Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

A spate of albino murders that occurred in Tanzania in 2008 serves as a starting point for investigating two events and stories regarding witchcraft among the Chagga-speaking people of Rombo District, Kilimanjaro Region. Departing from the popular and predominant concept of ‘occult economies’, these incidents and accounts are revealed to revolve around the concept of ‘life-force’ (), whose transfers and transformations afford human, animal, and vegetative being, and constitute ‘dwelling’ () and ‘life’ () in this setting. On this basis, it is argued that witchcraft pertains to modes of being and not-being that unfold from dwelling and life, as transformational processes. Moreover, the accounts are shown to encompass Catholic and Pentecostal Christianity, which unfold from each other as different attempts to deal with witchcraft. The result is a set of folding movements and moments that pertain to modes of being and not-being, which depart from representational approaches in anthropology.

This chapter describes the background for, and implementation of, the Barnahus model within the Nordic countries. It highlights the core elements of the model and the specifics of the Nordic welfare state context relating to the child welfare and criminal justice systems. A contextual and comparative perspective is used to shed light on how the model is shaped by the legal and institutional context in which it has been implemented. Local adaptions of the Barnahus model, specific to each Nordic country, are also identified. Finally, the outline of the book, containing sixteen chapters divided into four broad themes, is presented.

This chapter explores the aesthetic-material dimension of the Barnahus model as an integral part of its child-friendliness. The analysis has a background in discussions at the European level of the importance of child-friendly justice and the role of child-friendly premises in this respect. The chapter aims to further the scholarly debate about what child-friendliness means in the Barnahus context. Two types of data are analysed: texts produced in the implementation phase of Barnahus in Norway that discuss where Barnahus should be located and how they should be decorated, and survey data from children and adults who have visited Barnahus in Norway for investigative interviews. The chapter concludes that child-friendly premises are important because they acknowledge children in Barnahus as children and not only as victims of abuse. In addition, child-friendly premises is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for achieving a child-friendly—and caring—atmosphere.

This chapter presents and analyses children’s narratives about being summoned to, arriving at and visiting a Barnahus. The children felt welcomed as guests, but hard work awaited them in the police investigative interview in front of frightening cameras and with strangers watching in an adjacent room. The children found that they needed more information about what was going on and why. From the children’s perspective, Barnahus became a house where children meet the police in serious matters. This chapter concludes with suggestions for further research and reflections for practitioners in consideration of children’s experiences of procedures and of being addressed as non-acting objects—instead of the acting subjects, the children talked about themselves as being, and acted as, in the research interviews.

This chapter addresses the psychological treatment for children who have experienced parental physical abuse, as reported to child welfare services. For children, physical abuse can increase the risk of both internal and external behavioural problems. Since abused children often continue to live with their parents‚ it is important to offer interventions to prevent further abuse and to improve the child´s well-being. In this chapter‚ we describe a specialised intervention, Combined Parent – Child Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CPC-CBT), for families at risk for child physical abuse, which has been implemented in several Swedish Barnahus over the last 9 years. We report the results from an ongoing research study into the effects of the intervention on the risk of victimisation, parenting strategies and child well-being. The results suggest that Barnahus is a suitable context for providing support for families and that CPC-CBT is an effective intervention.

Barnahus performs investigative interviewing of children. Internationally, there are two parallel legal systems in which children’s testimonies are obtained and presented as evidence in court. The first system is often referred to as the ‘Adversarial package’, and the second is the ‘Nordic model’. This chapter presents the development of the Nordic model.

An important ambition among professionals in the Nordic countries over the last decade has been to enhance the quality of investigative interviews by using structured protocols in child forensic interviews. Today Iceland, Sweden and Finland are greatly inspired by the NICHD protocol, which is an internationally used protocol for the investigative interviewing of children, developed by Professor Michael Lamb and colleagues at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The NICHD protocol is based on research into children’s development of cognitive and communicative abilities and questioning techniques that enhance children’s capacities to provide accurate information about their past experiences. Researchers have recently also started to test a revised version of the NICHD protocol, which focuses on enhanced socio-emotional support from interviewers in order to manage children’s reluctance to reveal abuse. In our opinion, the use of structured, research-based interview protocols, such as the NICHD protocol, is a crucial step in addressing a main objective of the Barnahus model; providing better service for child victims of abuse by improving the quality of investigative interviews.

In Finland, specialised university hospital units have been set up to ensure a child-friendly and expert setting for investigating suspected crimes against children. The units conduct investigative interviews especially in cases involving young children or particularly vulnerable child victims, and provide expert assistance when requested by the police. In this chapter we present the legal and theoretical framework of these units. We focus on two specific elements within the Finnish system: the use of (forensic) psychological expertise within the pre-trial investigation and the hypothesis-testing approach. During the investigations at the units, particular care is made in collecting and assessing the background information of each case and planning the investigation accordingly. The scientific framework and its practical applications are demonstrated through case vignettes.

This chapter presents and discusses a new sequential interview model that is tailored to the needs of preschool children aged about 3 to 6 years old when they participate in investigative interviews in Barnahus. The extended forensic interview protocol (EFI) from the USA has served as the foundation for the development of the Norwegian sequential interview model (SI). This new model is based on close collaboration between police interviewers and Barnahus staff. The model differs from the standard procedures of investigative interviews in Norway and these differences are highlighted in this chapter. This chapter concludes with suggestions for further research on investigative interviews with preschool children.

The aim of the chapter is twofold. The first aim is to introduce a method of analysis for interdisciplinary child rights justice systems which offers a systematic approach to qualifying, understanding and critically discussing the interwoven processes and procedures at play within justice systems dealing with child sexual abuse. The second aim is to use the method to critically analyse and discuss the effectiveness of Barnahus in Iceland. The method identifies four main principles of international instruments which offer a constructive way to analyse parallel procedures and practices within justice systems. The study of Barnahus strongly indicates that the model was a radical improvement in furthering child friendly justice but some obstacles remain and the challenge of progressive and effective implementation of international instruments is an ongoing process.