In 1965, a Norwegian woman gave birth to a baby girl in a private hospital. Seven days later she returned home with a baby.
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When the baby developed dark curls that made her look different from herself, Karen Rafteseth Dokken assumed she just took after her husband’s mother.
It took nearly six decades to discover the true reason: Rafteseth Dokken’s biological daughter had been mistakenly switched at birth in the maternity ward of the hospital in central Norway.
The girl she ended up raising, Mona, was not the baby she gave birth to.
The babies – one born on February 14 and the other on February 15, 1965 – are now 59-year-old women who together with Rafteseth Dokken are suing the state and the municipality.
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In their case, which opened in the Oslo District Court on Monday, they argue that their human rights were violated when authorities discovered the error when the girls were teenagers and covered it up.