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

When the baby developed dark curls that made her look different from herself, Karen Rafteseth Dokken assumed she had just taken after her husband’s mother.

It took nearly six decades to discover the real reason: Rafteseth Dokken’s biological daughter had been misplaced changed at birth in the hospital’s maternity ward in central Norway.

The girl she ended up raising, Mona, was not the child 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 was opened Monday at the Oslo District Court, they claim their human rights were violated when authorities discovered the error when the girls were teenagers and covered it up. They claim that Norwegian authorities have undermined their right to a family life, a principle enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, and are demanding an apology and compensation.

Rafteseth Dokken, now 78, wept as he described learning all these years later that he had taken the wrong child, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

“I never thought that Mona was not my daughter,” she said in court Tuesday. “She was named Mona after my mother.”

Mona described a sense 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 child knew long before.

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

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

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

Mona could have learned the truth when she was young, but instead she “didn’t learn the truth until she was 57.”

“Her biological father is dead. She has no contact with her biological mother,” added Aarre Haanes.

The circumstances surrounding the 1965 switch at the Eggesboenes hospital are unclear, but NRK media reports suggest that there were several cases in the 1950s and 1960s where children were accidentally switched to the same institution. At the time, babies were kept together while their mothers rested in separate rooms.

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

An official from 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 inquiry.

Asgeir Nygaard, representing the Norwegian state, is contesting the case on the grounds 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 assessments difficult, in part because it was not clear from a legal standpoint what they could do,” he wrote in a statement to The Associated Press before the trial opened. “We will therefore argue in court that there is no basis for damages and that the claims are in any event time-barred.”

The trial is scheduled to run through Thursday, but it was not clear when a decision is expected.

A similar situation according to reports occurred in the US in 1969 when two little girls were accidentally transferred to a hospital in Texas, and the mistake was not noticed until a DNA test was done in 2018. Women later filed a lawsuit against the corporation that later bought the hospital.

right DNA Diagnostic Centerin the US, up to 500,000 babies each year are “at potential risk of going home with the wrong parent”, but newborns mistakenly moved at birth are generally noticed almost immediately after the incident. The center says only eight incidents of babies moved at birth have been physically documented in the U.S. between 1995 and 2008, though the center says the number is likely higher.