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The cabinet has formally apologised to children who have had to live in secure youth care facilities, saying the institutions were unsafe and damaging to those kept there.
“It was not and is not your fault. Nothing you went through in secure youth care was your own doing,” youth minister Mirjam Sterk said during a ceremony on Saturday.
Over the past twenty years, more than 20,000 people have been kept in gesloten jeugdzorg, restricted residential facilities for children who cannot remain in their homes.
Youth in these institutions need permission to leave, can be physically restrained and can be held in isolation.
“If you have done something wrong, you say sorry,” Anne Krijtenburg told broadcaster NOS. She spent months a secure youth facility as a child. “Many people think that the pain inflicted upon us is our own fault. Now it is finally being stated that this is not the case.”
Research by the Forgotten Child Foundation found that 75% of the youth they spoke to developed additional psychological problems in closed youth care.
The government has plans to phase out the facilities by 2030 and replace them with smaller living groups.
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