100 Days in Europe

A trip across Romania meeting people who look after and have looked after our dear ones. They are hundreds of thousands. These care workers return home finding it hard to resume normal life. They suffer from anxiety and have panic attacks. Their ‘white orphan’ children are left at home with the grandparents. Some women carers say: “They no longer want me. I have given away my life to Italy”.

Photo: Francesco Giusti/Prospekt

The clinic for our carers is called “the Italian Syndrome” – It affects many women who have left everything at home, including their children

Nicoleta, you are disgusting! Nicoleta, clean up! Nicoleta shut up! “I always hear those voices…”. She can still hear those screams ringing in her ears of the elderly sick man suffering from Alzheimer’s and his wife. She has memories in her head of the house in Treviso. It was like being in a prison without sleep and without permission to have time off, neither on Saturdays nor Sundays. “I dream of those people every night. Two zombies! They used to grab me; they hurt me!…”. Nicoleta is sitting and staring at the hydrangeas in the clinic grounds under the shade of a carob tree. She is sitting awkwardly in a black overcoat, which makes her fifty-two year old body look old. She sits on the same bench every day at noon. She was a carer for ten years and now she no longer has anybody to care for, not even herself.

She spends her time having therapy: “I realized I was speaking to voices when I returned home in 2012. I felt I was a prisoner; I could never sleep and I would run away. I had panic attacks and I would cry. My two children would look at me as if I were a stranger. They were right. They had grown up without me. By now, too much time had gone by. In the end, they went away”. Nicoleta smiles into space: “I have stayed here, whilst they have escaped to live in Sicily. It is just like before; we never see each other”. It is best like that: “Of course, why would they have stayed with me? They have their own lives to lead. I have given away my life to Italy”.

She was a carer for ten years and now she no longer has anybody to care for, not even herself.

Lives to be lost

Ah, Romania, the servant, a place filled with pain! There are over two hundred Nicoletas a year at the Iasi Socola Institute of Psychiatry. They are depressed, without appetite, they suffer from insomnia, schizophrenia, anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations and obsessions. Some went mad. Others tried to commit suicide. There are about a million care workers we take on at home and we think we know them. Only Syria exports more migrants to Europe than Romania, and they become lost lives when they return home.

Their complaint has a scientific name, which has caused us, as the largest European importers of affection for a fee, to be known as “the Italian Syndrome”.

This type of stress was diagnosed and first given this name by two psychiatrists from Kiev. In 2005, they have noticed common symptoms in many Ukrainian, Romanian and Moldavian women, including women from the Philippines and South America. They had all emigrated for years to care for elderly people far away in rich Europe, leaving behind children and husbands.

“More than a disease, ‘the Italian syndrome’ is a medical-social phenomenon,” explained Petronela Nechita, consultant psychiatrist at the Iasi clinic: “There is the prolonged lack of sleep, separation from the family, the delegation of motherhood to grandparents, husbands, and neighbours… We have many case studies. The situation got worse when Romanian women from the south of the country, where they used to work in the fields and were paid less, moved to the north of Italy to take care of the elderly. Our patients include mostly women who refused to take their days off and who refused free time in order to earn more money. They ended up totally exhausted from the hard work. Nobody can care for a person suffering from dementia or care for a person who is not self-sufficient for 24 hours a day alone, without ever taking a break. With the mental burden of what they have left behind, I would also get ill and so would you. On their return to Romania, the therapy for “the Italian syndrome” could last up to five years and it is rarely available on national healthcare. The cost is an average monthly salary of €240 over twelve periods a year.

A third of the women admitted to hospital attempted to commit suicide at least once, and they often did succeed. It is a silent massacre, because the family usually asks for the wording in the death certificate to be changed. In the poorest region of the EU, in Iasi, the place of “the hundred churches”, as this main city of the Romanian Moldavia is also called, and which Pope Francis Bergoglio will visit in June. Orthodox popes deny funerals and a Christian cemetery burial to those who take their own life.

Children from the village of Comarna, Iasi

Photo: Francesco Giusti/Prospekt

Abandoned villages

“Dor” is an almost untranslatable feeling that all carers know: the craving for what has been abandoned, that pining for what will never be found again, the anxiety for so much suffering to end. “Mi am un singur dor/ în linistea serii/ sa ma lasati sa mor” (I have only one dor in the silence of the night, let me die), verses written by the great local poet Mihai Eminescu.

Botosani, the village where he was born, has been abandoned by emigration. Today it breathes new life thanks to the lady mayor, who has managed to obtain legal contracts and more humane work shifts in Germany and Spain (“but not in Italy”). Likewise for Butea, where they have paved the road with asphalt, opened nursery schools for abandoned children and bought small coaches to bring the mothers back every month. However, these are exceptions. Everywhere else is like ghost towns of the Far West.

“Everybody left Comarna, but five thousand ghost inhabitants have sprouted up”, smiled the mayor Costel Gradinaru. They are Moldavian women (from outside the European Union), all residents at the same address as the house of a complicit policeman so that they can get a Romanian passport (in other words an EU passport) more easily and they can go to Italy from Moldavia without a visa.

People meet at a departure point at dawn every day in Via Nationala behind Iasi station, the hub of betting shops and striptease clubs, queuing up to leave by coach (Flixbus, AmiTuring or Atlass). Tickets cost €70 to Padua, €110 to Palermo – with a 40 kg baggage allowance. This is all run by gypsy gangs, who sell shoes, jackets and mobile phones alongside the ticket offices. Somehow these items were picked up in Italy.

“The tough time was when both mummy and daddy left. My mother is still in Taranto. I speak to her twice a day, but it is not the same thing. I would like her to be here. I have two brothers, younger brothers, who almost hardly know her.”

Spread around was a desert of new small empty houses with windows still covered in cellophane built with the money transferred from abroad.

“I felt like a slave in Rome”, said Gabriela Neculai, who earned 700 euros a month and never had a day off in ten years. “I did not even buy myself some fruit juice or an ice-cream. I sent all the money to Romania. Now I have a lovely house, but I am alone. No, it was not worth it”. Carmen, who is 58, spent ten years in Biella: “I could only wash once a week. They controlled my food, and I had to warm up water on the radiators. Now my family cannot stand me. I am like a spy. I write down what is being consumed. I am obsessive. Italy has made me become like this”.

“You Italians do not care about your parents at all. You take on a care worker and that’s it. You lead your own lives”, wept Elena Alexa, who is 60 years old and who has been in therapy for five years. “I worked in Verona off the books. I was given little to eat and I lost weight dropping to 50 kilos. I was looking after an elderly man who weighed 100 kilos. I was allowed six apple halves a week. Every day he would eat one half and give me the other half. They put my bed in the corridor where the dog slept. They would sling swear words at me, such as Romanian daughter of a bitch… you are all starving beggars! I gradually began to have panic attacks and a permanent pain in my throat. In the meantime, my family was going to the dogs. I had abandoned my parents to go and look after other people’s parents. My young son used to sleep with my photo under his pillow and trembled all the time. He used to phone me begging me: “Come home, or else I shall go on the roof and throw myself down…”. “He already had white hair at the age of 19”.

The return home

Elena Tescovina (in this photo showing pictures of her children) has just returned after working for many years as a carer in Florence and Milan. She lives in Comarna, a village near Iasi in the Moldavia region, which has almost been abandoned, because most adults work abroad.

Gabriela Neculai spent many years working in Italy. Now she is being treated at the “Socola” Psychiatric Institute in Iasi. Dr Nechita Petronela, head psychiatrist at the clinic: “More than a disease, ‘the Italian syndrome’ is a medical-social phenomenon. There is the prolonged lack of sleep, separation from the family, the delegation of motherhood to grandparents, husbands and neighbours…”

Photo: Francesco Giusti/Prospekt

Side effects

It is the person who makes the place, the Romanians say. It is their actions, which tell the story. A thirteen year old girl hung herself in mid March. This is the latest case. It is a side effect of “the Italian syndrome”, which also affects the 750 thousand children of the care workers, the so-called “white orphans” whose stories are told in Ingrid Coman’s novels. “It is a stereo type to think that all Italians are indifferent to the situation of care workers”, commented the writer, who is moving her family to Iasi. “I would not generalise. Understanding depends on individuals, not on society. However, it is a fact that in Italy, we are looking at a number of cases of slavery, and at the consequences caused.”

Silvia Dumitrache, Italian leader of the Romanian Women’s Association, keeps track of the children who commit suicide – not being able to cope with being left behind. They are about a hundred to date. Thirty seriously ill children hidden from the world suffering from depression have been admitted to the Iasi clinic. They do not know what to do with them, as there are no child neuropsychiatrists. Mihaela Hurdurc, head of the Caritas school, explained: “We had Alex, a seven year old boy who returned home with his mother. She felt she was a failure. Alex could not adapt to the new life and refused to eat non-Italian food. He wanted to commit suicide, so we had to admit him to the clinic. The discomfort of those left behind is diverse. They suffer from various disorders, such as anger, anxiety and learning difficulties. There are those who are ashamed of the fact that their mother lives away. Others live with their grandparents, who are too elderly. Others live with neighbours, who are too much like strangers. Others are left on their own to fend for themselves. Parents sometimes go away to Italy and do not appoint anybody to be in charge of their children; they disappear for months and never contact the school. They sometimes even change phone card and so the children do not even have a number to contact”.

The village libraries get filled up with the poorest children at a certain time in the evening. They have wifi available so at last, they can speak to their parents in Italy. “The hardest time in my life was when both mummy and daddy left”, said Michael Chiriac, a ‘white orphan’. “The happiest time was the first Christmas together. I was ten years old. Now I am 22 years old, and my mother is still in Taranto. I speak to her twice a day, but it is not the same thing. I would like her to be here. I have two younger brothers. They hardly know her”.

In a well-refurbished house at address No. D786 Comarna, Elena Tescovina has just returned from Florence and Milan: “Eight years! I only went out of the house to take out the rubbish…”. She was convinced to return to her daughter. “Mummy, we can just live on bread and dripping, but do not leave again!” …with an irrepressible sadness: “Nobody can understand how I felt”. She does not like what she found on her return: disputes, beatings, and alcoholism. Living with an unrecognisable husband amidst her grievances for him: “You have never had a job!” and his reproaches to her: “You talk too much, you sound like an Italian!”. Pure syndrome.

They all advise her to go to the clinic. Elena cries, as she blames herself. However, she does not intend going for the time being: “I shall get better by working”. She travels 15 kilometres by bus to Iasi in the afternoons. She wears a uniform. She is a security guard and has night shifts. “I have to care for the shops”. Those are her exact words: “to care for”.

Trigger Warning

Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, eating disorders

The cubbyhole in which Andrine (17) has hidden herself is so small she must sit on her knees. From her mobile she posts several entries on her secret Instagram account. Hundreds of Norwegian girls on this hidden network can read her messages about her wish to die.

NRK has investigated the dark network on Instagram. Andrine is just one of the girls connected to it. At least fifteen Norwegian girls in this closed group have, within a few years, taken their own life. For a long period, Andrine has been one of the most active users on this site – even into her last hours.

Between her bouts of crying she is hardly aware of the two adults standing outside her cubbyhole. She’d rather concentrate on the network and on getting the courage to send what will be a directly transmitted suicide note she writes in one of her last messages on Instagram:

All is checked. Shit Andrine – it is only to do it. DO IT! Don’t give a shit about the disgusting feeling you have in your stomach that does not mean a thing. Stop hesitating. Hell, nobody cares anyway

Comment: ANDRINE NO!! DON’T DO IT!

Comment: Noooo!!!!

(All censorship of the Instagram-postings has, in this story, been made by NRK)

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“At last everything is ready,” she writes. For nearly ten months she’s been living in a private child protection institution. On this day the last brick falls into place.

I hear how they look for me. I can’t say anything. (Censured, censured, censured, censured, censured). So when I am ready, I have a clear path. Nobody can stop me now.

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She also sends several text messages to the staff on duty this late evening in March 2017. Just before 10.30 pm Andrine sends a message where she says goodbye to her mother.

“Tell her that I am sorry for ruining her life. Just tell her that she was the best mother I could ever have had.”

In her room there is also a handwritten note. “Bye and thanks for everything,” she writes, ending with a heart.

“Bye and thanks for everything”

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The staff finds out where Andrine is hiding and tries to get her to talk. Finally she agrees to unlock the door.

Everything now looks as if it will sort itself out, but on the way down from the second floor, the staff suddenly hears a sharp thump from the room where Andrine is.

Then everything is quiet.

The staff runs upstairs again, but gets no response. The emergency centre is being contacted, while the staff tries to break in with a crowbar.

Just a few minutes later an ambulance is on site, and the girl is being brought out.

But for Andrine it is too late.

After four days in a respirator in hospital, she dies.

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

In the cardboard box

The cardboard box with Andrine’s things has been standing in the hallway for nearly two years. Her mother Heidi got it from the police just a few weeks after her daughter’s suicide.

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

After that, it has remained there, untouched but never forgotten. Almost every day she looks at it, but is too afraid to open it.

That’s because the mobile from that evening when Andrine died, is in the box.

Heidi is afraid there are things on it she actually does not have the strength to see.

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

After nearly two years she at last picks up the courage.

On the mobile there are two Instagram accounts: the normal one she followed herself, but also a completely unknown profile, “Sebrapiken.”

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

She logs in and feels how nausea is building up.

There she finds a dark and frightening world, full of girls like Andrine.

The hidden network

Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, eating disorders

On a hidden network with private and often anonymous profiles, hundreds of girls suffering from mental illness are meeting. In this secret place they give each other comfort and support, but they also share their darkest thoughts.

But even worse: they are posting pictures and films of serious eating disorders, deep wounds after self-harm, suicide thoughts, attempts and methods.

They often mark the accounts with “TW” or “Trigger Warning” to warn followers of content that may affect them in a bad way.

From Andrine’s mobile, NRK gets access to this secret room. Before she took her own life, she was one of the most active users in this enclosed environment. From her hidden Instagram account we find over 1,000 users posting depressive content of self-harm and suicide. Nearly 500 of the profiles are Norwegians. A mapping of this environment reveals that in just a few years, at least fifteen young girls have taken their own life.

– Immediately after the Easter break this year, a 22-year-old in Førde takes her life. Konstanse is also part of this world with several suicide attempts behind her. Before she dies, she deletes all her profiles on social media.

– Just a few days before, another suicide takes place. Cecilie can fill a whole room with her heart, but only fills a small corner of the sofa, her friends say about her. She is morbidly emaciated and is self-harming. The 20-year-old tries to take her own life several times and goes in and out of psychiatric treatment. On the eve of Easter 2019, she kills herself in Larvik.

– Leila Mariell from Vadsø has, for a long time, struggled with psychiatric problems and self-harm. She has been admitted on a number of occasions and has tried to kill herself several times. On Instagram and Twitter she has a lot of contact with others who also have difficulties. She finds a lot of support in this environment, but can also see that they can make each other more ill. By her followers she is seen as one who helps and support others, but she could not help herself. The 24-year-old dies in February 2019.

– In Østfold, a 17-year-old girl is together with another girl from the Instagram-group when she takes her own life in May 2018.

– Tine has several hidden profiles and is open about the environment she’s part of. She thinks it is about supporting and helping each other and can perhaps not see how damaging it can be for her and others. The 34-year- old struggles heavily with mental disorder, has an eating disorder and is self-harming. Tine takes her own life in October 2017.

– Merete’s great hobby is to sew and knit. She is training to be a child carer, but suffers mentally and has been in and out of institutions for many years. Finally this Haugesund girl plans her own funeral. In a final letter to her family she writes what is to be inscribed on her grave stone: Faith, hope and love. Merete dies in September 2017 at the age of twenty-nine.

– “Dear Mum, I’m writing to say goodbye. Love you so much. We will meet again.” This farewell letter lies in a flat belonging to a 19-year-old girl in Bergen. She has just moved into her own flat, but suffers mentally and injures herself. Her wish to die has been there a long time. She takes her own life in November 2016.

– In Rogaland, a 16-year-old girl is admitted for psychiatric treatment. She suffers from eating disorders and serious self-harm. She takes her own life in August 2016.

– Anette is only fifteen. The girl from Brønnøysund has just gotten a summer job and wants to buy a motorbike with the money. In a few weeks she is about to start an electronics course at college. She kills herself in July 2016.

– In March 2016 Karoline from Bergen dies. The 20-year-old shared many difficult thoughts and wishes to take her life in the network on Instagram.

– In February 2016 another girl from Bergen takes her own life. Camilla was only eighteen years old. “Rest in peace, little friend,” the family writes in the obituary.

– In the same month Marthe, who was also a part of the network, dies. She was bullied, injured herself and tried to take her own life several times. Marthe was only sixteen.

– “Karianne got peace at last,” says an obituary from 2014. She was depressed and did self-harm, but did not share her darkest thoughts with her near ones or in treatment. Within the network she had close friends, but was only fifteen years old when she died. Karianne took her own life in Stavanger after having given the followers a warning on Instagram about her plans.

– Eline dies in Bærum summer 2012, twenty-two years old. Before her suicide she struggled for a long time with self-harm and depression. She was active on several blogs before she took her own life.

They’re from all over the country and did not usually know each other outside the network.

They suffered from eating disorders or self-harm.

Half of them were below the age of twenty when they died.

Within the network, NRK has seen concrete examples on how methods for self-harm or attempts of suicide have spread from one member of the group to another. The worse an entry from a girl is, the more attention and care they receive from others.

Andrine

At only five years old, Andrine is bouncing around in her sister’s gym-suit and two years later she turns up, proud and a bit nervous, to her first training session. Throughout her childhood and youth at school, gymnastics is something she really loves, also as an instructor to the younger children.

Andrine grows up just outside the centre of Tromsø together with her mother and nine year older sister. “She had a normal childhood with much care and love,” says the mother.

At school she fulfils her duties and does well in most subjects. She has a winning way and lots of friends. She is a ray of sunshine with so much humour and high spirits that she is missed whenever she is away for just one day.

– “Andrine was very easy to like. We joked a lot together, even after she became ill. We could say one word wrong, look at each other and then burst out laughing,” says Heidi.

Andrine paints and draws and likes to potter around the house and her room. She has her own style, a bit playful and a bit boyish. When she puts on make-up, it is always soft and discreet. Andrine knows what she is doing.

Outward she appears tough and comfortable, but without anybody knowing it, she has serious psychological problems.

In February 2017, Andrine posts an old picture of herself. It is from a holiday with palm trees and flowers in the background. Andrine is smiling to the camera, dressed in a singlet and shorts.

TB to when I wasn’t sick, but just one who felt life had a few downs but I had been self-harming for nearly a year. The cuts were not particularly deep but I was also «clever» at cutting myself in places that wasn’t showing. Very few knew how I was struggling and that was fine. I was waiting fora n appointment at Bup (Child and Youth Psychiatric Clinic/transl.), but otherwise I was fairly OK.

Soon, she begins to cover herself up, as her arms, under her clothes, were covered with scars and wounds.

Trigger warning: Self-harm

The first cuts

Andrine’s first meeting with self-harm was at school. She’s together with a friend when some older girls show their scars. She had never seen anything like it before and in her diary Andrine writes that this is “extremely stupid!”

At the same time there is something from this happening that sticks.

At fourteen, Andrine starts to cut herself. It happens after what she herself describes as a “heavy summer holiday.” Hidden from everybody, this self-harming takes place more and more often, while the cuts get deeper and more serious.

She herself describes self-harm as an “adrenalin kick.” A form of mastering that lets her handle evil and destructive thoughts: “It feels like being locked into a room where self-harm is the only emergency exit,” Andrine explains to a psychologist.

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Trigger warning: suicide

The first suicide attempt

In August 2015, Andrine is admitted to hospital after a suicide attempt. The risk of suicide is not overwhelming, according to the doctors, but at the same time they warn of the danger of a repeat and the fact that the girl can “take her own life as an accident.”

After the suicide attempt, Andrine explains that she’s suffered of anxiety for many years. She never feels good enough and is convinced that nobody likes her. She also has great problems with controlling her feelings, especially when life goes against her.

Things that most people see as trivial can release endless sadness and crises. Self-harm and suicidal thoughts “can be seen in this context,” the report from the hospital says.

There is also another reason why she hurts herself. Andrine reveals this several months later.

The dangerous voice

Andrine is hearing a voice in her head. It suddenly appears and orders her to take her own life.

Together with “The Voice” there is also a small girl. Andrine calls her “Dagny.” A drawing in her diary shows a character that looks like she’s been taken from a horror movie. The eyes are pierced out and the mouth sewn together with thick stiches. “The Voice” has done this, and if Andrine doesn’t do as “The Voice” commands, the same thing will happen to her.

In order to ignore “The Voice,” Andrine has to suffer pain, she explains, either by cutting herself or swallowing dangerous objects.

Andrine is now being treated at the hospital, first in conversation therapy and later by medication. After a while she is seen as being well enough to be discharged, but Andrine does not want to go home.

The relationship with the family is very difficult, she feels. Andrine is now so sick that she requires more frequent follow ups than her mother can give her. Contact with her father was broken when she was ten years old, and Andrine feels she’s only a burden that nobody cares about.

She’s kept in hospital. And while her contact with the real world is shrinking, her life on Instagram takes increasingly more time and space.

The hidden account

She calls herself “Sebrapiken.” Probably from a book with the same name about a girl who also injures herself.

Lying on the bathroom floor, thinking of cutting. The only way out now….I can’t do it

Comment: No don’t!

Comment: Don’t!!!! Hold on (heart)

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Just like Andrine, many of the girls on the hidden network seem to be completely normal girls from all over the country. Often very young, some as young as fourteen years old. They often don’t know each other in real life, only online.

The girls use their own “tribe language” with codes for diagnoses, what type of self-harm they’re into, how many times they have been admitted to a hospital or tried to take their own life.

In this, Andrine at last finds a place where she doesn’t feel alone. Here she gets support and understanding from others who suffer the same and who understand her situation.

But most of all, she has found a fellowship where sick girls are exchanging negative thoughts and experiences. In a world without adults, they share tips and advice on self-harm and suicide.

Andrine quickly becomes a person that most people know of in this secret environment.

Being transferred to child care

During the next months, Andrine is more or less continuously admitted to several different institutions.

In several places it seems like things are going well, at least in the beginning. The girl seems positive and happy, she follows her treatment and often shows signs of improvement.

Then come the downturns, abruptly and worse. Self-harming gets more frequent and takes new forms. Andrine starts to swallow harmful objects and the cuts find new spots on her body.

In February 2016, Andrine’s condition has deteriorated so seriously that she’s transferred to child protection, and in May she moves into a private institution called “Jentespranget.”

Here she remains during the last months of her young life.

A new beginning

Jentespranget is situated at Stord, between Haugesund and Bergen. It is a department for seriously-ill girls. Some of whom are often under around- the-clock supervision.

Andrine gets her own room with two staff members looking after just her.

She’s given a new treatment plan and sees a psychologist regularly. Gradually, she begins to think of her future and attends school when she is capable. To keep her thoughts away from evil, the days are filled with activities. Andrine is to be taught to take responsibility for her own life and has to wash her clothes and keep the house in order.

She starts working out, and as a part of her treatment Andrine begins horse therapy.

But during the summer she suddenly falls into extended, heavy depressive periods. Her thoughts on self-harm and suicide increase, especially in the evenings, according to staff.

Andrine has access to both her phone and the internet, also at night. In two months she posts over 1,500 entries. She posts private messages several times a day and much of those are images of self-harm and thoughts on taking her own life.

At Jentespranget they notice that she’s very active on the Internet. In a risk assessment the employees write:

“Andrine has on several occasions informed that she wishes to take her own life. She has also written suicidal thoughts on social media, on a closed Instagram profile.”

During her stay Andrine attends several meetings on how damaging this environment can be for her, but she takes no notice.

I and people in charge talk about “self-harming Instagram” (smiling face upside down)

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The staff has no right to take the mobile away from her, but when they suggest banning it for a period, Andrine uses self-harm as blackmail to keep it.

As Andrine is voluntarily admitted to the institution, the staff has only limited authority to use force against her.

You snitch, you die

As Sebrapiken, Andrine is “safe.” Many users also mark their profiles like this. In this group “safe” means to follow an unwritten rule that nothing from within the network is to be shown or told to outsiders. There’s a rule of silence, and it’s simple: “You snitch, you die!” If you don’t keep quiet, you can be blocked or closed down by others. Some say this rule is valid even when there’s a question of life-or-death for the girls.

But Andrine does not want to follow this rule when somebody is trying to take their own life. Once she called an institution in northern Norway to tell their staff that one of the girls living there was about to commit suicide.

Contagious behaviour

In August 2016, Andrine experiences online that a close friend from within the Instagram network kills herself. She takes this very hard and is clearly affected by her death. The two following months she is admitted six times after overdoses and other suicide attempts. During this period she has to get nearly 200 stitches.

And so, she is sent to hospital in Bergen. She has suffered severe internal injuries after swallowing dangerous objects and must be operated upon. After surgery, a new suicide attempt happens at the hospital, and Andrine is only a whisker from death.

It frightens me how bad my psyche takes anaesthetics and how peaceful I became today (ended with me sleeping very heavily or being anaesthetised). Every time I become conscious there is always someone holding me down, keeps me tied or holds me back. Always. I cry and shout I want to die. Try to run away etc. It does not happen once, but repeatedly. Perhaps a sure sign I should end this shit.

Comment: I am here for you (hearts)

Comment: So stop it, and never do it again! Hang on to the thought that you really DO NOT want to do this to yourself again (small heart).

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Now Jentespranget asks for help. To the child protection agency in Tromsø they write: “We must, to the best of our ability, keep this girl alive,” but this is difficult with the framework they now have. For a period they employ extra staff to cover Andrine.

The fear of turning eighteen

Andrine is now only weeks from turning eighteen. After years as a hot potato in the system, in and out of psychiatric institutions, in and out of meetings on who shall take care of her, this is something she fears more than anything: having to take care of herself.

Already two years before Andrine dies, a previous entry in a hospital report says that she is especially vulnerable to major changes.

She needs security and stability, and we see that her self-harm increases as soon as discharge is being approached. She says she does not see many possibilities in the future, her thoughts regularly return to taking her own life.

At the beginning of 2017, Andrine is, despite her situation, given the decision that she is not guaranteed a place at the institution Jentespranget when she turns eighteen. This really frightens Andrine, now that she finally has arrived at a place that she really likes.

It frightens me that I actually will kill myself if I miss the offer of a place here. This is not meant as a threat, although I know it can sound like that. But for the first time in ages I begin to show some progress. For the first time I have small rays of light in my life that I love. For the first time I see a bit of hope for myself as well…..if I lose everything now I really have nothing more to hold on to. If I miss it now I am finished…

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Andrine desperately wants a quick decision. She and her mother are attending several meetings with the child protection agency without reaching a final decision. During so-called cooperative meetings about Andrine, nobody can give the girl a clear answer.

The last day

In the morning on the day Andrine dies, the staff perceives her as being very “heavy.” Already before breakfast there’s a text from Andrine saying she’s not feeling good. She feels completely “rock bottom.”

The staff is united in keeping a certain distance. Experience shows that the closer they are to her in these situations, the greater the risk of her hurting herself.

Andrine starts the day in the stables, and after having fed the horses she seems better. At dinner she jokes and plays around with the employees, and in the evening they all go to the cinema.

In the middle of the film the staff gets a call from one of the other girls in the house. She says that Andrine has plans to take her own life later that evening and that she has posted this on Instagram.

Since Andrine seems stable and at ease, their joint decision is to bring it up when they get back home.

On the way from the cinema Andrine posts this image.

Sitting in the car smiling because the film has ended and so has my life.

Comment: No, Andrine!!! (sad face)

Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing

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Back at the house Andrine runs upstairs to her room before anybody gets to talk to her. They can hear her cries and suggests a trip to the doctor, but Andrine refuses. She doesn’t want anybody to stop what she has planned.

A while later a text message arrives in which Andrine says thank you for everything. The search for her starts, but on the same evening Andrine’s life is over.

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

“Poor child of mine! Just to think how hurt she must have been and I did not manage to help!” says Andrine’s mother Heidi and puts her daughter’s mobile phone away.

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

She wants Andrine’s story to be included and help to reveal this hidden network because it is a dangerous arena, she says.

– “This is completely without any filtration. Had Andrine not had this relationship with the Internet, I don’t believe it would have ended as catastrophically as it did.”

Just a few weeks after Andrine’s death, the child care agency formally cancels her place at Jentespranget. Ending date for her stay: the day Andrine would have turned eighteen.

An official report following Andrine’s suicide, states that the employees at Jentespranget did everything they could in the situation and that the follow-up of this girl was defendable.

Epilogue

The day after Andrine’s eighteenth birthday, Heidi finds an envelope in the letter box at home. It is a thank you letter from the director at Oslo University Hospital.

In the letter it says that Andrine’s organs, after she’d been disconnected from the respirator, have given new life.

– “When I came to the part about the children, I just burst into floods of tears. I had really hoped that she would save some children, so it was good to hear,” says Heidi and reads the last lines in the letter aloud:

Four adults and two children have been given a new life. I hope this can be a comfort for you and Andrine’s sister to think about. I wish you as good a future as possible and feel with you in your sorrow.

This story is based on Andrine’s profile and own notes, journals from the child and youth psychiatrists involved, the child care agency and other public documents connected to her treatment, plus interviews with Andrine’s mother and conversations with those closely involved with the fourteen other girls who have died. Their families have accepted the use of pictures and names of these girls.

Neither Jentespranget nor the child and youth psychiatrist treating Andrine are willing to be interviewed in regards to this matter.

The Children, Youth and Family Agency in Region North and its Area Director Mr Pål Christian Bergstrøm, writes to NRK:

“This is an extremely serious case. For us it is the worst thing that can happen – a child dies when under care of child protection. We feel empathy for the mother and other survivors. The employees working with Andrine are also experiencing great sorrow. It is very difficult to be informed that Andrine felt we did not do enough to help her. This case was, however, extremely involved and complex.

Legislation set for the purpose of securing children’s rights can in situations where the children are as ill as Andrine, limit the child care agencies’ ability to provide the assistance that children need. This case also highlights the demand aid organisations face when this form of social media is used.”

­Trigger Warning