Criminal Law and Children’s Access to Barnahus Services

Abstract

The aim of Barnahus is to provide children who are victims of violence and abuse with support, protection, and access to justice. In the Swedish Barnahus model, the target group is defined by what constitutes a criminal act. In this chapter, we explore the significance of this definition in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN-CRC), using Sweden as an example. We argue that the close link between the definition of the target group and criminal law may exclude children who have been subjected to violence and abuse from gaining access to Barnahus’s services, which might conflict with children’s rights according to the UN-CRC. We apply a children’s rights perspective in this study, based on the standpoint that Barnahus is an outflow of a child’s rights to protection from all forms of violence and abuse, according to the UN-CRC.