A divorced Somali father of three was recently charged in Oslo District Court with domestic abuse after assaulting his 17-year-old son, who had come out as gay.

In March 2024, police received a report of a boy who had been brutally beaten by his own father.

The victim, who has a mild autistic diagnosis, has been traumatised and run out into the street in despair. Fearing for his own life, he cries out for help, and a passer-by grabs him and calls the police. The boy’s father is arrested the same evening.

The boy lived with his mother and siblings. A restraining order has now been imposed on the parents, and both were originally charged with domestic abuse. The case against the mother has subsequently been dropped.

The father has previously been charged with violence on a trip to Somalia, where he kidnapped and beat and kicked his own son along with relatives, but the case was dropped.

In the second week of March, the case against the father came up in Oslo courthouse – he is also accused of stabbing a neighbour during an argument over the storage of rubbish.

The victim’s mother and uncle are testifying in court, downplaying their accounts of the incident. It has also become a child protection case, as the victim now lives permanently in an institution under the auspices of the child protection authorities.

The boy’s close contact and environmental therapist are also witnesses in court, and portray him as a kind and humble boy, credible in his statements but with a very low self-esteem and a great need for confirmation. The victim does not want to give the name of the institution where he lives, for fear that his parents will seek him out. He has been interviewed at the Children’s Centre, and a video of the conversation will be played in court.

His father, who is sitting in court and listening, shows no guilt or shame during the playback of the recording, but appears totally indifferent, as if he has done something right.

The defendant scowls at me a lot, and during the break he actually comes up to me – he appears threatening and angry. He wonders why I’m writing, who I’m writing for and says he doesn’t want the case in the media. Three times he asks me who I am, but I refuse to answer.

The video shows a lovely and sensitive boy talking about his room, his hobbies and his dreams. He begins to describe what has happened. He says it started when he was 11 years old and had been watching porn online. His father then forcibly sent him down to Somalia, a place where he was neither born nor raised.

He doesn’t speak the language and has no money, and they take away his passport so he can’t go back to Norway. He is simply kidnapped and left in the care of unknown relatives who will “educate him”, i.e. beat some sense into him, so that he will follow the Koran.

“He has to get clean”, they throw hot water on him, threaten him with a knife, isolate him and torture him there for two years. The boy is at his most vulnerable age, only 11 years old and totally cut off from contact with his family in Norway, who he just wants to go home to.

He thinks he’s going to die there, and eventually goes into a severe psychosis. He is then taken home and hospitalised at Ahus youth psychiatry. Child welfare services are very concerned and believe his parents are incompetent at raising and caring for children, yet he is sent home to them.

The boy has taken a blood test for an STD, and his mother finds out about it. He tells her that he is gay, that he has had sex with a boy and wanted to get tested.

His mum’s eyes turn black and ice cold. She refuses him to touch things in the house, like shampoo bottles, soaps, groceries; she says she can’t love him anymore because he’s gay and tells him to pack his things and move out immediately. The 17-year-old no longer belongs to the family.

She wants him to realise that he has been abused and has not participated in sexual activity voluntarily, because being gay in Islam is a mortal sin. She asks his siblings to block him from phone calls and messages, and never contact him for the rest of his life.

The same day, the father comes to “visit”. The victim has locked himself in his room because he is insecure and afraid of his father, who has beaten him many times before. The father is also very religious and faithful to Islam.

The father kicks open the door and sits on the boy lying in the bottom bunk. He starts punching him hard in the face repeatedly, choking him and hitting him on the body while hurling abuse at him.

The offender explains in detail. He is credible about how, in a panic, he tries to shout at his siblings, because he is sure he is going to die.

The siblings don’t come and don’t say anything, they have been muzzled and don’t react to the violence or the abuse situation.

The father tries to drag his son out of the bedroom by his hair while shouting ugly insults at him and harassing him in the worst possible way.

Finally, he leaves the apartment, but takes the boy’s mobile phone with him. The victim then has no opportunity to call the police.

The boy tells us that he runs out into the street on his socks, his glasses are broken and he can’t see very well. In a state of shock, he grabs a passing woman and shouts in panic that he needs help because his father wants to kill him.

The woman calls the police and the father is arrested the same evening. The victim is then taken care of by the police and transferred to the Children’s Centre where he spends three hours being questioned about the incident.

He is clearly traumatised and in shock, he is bruised and frightened, a vulnerable boy, who is now all alone in the world. Thrown out of his childhood home by his mother, seen as “dirty and sinful”.

The victim wants to live with his uncle, but his mum says no one in the family wants him anymore. He must either obey his mother, let her cut his hair, pick him up from school, deny him mobile phones, have total control over him as if he were in a prison, or disappear completely from the family.

He is denied contact with his siblings for the rest of his life, portrayed as sick and bruised by a Muslim father who believes he is blameless but was only following the Koran…

The case raises important questions about violence, religious intolerance and children’s rights. What will the boy’s future be like with this starting point?

Children from foreign cultures often grow up with a lot of violence, threats and intimidation, and little emotional closeness – they are often traumatised.

These parents seem completely devoid of empathy and totally indifferent to the wrongdoing and abuse. They do not see the violence, but justify it. They only see the “wrongdoing” that their son had become gay. They don’t seem to understand the psychological state the children get into when they are brought up like this.

The father does not plead guilty and the judgement has not yet been handed down.