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Former Swiss prisoners seek justice

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In Switzerland, thousands of victims of a policy known as “administrative detention” are demanding an investigation and compensation for being imprisoned without committing any crime. The practice was aimed at encouraging better behavior among young people. Anchor Lisa Mullins gets the full story from the BBC’s Imogene Foulkes.

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LISA MULLINS: In Switzerland, victims of a policy known as “administrative detention” are calling for an investigation. That term, “administrative detention,” doesn’t sound so bad. But it’s bureaucrateez. It refers to a policy of imprisoning teenagers who committed no crime and denying them any legal recourse. The policy of detention ended in the early 1980s. Switzerland’s justice minister apologized for the practice last week. Reporter Imogen Foulkes in Berne has spoken with some victims about why they were locked up in the first place.

IMOGEN FOULKES:  A couple of reasons that come up again and again are work shy, i.e. somebody who doesn’t seem to want to work and having loose morals and the loose morals sadly is particularly applied to women, teenage girls who maybe got pregnant before they were married. The boys they didn’t knuckle down to the apprenticeship that they were assigned to. One boy, I have an example, a 16-year-old boy he did one apprenticeship, didn’t finish it, started another, didn’t finish it. He was arrested and his local community said well, behaviors not good, we will detain you.

MULLINS: Well, something similar happened regarding the detention of another woman you talked to. She’s now 60 years old. Her name is Ursula [PH] Beyondi. Let’s hear first what she told you.

URSULA BEYONDI: I was 17 years old when I was sent into jail. And I was pregnant then and fifth month. In those times, in ’67 it was forbidden in Switzerland to have a baby without to be married and at this age, I was too young.

MULLINS: And she said she was 17 years old, pregnant without being married, which was what she apparently did wrong according to Swiss officials. How long was she in prison?

FOULKES: She was in prison for just over a year. What was particularly hard for her, I think first of all she was in a common woman’s prison with murderers and common criminals, treated exactly the same. She had to give birth in prison. Immediately after the birth her child was removed from her. She was not allowed to have contact with him because he was going to be put up for adoption. And after an absolutely enormous fight, she told me I just screamed everyday. She got her son back, but for three months she didn’t know where her son was. So an awful lot of kind of things that we would take as basic human rights were being transgressed there.

MULLINS: So, government officials have now addressed these detentions that happened. What do they say to explain them?

FOULKES: I talked to the Swiss Justice Minister on Friday evening, just minutes after she issued this formal apology and I said to her, look, it’s good that you said sorry and everybody is really welcoming that, but what about the issue of real reparation, compensation, and so on. And she said, well, we’re not into that question because what happened was legal at the time. It’s a difficult ground but the point about why this happened is that there were no facilities that we would consider now for young people who transgressed under really pretty strict and pretty conservative society where parents who were having problems with their children could approach the authorities and say I’m having problems and the authorities would say of yes, we have a solution. Or Beyondi’s mother, for example, was told we will send your daughter to a facility where we will teach here life lessons. She’ll learn how to care for her baby. Her mother was never told that she was being sent to prison and at the end of her time in prison, Ursula Beyondi’s parents were given a bill for 7,000 Swiss francs. That’s $7,000, a fortune in 1968.

MULLINS:  Is there any chance of compensation? That they will be able to get some of that money back is not more?

FOULKES: In almost any other country, and I think America, the United States, would certainly be one, there would already be class actions about something like this. Switzerland doesn’t move so quickly. But the fact that this story has been all over the news here this week, that there’s a book been published, so we are moving towards reparation. But I think if you’re talking about millions of dollars in damages, it’s not the Swiss way. That is very unlikely and at the moment, the victims that I have talked to, were in tears of gratitude on Friday evening, just the fact that the Swiss Justice Minister had used that simple word, sorry.

MULLINS: Right. Ursula herself said she’d been waiting decades for that. The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes is Berne, Switzerland. Thank you.

FOULKES: You’re very welcome.

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