STAVANGER, Norway — In 1965, a Norwegian woman gave birth to a baby girl in a private hospital. Seven days later she returned home with a baby.

When the baby developed dark curls that made her look different from herself, Karen Rafteseth Dokken assumed she simply looked like her husband’s mother.

It took almost six decades to discover the real 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, along with Rafteseth Dokken, are suing the state and the municipality.

In their case, which opened Monday in Oslo District Court, they argue that their human rights were violated when authorities discovered the mistake when the girls were teenagers and covered it up. They claim Norwegian authorities have undermined their right to a family life, a principle enshrined in the European human rights convention, and demand an apology and compensation.

Rafteseth Dokken, now 78, was crying as she described learning so many years later that she had made the wrong baby, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

“I never thought Mona wasn’t my daughter,” he said in court Tuesday. “She was named Mona after my mother.”

Mona described a feeling of never belonging as she grew up. That feeling of uncertainty pushed her in 2021 to take a DNA test, which showed that she was not the biological daughter of those who raised her.

But the woman who raised the other baby knew long before.

A routine blood test in 1981 revealed that the child he was raising, Linda Karin Risvik Gotaas, was not biologically related. The woman who raised her, however, did not file a maternity case. Norwegian health authorities were informed of the mix-up in 1985, but refrained from telling the others involved.

Both women who were switched at birth said in interviews that it was a shock to learn of the mix-up, but the knowledge made parts of their lives fall into place, explaining the differences both in terms of appearance and behavior.

Kristine Aarre Haanes, representing Mona, said the state “violated her right to her own identity for all these years. “They kept it a secret.”

Mona could have learned the truth as a young adult, but instead “she didn’t discover the truth until she was 57.”

“His biological father has died. He has no contact with his biological mother,” Aarre Haanes added.

The circumstances surrounding the 1965 exchange at Eggesboenes hospital are unclear, but NRK media reports suggest that there were several cases during the 1950s and 1960s in which children were accidentally exchanged at the same institution. . In those days, babies were kept together while their mothers rested in separate rooms.

In other cases, errors were caught before children were permanently placed with the wrong families, according to reports.

An official at the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services said the state was not aware of similar cases and there were no plans for a public investigation.

Asgeir Nygaard, a representative of the Norwegian state, challenges the case, claiming that the 1965 change took place in a private institution and that the health directorate in the 1980s did not have the legal authority to inform the other families when they discovered the error.

“Documentation from that time indicates that government officials found the evaluations difficult, among other things because it was not legally clear what they could do,” he wrote in a statement to The Associated Press before the trial opened. “Therefore, in court we will argue that there is no basis for compensation and that the claims being brought are, in any case, time-barred.”

The trial is scheduled to continue until Thursday, but it was unclear when a ruling is expected.

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Associated Press writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.