Battle escalates over homeschooled child seized by Swedish government
STRASBOURG, France — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Home School Legal Defense Association filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights Friday asking it to hear the case of a seven-year-old boy seized by Swedish authorities because his parents home-school.
“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. “A government trying to create a cookie-cutter child in its own image should not be allowed to violate this basic and fundamental human right. The refusal of Swedish authorities to respect that right has left us no choice but to take this case to the European Court of Human Rights.”
Swedish authorities forcibly removed Dominic Johansson from his parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, 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 have they charged the Johanssons with any crime. The officials seized the child because they believe home schooling is an inappropriate way to raise a child and insist the government should raise Dominic instead. Social services authorities have placed Dominic in foster care and a government school and are only allowing Christer and Annie to visit their son for one hour every five weeks.
“We are gravely concerned about this case as it represents what can happen to other home-schooling families,’” explained HSLDA lawyer Mike Donnelly, one of nearly 1,700 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “In response to our inquiries, Swedish authorities have cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to explain and defend their actions. If the U.S. were to ever ratify this treaty, as the White House and some members of Congress have expressed a desire to do, then this sort of thing could occur here.”
ADF and HSLDA attorneys decided to file Johansson v. Sweden with the ECHR when the Supreme Administrative Court of Sweden refused to review a lower court’s December 2009 ruling in Johansson v. Gotland Social Services that found that the government was within its rights to seize the child. The lower court cited the fact that Dominic had not been vaccinated as a reason to remove him permanently from his parents and also repeated the provably false charges that home-schoolers do not perform well academically and are not well socialized.
The Home School Legal Defense Association is an 85,000 member non-profit organization that advocates the legal right of parents to home-school their children.
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.