Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

More and more people around the world seem to be falling out with their children who don’t want children of their own – depriving the seniors of much-wanted grandchildren. Switzerland is no exception. We investigate a delicate subject.

That and more in Tuesday’s briefing.

Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

In the news:  Systematic sex abuse by the Catholic Church, a government decision on solar panels, and possible light at the end of the Gotthard Road Tunnel.

• A sweeping, year-long study of sex abuse by priests and others within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland published on Tuesday has turned up more than 1,000 cases since the mid-20th century. The authors said they identified 1,002 “situations of sexual abuse”, including accusations against 510 people. The abuse, they wrote, affected 921 people.
• The Federal Roads Office expects the Gotthard Road Tunnel to be re-opened to traffic this week. The demolition work is to begin on Tuesday night. The tunnel had to be closed to traffic on Sunday afternoon due to a technical defect in the intermediate ceiling.
• The Swiss parliament has decided that in future solar panels must be installed on large roofs and façades. This obligation applies to new buildings with more than 300 square metres of chargeable area.

Dreamstime.com

Fewer and fewer people in Switzerland are having children, often by choice. But for those who have no say in the matter – such as wannabe grandparents – that decision can lead to heartache.

Daniel and his mother were in the middle of an argument, he can’t even remember the reason. Suddenly she burst out angrily, “And I won’t have any grandchildren either!” Daniel is in his mid-thirties, an only child, and until that moment he had shown no interest in having offspring. It became clear during this argument that this was a big concern for his mother.

An unfulfilled wish for grandchildren hurts. More and more people in Switzerland will feel the same way as Daniel’s mother in the coming years. In this article, Janine Gloor looks at the consequences of the steadily declining birth rate in Switzerland and speaks to various experts about the desire to become a grandparent.

“Childlessness is a touchy subject across all generations, something that became apparent during research for this article. It was hard to find anyone willing to talk about their own experiences,” she writes. “One senior citizens’ association even declined to ask its members to share their experiences. The image of happy grandparents, on the other hand, is omnipresent, as for example in advertising.”

Did your parents lean on you to have children? Let us know.

Keystone

Ten years ago today a social therapist, Adeline M, was killed by a prison inmate whom she was accompanying on a horse-riding excursion outside his detention centre in Geneva. Swiss media have been looking at whether any lessons have been learnt.

On September 12, 2013, the man, who had been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for two rapes, abducted her into a forest, tied her to a tree and cut her throat with a knife he had asked for and received to clean horses’ hooves.

There was a political outcry following the murder, with calls for reform and people asking how such a dangerous person could not only be let out but also be given a knife. The case raised various questions about security in centres – such as the the Pâquerette centre housed in the Champ-Dollon prison – that prepare prisoners for a return to society and the protection afforded social workers such as Adeline M. In 2017 the man was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a chance of parole.

On the anniversary of Adeline’s murder, the medical director of the Curabilis detention facility in Geneva expressed strong criticism of the conditions at the time. Before Adeline was murdered the French-speaking part of Switzerland was “years behind” in the treatment of dangerous people suffering from mental disorders, Panteleimon Giannakopoulos said in an interviewExternal link with Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève. And there is still “room for improvement”.

“In hindsight, what happened can be criticised mercilessly,” Giannakopoulos said. At the time, “not enough attention was paid to the delicate balance between psychiatric pathology, the need to re-socialise prisoners and ensuring public safety”, he said, also pointing to a lack of coordination. We also need to ask ourselves how far it is desirable to accompany an individual towards freedom, “and at what point our benevolent gaze becomes naive” he said. “Before Adeline, our benevolence was tinged with naivety.”

Zeinab Aouamri, director of the Department for the Application of Sentences and Measures in the canton of Geneva, which authorised the outing in 2013, told Le TempsExternal link that since the Adeline case, a dozen criminologists have been hired to carry out assessments. And when it comes to discharging offenders, it is no longer possible to have just one person in charge.