A Great Find: Turning the World Upside Down

The Godhavn Inquiry

The first Danish inquiry on child abuse and neglect in institutions or children’s homes was named the Godhavn Inquiry, and its results first appeared on May 9, 2011, in the Godhavn Report. The report was an independent scrutiny of a number of complaints raised by members of Landsforeningen Godhavnsdrengene (National Association of the Godhavn’s Boys) against nineteen Danish children’s homes in the period from 1945 to 1976. The inquiry included a thorough study based on interviews and archival material documenting the conditions at Godhavn Drenge- og Skolehjem as well as selective studies of eighteen other children’s homes.¹

The story behind the inquiry dates back to 2005, when Danish National Television (DR) broadcast Rikke Skov’s documentary Drengehjemmet (The Boys’ Home), in which former boys and employees of the children’s home put forward a number of accusations of abuse, neglect, and medical experiments using psychopharmacological drugs at Godhavn in the 1960s. The subsequent debate led to the foundation of Landsforeningen Godhavnsdrengene, which fought for an impartial inquiry into the conditions during its members’ stay at children’s homes. Their efforts were rewarded in 2010 when an inquiry was carried out by three historians from the Welfare Museum in Denmark, under the management of curator Maria Rytter. Ninety-nine participants, mainly members of Landsforeningen Godhavnsdrengene, were interviewed during the year-long investigation.

The inquiry was divided into two parts: one based on interviews and one based on research into archival material. In addition to Maria Rytter, the museum employed two full-time researchers for six months, historians Jacob Knage Rasmussen, who carried out most of the interviews, and Inge Mønster-Kjær, who investigated the archival material with assistance from Associate Professor Jesper Vaczy Krag, a member of the inquiry’s professional reference group.

BEING A MUSEUM

Having a museum do this kind of investigation is not something that has been seen in other countries, but in this case it had its reasons. The Welfare Museum occupies the best-preserved poorhouse in the Nordic Region, Svendborg Købstads Fattig-og Arbejdsanstalt, which dates back to 1872. The Welfare Museum displays an often hidden part of the history of Denmark—the story of the many people who have lived in society’s shadows. It collects, preserves, researches, and relates the history of life in care institutions such as children’s homes, poorhouses, workhouses, and homes for the aged. The museum’s nationwide collections of social history provide the basis for a permanent exhibition, Du skal ikke tænke på din mor og far (You Shall Not Think About Your Father and Mother), and website www.børnehjem.dk, as well as the projects 100 års fattigdom (100 Years of Poverty) and Beat Poverty.

Through this work the museum has taken a lead in documenting the last one hundred years of the history of children’s homes. But hidden opportunities are revealed when a museum carries out a national investigation like the Godhavn Inquiry.

Image 1.

The gym at Vaerebro Boys’ Home as it looks today. Photo: Jacob Knage Rasmussen 2010.

As museum curators we focus on the material object or artifact and its role, not only in the making of exhibitions, but also as pieces of evidence in a larger context. From our earlier research into children’s homes, we understood the importance of finding historical artifacts retained by the care leavers or left in the old institutions. We knew, however, that employees in former times often did everything they could to cover the evidence of their treatment of the children in their care. Thus, it was not uncommon to see the children’s records and institution archives being burned in the garden by the headmaster when the homes were closed down in the 1980s. So if we were going to find anything, we had to be both lucky and always alert to other possibilities—and during the Godhavn investigation we were both. This awareness served us well when we accidentally stumbled over a...