Swedish Family Destroyed by Government for Homeschooling

I have written on  my other blog about the uber socialist practices in Sweden. Yesterday a ruling came down from an appeals court that should send chills through home-schooling families around the world.

Christer and Annie Johansson were living a normal lie with their nine-year-old son Domenic in Sweden up until 2009. Annie is a native of India and Christer is Swedish. What happened to break up this idyllic family?

On June 25, 2009, a seven year old boy was abducted at gunpoint from his terrified parents. They had just boarded a plane to fly to the country where the boy’s mother had been born, and where her kin still lived. They were leaving their own country for good, because they had grown weary of the harassment they suffered there from a syndicate of well-placed thugs. They themselves had broken no law.

The boy’s name is Domenic Johansson. He is now going on ten years old, and he has seen his mother and father only very briefly since. The thugs, officials of the Swedish government, have allowed the parents very little opportunity to visit. Domenic’s mother has suffered a nervous breakdown, and is now quite incapacitated. The foster-woman into whose care Domenic was given has informed the boy that she will never let him return to his mother and father, no matter what any court might say. Domenic, once a cheerful little boy, looks haggard, crushed, dull, as if the heart had been ripped out of him. (Crisis Magazine, 2/17/12)

That day nearly 3 1/2 years ago was when Swedish authorities removed Domenic from his parents custody because of the horrendous crime that the Johanssons had committed. They had pulled Domenic out of his state-run school to educate him at home. Yes, that's right. They had the audacity to home school Domenic. Never mind that homeschooling was legal in Sweden at the time. The authorities said that the boy's father, Christer, was narcissistic, and that is why the boy was taken from the parents.


Sweden's Parliament passed a law in 2010 (a year AFTER Domenic's removal) that essentially banned homeschooling as well as any curriculum not approved by the Swedish government. The law took effect in 2011 (2 years AFTER Domenic was removed). The leading proponent for homeschooling, Jonas Himmelstrand, finally gave up the fight and left the country when the law went into effect because he feared persecution  for is views.

One particular politician in Sweden, a leader in the liberal party named Lotta Edholm, has used her power to influence legislation and to have children like Domenic removed from parents who choose to homeschool for reasons that she and the majority (which she influences) in the legislature do not approve, such as religion. Edholm has a blog where she has explicitly written down her fascist views (in Swedish, so translations below are from using Google translator).


Studio, one for vulnerable children
16 January 2012
Last Thursday I attended Studio One (a news reporting channel) to talk about children who do not attend school. It was a good discussion of compulsory schooling and how to look at the absolute most vulnerable children actually kept away from school. My Christian Democratic motdebattör [debater?] Annika Eclund and I had very much the same view of the problem, except that she does not want to open up for increased powers to help these children, but instead focus on creating "long-term trust between school and home." Of course the school should do as much as possible to the cooperation with the home work well, but unfortunately there are indeed cases where it does not work. One way to judge societies by looking at how to treat the absolutely most vulnerable. I would think that this is one such occasion when we must take a step back and say that either we leave these children to their own devices in a home with no school and often social life, or so goes society in to help and ensure children's rights to education to ensure a good life.

All children have the right to go to school
10 January 2012

Lotta Edholm

Today I write with Ann-Katrin Aslund (FP) on Aftonbladet's debate page that the social services law should be amended so that social services are able to intervene when children are kept away from school by their parents - often for religious or ideological reasons. All children have the right to education. The Education Act states that education should "be designed in accordance with fundamental democratic values ​​and human rights." This is incompatible with a system where parents can simply refuse to send their children to school and social services are completely without legal basis to intervene. Deputy Social Maria Larsson, Minister for including children's conditions, should take the initiative to change the Social Services Act so that social services have measures to take when parents keep children away from school.

There is a bitter battle still raging in Sweden over the government's strangle-hold on education. To the Swedish government, the right of children to an education has morphed into the government's mandate that only they can decide what type of education and where it must take place. Never mind that Sweden is supposed to be a democracy.

The state removed Domenic from his parents in June of 2009 simply because they wanted to homeschool him. The state claims it knows best. Domenic's parents were given limited visitation, and at times none whatsoever, over the last three years. In June of this year a court in Sweden ruled that this was violative of the parents' rights and ordered Domenic returned to his parents. But the state appealed, and on Monday of this week a higher appeals court reversed the lower court decision. Indeed, the ruling was that their parental rights should be TERMINATED. Astonishingly, Monday was International Human Rights Day.

This is what Americans are facing with the increasingly socialist-leaning officials in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, and in an increasingly submissive citizen population that is willing to allow the government to take over child-rearing and education and other facets of life that parents used to (want to) be responsible for. The question is who will be the American version of Lotta Edholm? There is no shortage of liberal candidates waiting in the wings to be the star of the show.

It makes me weep. 

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