The family says Leen was never physically punished – and they believe the allegation of violence was taken particularly seriously because they were immigrants to Norway.

“If you’re from the Middle East you’re automatically deemed to be abusive and backward,” Hiba says.

The Child Protection office dealing with the case said it could not comment in detail. But it said it did not agree with the family’s version of events, and it denied treating children from immigrant families more strictly than others.

One journalist has calculated, however, that children with a foreign mother are four times more likely than other children in Norway to be forcibly taken from their families.

Reidar Hjermann, the former Children’s Ombudsman, says no-one should be judged to be violent without evidence. But he also says: “When a family comes to Norway with a mother and father who have themselves been brought up with violence, then I think we should assume that we need to go to help this family to understand that where they come from, physical punishment is rather common, but in Norway it is absolutely forbidden.”

He believes “the Norwegian system should do something about its reputation” by improving professional competence in a system that he thinks is currently too decentralised.

And he adds: “One of the absolutely overarching strategies is to help children in families. To remove a child from a family is something you try not to do at all.”

Katrin Koch, the head of the Child Expert Commission which the disgraced psychiatrist was a member of, says one reason for the disproportionately high number of immigrant families affected by care orders might be that Norway is “quite a conformist country in many ways.”

She says: “It might be that the child protection services are not aware enough that there are many ways of raising children.

“Another point would be that Norway is a rich country – and the richer you are, the less consideration you have to give to survival issues, and the more consideration you can give to an optimalisation of how children are to be raised.”

Child welfare guidelines in Norway, as in some other countries, specify that parenting does not have to be “good” - only “good enough.”

But Katrin Koch says: “Maybe the level for ‘good enough’ in Norway is different from other countries.”

The Ministry of Children says it’s bringing in legal changes that will strengthen children’s and family rights. It’s reviewing some care orders – though there’s no suggestion that’s linked to the conviction of the expert psychiatrist.

Like other agencies in the child protection system, the Ministry won’t comment at all on his case at all.

But Inez – who’s now become a campaigner for family rights – regards the silence over the convicted psychiatrist as a cover-up.

She and other parents who’ve lost children are also surprised by a family court decision that the disgraced expert can keep custody of his own young children.

“I’m at a loss for words, for the outrage,” she says, “knowing other parents who have had lesser allegations and have lost children.”

Thore Langfeldt, a psychologist who works with sex offenders, and who gave testimony as an independent expert in the case of the convicted psychiatrist, regards that reaction as “moral outrage”.

He says there is no evidence to suggest that people who download child pornography are more likely than anyone else to commit other offences against children.

“Sometimes moral panic takes over and empirical psychological data vanish on us,” he says.

But Inez, who has been active in her community as a local politician and lay judge, says the case has changed the way she views her own country.

“Before 2013 I considered Norway as the best country in the world. And in many aspects it still is a good country. But if the system is closed and there is no transparency, then it is so much easier to sweep things under the carpet when things go wrong,” she says.

“There has to be a willingness to fix things, because it ensures that people can trust the system.”