really like.
Takes the children sailing
On 23 May he stayed in the woods overnight. The following day the girls were playing on the slide. Then they ran towards the wooded area. They saw their father. When they met, Petter took them with him.
– When you have clear indications that children are being subjected to abuse, you do not send them back to where the abuse was committed, he says. – I did what any normal person would have done.
After the children joined Petter in the woods, they travelled the long distance down to a sailing boat that Petter kept in Son.
They sailed out and stayed by an island. Petter gave his daughters time and did not want to pressure them into talking, but instead allowed them to tell him about conditions in the emergency foster home when they were ready.
On Friday, 31 May, they went to a beach on Husøy, near a friend of the eldest daughter. They did not meet the friend. Instead, they encountered the police.
The father is arrested, the mother is found in Sweden and arrested there, and the two daughters are taken back to the emergency foster home before being separated and placed in different homes.
Financial motives?
The emergency foster home, which later received foster-home status, obtained the assignment through Stendi AS, a private company that sells child welfare services to the public sector and has annual turnover of around NOK 3 billion.
As a foster home, one can earn from NOK 18,667 to more than NOK 21,300 per month per child, depending on age.
Enhanced foster homes earn more, and if children receive diagnoses, this triggers claims for additional funding. After some time in foster care, the eldest girl had received several diagnoses. When children are described as “very difficult” and have various needs that must be met, foster parents may be bought out of employment and receive full salary to remain at home.
The foster parents continued to receive full pay to stay at home even after the girls later began attending school and kindergarten.
In addition to salary and emergency foster-home compensation, there is money intended to cover clothing, food, and other expenses for the children.
At first, only the woman in the household served as emergency foster mother and foster mother. After some time, her partner, who was receiving disability benefits, was also bought out to serve as foster father.
Removed by force in March
Petter Gunnerud and Monica Drexel were deprived of their two children, aged four and eight, by the child welfare services on 5 March 2024. Together with four police officers, child welfare officials escorted the children into a car while the mother was physically restrained. She shouted after them that she loved them and that they would be allowed to come back.
Three child welfare authorities – Sarpsborg, Tønsberg, and Child Welfare Services East in Agder – worked together to locate the family, which was considered to be “on the run”. They informed the child welfare authorities in Nord-Østerdal that the children could be removed “immediately without investigation”. The justification was that the girls were not attending school and that the family was on the run. The child welfare authorities in Nord-Østerdal had carried out no independent investigation; their assumptions were based on a report received from Sarpsborg.
The parents were permitted contact with the children once a month.
The emergency order reviewed
After the sailing trip, the parents continued working to regain custody of their daughters.
In October 2025, the emergency order was reviewed in the Agder District Court. Seven days were set aside for the hearing. It was a story stretching back many years. Documents, reports, audio recordings, films, and photographs were to be examined.
The proceedings ended with a devastating judgment against the child welfare services. The daughters were to be returned to their parents. The eldest girl had received lawful home education, both children were active and socially engaged with others, and there was no documented flight from the child welfare authorities. There was no basis for the emergency order.
During the court proceedings, the police appeared. Petter was charged with “deprivation of care” (omsorgsunndragelse): abducting his own children.
Alleged developmental concerns
Following concerns dating back to the birth of the eldest daughter, the child welfare services became involved. The parents did not oppose invitations to meetings and assessments. However, they disagreed with the conclusions reached. Among other things, the child welfare services were said to be seriously concerned about the girl’s alleged developmental abnormalities. An independent specialist psychologist assessed her as developing normally and being ahead of her peers in some areas. A report from a crisis centre gave a favourable impression of a secure girl who interacted well with both her parents and other adults. The mother says she felt pressured by the child welfare services into going to the crisis centre. The father says they have been pursued by the child welfare services for many years.
It began with a report of concern filed on the same day the eldest girl was born. Ambulance personnel transporting the parents to hospital criticised conditions in the home. The child welfare services appeared at the hospital before carrying out a home visit, but concluded that the concerns were unfounded. Nevertheless, the family was monitored for years, with what the parents describe as manufactured excuses.
The girl received approval for home education. Yet the 2024 emergency order states that the eldest girl had been deprived of her “right and obligation to attend school”. No such right and obligation exists. There is an obligation to receive education, which the parents had received approval to provide from Sarpsborg Municipality.
At an earlier stage, the child welfare services in Sarpsborg had reported the family for failure to ensure school attendance, but the police discontinued the case on the grounds that “the investigation strongly indicates that no criminal offence has occurred”.
Trial in Eidsvoll
The trial took place from 8 to 11 June in the Glåmdal and Romerike District Court. Twelve observers attended. Environments critical of the child welfare services are following the case closely, placing pressure on both judges and witnesses. The case is subject to an extensive reporting restriction and therefore cannot be reported without reservation.
This creates difficulties in a story that stretches across years and includes documentation in the form of reports, audio recordings, photographs, and surveillance-camera footage. Not all reports are consistent with one another and must be assessed in light of witness testimony, personal impressions, and common sense.
The father says he repeatedly requested explanations from the child welfare services regarding the nature of their concerns but never received a satisfactory answer. The basis for those concerns has now been disproved, and the foundation of the emergency order found invalid in a judgment from the Agder District Court (which is also subject to reporting restrictions). The proceedings in the Glåmdal and Romerike District Court lasted seven days, during which the father was able to address the most serious allegations.
Exempt from public scrutiny
The internal mechanisms of the child welfare services remain hidden from public view when they fail, and foster parents and child welfare employees who fail in their duties are spared accountability in the light of public scrutiny.
The father asks:
– How can public employees performing a public role in a public criminal case be exempt from public scrutiny?
More coverage of the trial will follow. I spoke with the accused father after the district court proceedings. You can watch our conversation here:
A father who wished to investigate the conditions under which his daughters were living in an emergency foster home, and who was ultimately deemed a sufficiently capable caregiver, has been charged with abducting his own children.
The daughters want to be with their mother and father and have a natural and stimulating everyday life, regular education within an extensive home-schooling environment in which they thrive. They are now back with their family.
The child welfare services can remove children without a valid basis and face no punishment, but when a concerned parent removes children from a foster home where they are not doing well, the police appear and seek to imprison that parent. The children now risk losing their father once again.