How One Government Justifies Taking Children From Their Parents

Inside the Issues with Alan Sears

A tragic example comes from Sweden, where Alliance Defense Fund lawyers are working diligently alongside attorneys for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) to help a couple regain custody of their young son from the Swedish government.

In June, 2009, Swedish authorities forcibly removed seven-year-old Dominic Johansson from his parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, on a plane they had boarded to move to Annie’s home country of India. (The family had decided to head to India to do missionary work with orphanages there.) The officials did not have a warrant nor have they charged the Johanssons with any crime. Their only stated motive for seizing the boy is that they believe his parents home-schooled him … and in Sweden, home schooling is deemed inappropriate. Inappropriate enough, it seems, that government officials feel they can do a better job of raising Dominic than his parents can.

“It’s one of the most disgraceful abuses of power we have ever witnessed,” said HSLDA attorney Mike Donnelly. “The Swedish government says it is exercising its authority under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (a document that many would like to adopt here in the United States) in their unnecessary break up of this family. In addition, the Swedish Parliament is considering [what is] essentially a ban on home schooling. We have heard that other home-schooling families in Sweden are having more difficulty with local officials. We fear that all home-schooling families in that country are at risk.”

“Parents have the right and authority to make decisions regarding their children’s education without government interference,” said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska, who is based in Europe. “This is about a government trying to create a cookie-cutter child in its own image. Without help, the parents in these cases are really powerless since the system is so one sided.”

Swedish social services, for instance, initially limited visitation to the child to two hours per week but now have curtailed that to one hour every fifth week – and no visit at all for Christmas, because the social workers were on vacation.

Please be in particular prayer for Dominic and his family, that the Lord will intercede in these circumstances and that our attorneys and those of HSLDA will find a legal means of restoring this boy to his parents. And pray, too, for those here in the U.S. who are battling similar prejudices against Christian home-schoolers.