Vindicates Homeschooling Parents
6/15/2012 Charisma News Staff Charisma News
A Swedish district court has ruled that the parental rights of a
10-year-old boy abducted by the government three years ago for being
home-schooled will not be terminated.
The court stated it could not ignore the unanimous and extensive
testimony of firsthand accounts of friends, family and others that
Domenic Johansson’s parents, Christer and Annie, were properly caring
for him prior to Swedish authorities seizing him in 2009.
"It was pretty important that we won this, because if we didn't, we
would have permanently lost our only child,” Christer Johansson. “There
is something very wrong with people who would keep a family separated
this long for no legitimate reason."
Swedish authorities forcibly removed Domenic from his parents in June
2009 from a plane they had boarded to move to Annie’s home country of
India. The officials did not have a warrant nor did they charge the
Johanssons with any crime. The officials seized the child because he was
home-schooled, even though home schooling was legal in Sweden at the
time he was taken into custody.
“The government shouldn’t abduct and imprison children simply because
it doesn’t like home schooling,” said Alliance Defense Fund legal
counsel Roger Kiska. “We encourage Swedish authorities to release
Domenic to his parents in light of the court’s ruling, and we hope the
European Court of Human Rights will reconsider its recent rejection of
Domenic’s case in light of the Swedish court’s determination. This
family’s human rights have been unimaginably violated.”
In December 2009, a Swedish court ruled in Johansson v. Gotland Social Services that the government was within its rights to seize the child. ADF and HSLDA attorneys filed a lawsuit, Johansson v. Sweden, with the European Court of Human Rights in June 2010 over the matter.
That court recently declined to hear the case even after additional
submissions from ADF and HSLDA attorneys, but the new ruling from the
Swedish court determined that Domenic’s mother and father are suitable
to exercise parental rights over their son, bringing new hope that the
child will be returned home.
“This is a tremendous day for the Johansson family,” said Home School
Legal Defense Association Director of International Relations Mike
Donnelly, one of more than 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “HSLDA
and ADF have been supporting them since Swedish officials took their
child--a grotesque abuse of their human rights. Dominic has not been
returned home yet, but we have every hope that he will be soon.”
Source: Charisma News