http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=1113834Bill Bumpas - OneNewsNow - 8/6/2010 7:00:00
A family's anguishing battle to get their son back from Swedish authorities because they home-schooled him could be played out before the European Court of Human Rights.
After being turned away by the Supreme Administrative Court of Sweden, attorneys for the Johansson family filed an application last month with the ECHR, asking it to hear the case of seven-year-old Dominic. Swedish officials seized the boy in June 2009 because the government does not believe home-schooling is a proper way to educate a child. Social services authorities have placed Dominic in foster care and a government school and are only allowing the parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, to visit their son for one hour every five weeks. (See earlier story)
Mike Donnelly with the Home School Legal Defense Association explains the suffering being inflicted by the government upon the family.
Michael Donnelly"This is a trauma of the highest order for this family," says Donnelly. "It would be one thing if their child was dead...you can grieve, you mourn; you can get on with your life. [But] their child is not dead; their child has been kidnapped by the very government that is supposed to protect their rights."
As the attorney explains, the Johanssons are struggling with the situation.
"How can you process that?" he asks. "How do you get on with your life when you have something like that that has happened when your only child, who's been the focus of your life as a parent, is suddenly stolen from you by your government and they won't give him back?"
United Nations UN logoAccording to the HSLDA, Swedish authorities defend their actions by citing the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that has been endorsed by the White House and some members of Congress.
"We are gravely concerned about this case because of the threat it represents to other home-schooling families," Donnelly expresses in a press release. "If the U.S. were to ever ratify this treaty...then this sort of thing could occur here."
Donnelly tells OneNewsNow they are praying for God to intervene and return the boy to his family while they are waiting to hear if the European Court of Human Rights will agree to hear Johansson v. Sweden -- the follow-on to Johansson v. Gotland Social Services, the case in which the government was found to be within its rights to seize young Dominic.
Topic: Legal battle involving home-schooler escalates (Read 1886 times)