4 ms·

Sweden authorities abducted a child because of homeschooling

21 points by Jach 13y ago

lrem 13y ago
That's about why Sweden is the only country in EU I don't want to settle in. A year or two ago there was a well-known (at least in Poland) case where a child was taken from an immigrant family on the grounds of being "too sad". This was assumed to be a sign of some abuse. What happened in fact was that child's favorite gradma died.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  Better not move to the UK either. The "news" at the moment has a fetish for finding cases where a lack of state intervention resulted in some poor little sods death. Of course, after they're published a few stories it's no longer "news" at which point they'll find some other statistically unlikely tragedy to flog to the ghouls.
  - lotsofcows 13y ago
    I spent ages trying to work out what the downvote was for, then I spotted the missing apostrophe. Sorry!
- kalleboo 13y ago
  Not just Sweden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education
kalleboo 13y ago
Background: Homeschooling is not legal in Sweden since June 2010, and even before then (this seems to have happened in 2009) it was a difficult exception to make use of (you had to convince the council where you lived to examine and approve of your course, convince a local school to do some kind of testing for grades, etc).
ars 13y ago
Sorry, but this story is not credible. Maybe someone who speaks the language can read the court documents and tell us what this one sided story is leaving out?
darklajid 13y ago
The language is intentionally emotional. Sweden didn't 'abduct' a child. If you want to believe Wikipedia [1] (since I'm not a lawyer and not even remotely sure about the specifics of the laws in question) the same thing could happen here in Germany. I doubt that is even close to the full story here, and a site that fights for homeschooling probably wants to push its own agenda first and foremost. This seems to be a tabloid headline, with biased/incomplete/weird content behind the link. 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Vollzeitschulpflicht https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Vol...
- alipang 13y ago
  I do find it disturbing that Sweden /requires/ you to send your kids to a government institute for hours each day to be educated. In practice, of course, free education is a great privilege for most families, but I fail how you a free society in congruent with this law. I'm Swedish, but have left the country. The quality of Swedish schools is less than outstanding imo.
  - ars 13y ago
    > a government institute What about private schools?
  - darklajid 13y ago
    I guess that's fine. You have always the option to leave a group of people/a society that has a different opinion. Germany requires the same (Homeschooling isn't allowed, except in very specific cases -> A child that cannot be transported/isn't mobile at all for example). For me that is The Right Way. The same education for everyone. If the public education sucks, we need to improve that not work around the issue. And .. the majority of reasons for homeschooling are plain invalid in my world (often based on religious ideas, claiming that the curriculum is containing 'forbidden'/'evil'/'wrong' stuff). 'Free society' doesn't imply the right to do everything. You cannot drink and drive. You're not allowed to beat your (very own, hey you made those!) children. For some, myself included, the requirement to send your kids to a 'real' school is a necessary thing and not Restricting The Freedom. You're free to disagree (both in Sweden and Germany), but in that case you need to decide if that freedom is important enough to warrant a move - or you can try to lobby against the majority/the status quo. Ignoring the state and law (as the family seemed to have done) or calling it wrong won't help.
johnchristopher 13y ago
A timeline here: http://freesweden.net/domenic_timeline.html http://freesweden.net/domenic_timeline.html Don't know if it's biaisd though.
- darklajid 13y ago
  Thanks, that paints quite a different and better picture. It seems homeschooling was legal and the parents had a very good reason to do it even if it wouldn't be (the upcoming move to IN). I fail to understand why they wouldn't comply when the state started to demand that their son visits a 'normal' school though. They fought a dangerous battle with a state they planned to leave. I wouldn't have dared to do that, the minimum damage would've been a hefty fine, the maximum .. happened. At least I'm far more sympathetic after reading this timeline than after that OP's link..
blahbap 13y ago
"HSLDA encourages interested members to pray and fast for the family and participate in these other forms of support" - what's this crap doing on HN ? This is an extremely one sided argument from one side in a conflict.
Kiro 13y ago
There's a lot more to the story. For example the fact that the dad abducted the boy for several days sleeping in barns and in the car in the middle of the winter, something which he was sent to jail for. Or that the boy was physically abused, had tooth decay due to health care neglect and no vaccination prior the planned trip to India.
- jtheory 13y ago
  Are these actual details of this case (if so, where are you getting them?), or examples of possible explanations that might be left out in an article such as this? I do get the sense there's quite a bit left out of the article.
  - Kiro 13y ago
    https://www.flashback.org/t1109355 https://www.flashback.org/t1109355 In Swedish but they refer to the court documents (Google Translate): "The man came driving straight toward the son and the foster mother in a car, got out, pulled her son into the car and drove away from the scene. The man then switched to another car and slept two nights with her son in a barn and another outbuilding like space." "The father was sentenced to prison for the unlawful detention, and has had restraining order against son with an extension until at least last fall." "The boy lvu: was, among other things because he had been physically abused. The judges consisted of caries (!). When parents would move him to India at the age of eight, they had not vaccinated the boy. It was then that assistance was on the plane at Arlanda. Having grown up in Sweden and move to India without preparation of vaccinations can be dangerous. It was not about a charter trip to Goa, and even then, many people tend to take photos vaccines." http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=5519799 http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art... "But the police do not come and take children who do not go to school. Emma Östling says this stopped in the 1980s. So there has to be a bigger issue for the local authority to justify taking a child away. This means that the local municipality's social department must have decided that the familiy's home was not a safe place for the child."
    - Jach 13y ago
mrintegrity 13y ago
Most definitely a biased article. I scanned some of the court documents and a few things really stood out, in particular: "Domenic himself has made it clear that not want to meet his parents or even talk about them." Not something you would expect of a child forcibly removed from loving parents. From what I read, the parents sound like a couple of douche bags that are more interested in themselves than the child. Dissenting opinion to the decision to keep him in foster care agreed that the care under his parents was insufficient but that foster care may be over the top.
cwisecarver 13y ago
Why do these hslda articles keep showing up on HN? This is the second one in as many days. I'm not questioning their value, just their placement on the homepage of Hacker News.

21 points by Jach 13y ago

lrem 13y ago

That's about why Sweden is the only country in EU I don't want to settle in. A year or two ago there was a well-known (at least in Poland) case where a child was taken from an immigrant family on the grounds of being "too sad". This was assumed to be a sign of some abuse. What happened in fact was that child's favorite gradma died.

lotsofcows 13y ago
Better not move to the UK either. The "news" at the moment has a fetish for finding cases where a lack of state intervention resulted in some poor little sods death. Of course, after they're published a few stories it's no longer "news" at which point they'll find some other statistically unlikely tragedy to flog to the ghouls.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  I spent ages trying to work out what the downvote was for, then I spotted the missing apostrophe. Sorry!
kalleboo 13y ago
Not just Sweden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education

kalleboo 13y ago

Background: Homeschooling is not legal in Sweden since June 2010, and even before then (this seems to have happened in 2009) it was a difficult exception to make use of (you had to convince the council where you lived to examine and approve of your course, convince a local school to do some kind of testing for grades, etc).

ars 13y ago

Sorry, but this story is not credible. Maybe someone who speaks the language can read the court documents and tell us what this one sided story is leaving out?

darklajid 13y ago

The language is intentionally emotional. Sweden didn't 'abduct' a child. If you want to believe Wikipedia [1] (since I'm not a lawyer and not even remotely sure about the specifics of the laws in question) the same thing could happen here in Germany. I doubt that is even close to the full story here, and a site that fights for homeschooling probably wants to push its own agenda first and foremost. This seems to be a tabloid headline, with biased/incomplete/weird content behind the link. 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Vollzeitschulpflicht https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland)#Vol...

alipang 13y ago
I do find it disturbing that Sweden /requires/ you to send your kids to a government institute for hours each day to be educated. In practice, of course, free education is a great privilege for most families, but I fail how you a free society in congruent with this law. I'm Swedish, but have left the country. The quality of Swedish schools is less than outstanding imo.
- ars 13y ago
  > a government institute What about private schools?
- darklajid 13y ago
  I guess that's fine. You have always the option to leave a group of people/a society that has a different opinion. Germany requires the same (Homeschooling isn't allowed, except in very specific cases -> A child that cannot be transported/isn't mobile at all for example). For me that is The Right Way. The same education for everyone. If the public education sucks, we need to improve that not work around the issue. And .. the majority of reasons for homeschooling are plain invalid in my world (often based on religious ideas, claiming that the curriculum is containing 'forbidden'/'evil'/'wrong' stuff). 'Free society' doesn't imply the right to do everything. You cannot drink and drive. You're not allowed to beat your (very own, hey you made those!) children. For some, myself included, the requirement to send your kids to a 'real' school is a necessary thing and not Restricting The Freedom. You're free to disagree (both in Sweden and Germany), but in that case you need to decide if that freedom is important enough to warrant a move - or you can try to lobby against the majority/the status quo. Ignoring the state and law (as the family seemed to have done) or calling it wrong won't help.

johnchristopher 13y ago

A timeline here: http://freesweden.net/domenic_timeline.html http://freesweden.net/domenic_timeline.html Don't know if it's biaisd though.

darklajid 13y ago
Thanks, that paints quite a different and better picture. It seems homeschooling was legal and the parents had a very good reason to do it even if it wouldn't be (the upcoming move to IN). I fail to understand why they wouldn't comply when the state started to demand that their son visits a 'normal' school though. They fought a dangerous battle with a state they planned to leave. I wouldn't have dared to do that, the minimum damage would've been a hefty fine, the maximum .. happened. At least I'm far more sympathetic after reading this timeline than after that OP's link..

blahbap 13y ago

"HSLDA encourages interested members to pray and fast for the family and participate in these other forms of support" - what's this crap doing on HN ? This is an extremely one sided argument from one side in a conflict.

Kiro 13y ago

There's a lot more to the story. For example the fact that the dad abducted the boy for several days sleeping in barns and in the car in the middle of the winter, something which he was sent to jail for. Or that the boy was physically abused, had tooth decay due to health care neglect and no vaccination prior the planned trip to India.

jtheory 13y ago
Are these actual details of this case (if so, where are you getting them?), or examples of possible explanations that might be left out in an article such as this? I do get the sense there's quite a bit left out of the article.
- Kiro 13y ago
  https://www.flashback.org/t1109355 https://www.flashback.org/t1109355 In Swedish but they refer to the court documents (Google Translate): "The man came driving straight toward the son and the foster mother in a car, got out, pulled her son into the car and drove away from the scene. The man then switched to another car and slept two nights with her son in a barn and another outbuilding like space." "The father was sentenced to prison for the unlawful detention, and has had restraining order against son with an extension until at least last fall." "The boy lvu: was, among other things because he had been physically abused. The judges consisted of caries (!). When parents would move him to India at the age of eight, they had not vaccinated the boy. It was then that assistance was on the plane at Arlanda. Having grown up in Sweden and move to India without preparation of vaccinations can be dangerous. It was not about a charter trip to Goa, and even then, many people tend to take photos vaccines." http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=5519799 http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art... "But the police do not come and take children who do not go to school. Emma Östling says this stopped in the 1980s. So there has to be a bigger issue for the local authority to justify taking a child away. This means that the local municipality's social department must have decided that the familiy's home was not a safe place for the child."
  - Jach 13y ago

mrintegrity 13y ago

Most definitely a biased article. I scanned some of the court documents and a few things really stood out, in particular: "Domenic himself has made it clear that not want to meet his parents or even talk about them." Not something you would expect of a child forcibly removed from loving parents. From what I read, the parents sound like a couple of douche bags that are more interested in themselves than the child. Dissenting opinion to the decision to keep him in foster care agreed that the care under his parents was insufficient but that foster care may be over the top.

cwisecarver 13y ago

Why do these hslda articles keep showing up on HN? This is the second one in as many days. I'm not questioning their value, just their placement on the homepage of Hacker News.