Distraught

Distraught father takes son home

A boy and his father during state supervised visit July 2010.

After a year-and-a-half of disappointing court cases and state-supervised one hour visits once every five weeks with his only child, an understandably distraught father accused of no crimes against his son, took his 9 year old son, Domenic, home for an extended visit with family on Monday, November 22nd. Christer Johansson had no apparent motive other than to have more time with his son and to allow Domenic's grandparents, who had not seen their grandson in nearly a year-and-a-half, a chance to see their grandchild. On Wednesday, November 24th, Christer telephoned Alva police to inform them he and Domenic could be found at home.

Unfortunately, this visit was not approved by Gotland Social Services. This is the same social services department who took Domenic off of a plane and have held him for a year-and-a-half only allowing the parents to see their only son for 1 hour every 5 weeks. After such inhuman treatment, treatment that some might even call psychological torture, Mr. Johansson now finds himself behind bars with Domenic back in state custody. Eerily similar to what happened on the plane in June of 2009, armed police swept into the Johansson home, and dragged Domenic from his parents and grandparents. He is reported to have cried over and over, "I don't want to go back! I don't want to go back!" into foster care.

This latest event in the ongoing Johansson saga began last Monday when Chirster walked out of a state supervised visit taking Domenic with him. Domenic went happily home with his father. Since the time that armed police seized the boy 18 months ago from an India bound jetliner just moments before take-off,  Domenic has pleaded with his parents to go home. However, the Johanssons have been ordered by social services to ignore their son's pleas, and to act as if they do not want him home. 

Last Monday, Christer Johansson could ignore his son’s pleas no longer. This family has suffered so much and now the Swedish authorities plan to try Mr. Johansson for taking his own son home.  Christer was arrested Wednesday night and he was arraigned and remanded in custody on Friday. He is being held "on suspicion of unlawful detention," alternatively "heavy-handedness with a child." According to Chapter 4 section 2 of the Criminal Code, this is punishable with prison for a minimum of one and maximum of ten years. Removing a child under fifteen years from the social services can constitute a crime against freedom or the promotion of escape and is punishable with fines or a prison sentence of up to one year. Christer will be prosecuted within two weeks during which time he will be subjected to a mental evaluation. Yet, during the visit Domenic was not harmed in anyway and did not want to leave his parent’s custody.

Before Christer telephoned police on Wednesday, Domenic shared a wonderful day-and-a-half with his parents and elderly grandparents. According to his uncle, Domenic was thrilled to be home and did not want to go back into foster care. In response to Christer's telephone call to police, several squad cars descended upon the Johansson home and armed police swept in, dragging Domenic out into the unseasonably frigid temperatures without giving him an opportunity to take his coat.


The struggle between the Johansson family and Gotland Social Services began in the fall of 2008 when the family chose to home school then 7 year old Domenic. Their choice to home school Domenic was predicated on the fact that the family was planning to move back to India, where Christer and Annie had met and married in 2000. Annie is a native of India. The family was living temporarily in Sweden, Christer's native homeland, with plans to return to India in 2009. Home schooling seemed the most logical choice for the family, as Domenic's parents desired to keep disruption of his education to a minimum as the family emigrated back to India.

Domenic on the boat to Stockholm, his last hours of freedom.

Home schooling was a legal option in Sweden at the time Domenic was taken into state custody, but has since been greatly restricted when the controlling Swedish Liberal Alliance passed into law a 1500 page education bill which threatens parents with fines up to $3000 dollars and loss of custody of their children, should they attempt, or continue, to home school, unless granted permission under "extraordinary circumstances."

When the Johanssons contacted their local school administrator, they were met with resistance. The school administrator threatened the family with social services contact if they did not enroll Domenic in school. Even while still legal in Sweden at the time, many people in positions of governmental power and authority are against the practice of home schooling. The Johanssons decided to stand their legal ground in spite of the school official's threats which unfortunately triggered a nightmare for Domenic and his family. While under tremendous pressure by social services to enroll their son in school, Domenic's mother, who holds a Masters Degree in English, continued to educate their son at home through the 2008-2009 school year. 

Looking on as police storm plane moments before he's taken.

On June 25, 2009, Domenic excitedly boarded an India bound jetliner in Stockholm with his parents. Just moments before take-off and at the behest of Swedish social services, armed uniformed police stormed the plane and forcibly removed the Johansson family. That was the last time the Johanssons saw Domenic before he was forced into foster care. 

To learn more about the Johanssons and their struggle to bring their son back home, feel free to browse the numerous stories published on this blog. 

To learn more about Sweden's heavy-handed HVB and LVU laws, the laws used to govern forced treatment and forced foster care, and how they adversely impact her citizens and families, a book and video series have been authored by Daniel Hammarberg. Hammarberg, now in his mid-30s, as a teen was forced into Sweden's state care until he attained the age of 21. In direct response to his experiences with Swedish social services, Hammarberg has studied and written about the ever increasing role Swedish government is playing in the intimate lives of it's citizens. In his book The Madhouse: A Critical Study of Swedish Society, Hammarberg covers diverse segments of Swedish society, including HBV and LVU. In his 25 part video series The Socialist Utopia, Hammarberg painstakingly details the rise and devastating results of socialism in Sweden. Hammarberg has also authored a video on the LVU law, the law used to regulate foster care in Sweden which clearly demonstrates the trap of hopelessness in which parents and children find themselves once social services becomes involved in their lives. As Elin, the desperate 13 year old, penned in a Swedish orphanage just hours before taking her own life, My life is ruined, thanks to the Linköping social services. The only thing they do is destroy other people's lives, so stay away from them. If your parents need help, just tell them to ignore getting help, because that's the safest.

A Series of Excerpts Examining Outcomes of Swedish LVU Laws

This is the first in a series of excerpts we will share from Daniel Hammarberg's book: The Madhouse: A Critical Study of Swedish Society Mr. Hammarberg writes from first-hand experience with Sweden's LVU laws as executed by Swedish Social Services "for his good" while he was young. In direct response to his experience, Mr. Hammarberg has taken a close look at the ever increasing role Swedish government is playing within the intimate lives of it's citizens. In his book, Mr. Hammarberg has concluded Sweden, in many ways, has become a madhouse. While his book covers many diverse subjects and segments of Swedish society, the excerpts we will examine are specific to Sweden's LVU law. This first excerpt begins with Mr. Hammarberg's introduction to the LVU section of the book, followed by the harrowing story of Elin. All Elin ever wanted, as written in her diary, "was allowed to return home to mom." Links to media stories regarding Elin can be found at the end of today's entry. Will the reality of the lives of the unfortunate children we will examine over the next few weeks one day become Domenic's reality? While Sweden is bent on retaining it's tight grip on Domenic, we pray his story might have a much happier ending.

Suicides as a consequence of institution placement
By Daniel Hammarberg, human rights activist and author of The Madhouse: A critical study of Swedish society
In most of the Western world, the idea of placing children into orphanages takes people back to the time of Charles Dickens' early 19th century London. Not so in Sweden, where in 2010, orphanages are seen as an essential part of the arsenal the government has at its disposal for coming to the rescue of "vulnerable children." Yet the question is - are these children vulnerable because of their environment, or due to living under a government that wants to care for them? I'm personally more inclined to suggest the latter.

Troubling statistics concerning the mental wellbeing among the growing generation in Sweden today do indeed exist. During the summer of 2009, Gothenburg newspaper Göteborgs-Posten had conducted a survey sent to all ninth-graders in this metropolis, where they found that one in five girls had already at that age inflicted harm on themselves - what's commonly described as self-cutting. As can be expected, Swedish society has extensive public facilities available for helping these troubled children, but can the government really offer anything of value to them? Can these vulnerable children find proper support from taxpayer-financed counsellors and staff? These coming vignettes will have you thinking otherwise; the common theme among all of them is that the children ended up at modern Swedish orphanages, what's called HVB-hem or HVB homes, from its acronym. Hem för vård och boende, "homes for care and living."

Elin, begging for mercy, dead at 13

In her youth, a woman named Susanne had suffered a traffic accident and was left disabled - moving around on a walking frame, with a disability pension already at age 20 from not being able to work. The next couple of years, she has three children - two daughters and a son. The first years of the lives of these children would be very happy, though soon the father disappears from the picture and the mother is overwhelmed by the burden of raising her family with her disability. 

When her middle child, Elin, born in 1994, is six years old, the social services becomes involved in family life and Elin is relocated to a foster family, something Susanne agrees to since she admits she's not capable of being a mother at this point in time. Elin isn't treated very well by this new family, however, becoming the target of frequent insults thrown at her by her foster parents. She attempts to get the social services to listen to her when she tells them that everything isn't alright, but they don't give her the time of day, in spite of Elin showing up for school malnourished and with discarded clothes. According to her records with the social services, everything is just fine with the placement.

After a couple of years, Susanne starts feeling she's fit to take over parenting again, and Elin also has a great desire to return to her mother, but the social services isn't very interested in interrupting the placement - it's gone from entirely voluntary to thinly veiled coercion. Eventually, when Elin is twelve years old, the authorities launch a new investigation, and both Elin and Susanne want to be reunited. 

The social services has other plans, however, deciding to place Elin with a new foster family. Susanne is told that if she doesn't agree to this placement, they will go through with a forced placement under the LVU law. Elin isn't happy in the new foster family and spends as much time as she can on the phone with her mother and sister. On the other hand, she's not very interested in socializing with her foster family, and when the social services learns of this, her phone is taken away from her. As she writes in her diary:

"If you hate life, you have to be able to talk to someone... And then I don't mean psychologists, but someone you can trust."

"The only thing that gets me up when I'm sad is mom and Linda. But now the social services has decided I'm only allowed to call them once a week."

"The only thing that could make me feel good was if I was allowed to return home to mom."

Elin tells the social services she's being battered in this family. She implores her caseworker not to tell her foster parents, but they are told in spite of her pleadings. At this time, Elin starts cutting her arms.
Before too long, this foster family decides they don't want Elin with them anymore, and once again Elin hopes she can be reunited with her family. This time around, the social services actually pulls out the LVU law, forcibly placing Elin at an HVB institution some 200 km away from her mother. Now it's 2008 and her short life would soon come to an end.

26 March	Placed at Carl Bobergsgården as a single girl at age 13 with up to 10 boys, ages 11 to 20, most of them placed there for conduct problems.
30 March	Elin is physically assaulted by one of the boys.
3 April	She's assaulted again.
7 April	Elin is once again badly assaulted and her wrist is radio-graphed due to a possible fracture.
10 April	She runs away from the orphanage and spends the night in the nearby forest.
13 April	Elin is assaulted by six older boys at the orphanage. At around 15:00, she tells the boys at the orphanage that she's going to go hang herself. Then she walks out and spends the night in the forest again, never to return.
14 April	Elin is found dead hanging from a tree - an obvious suicide - 18 days after having been placed at the orphanage.

Elin had told friends at school that she was both assaulted and sexually harassed at the orphanage, but refused to tell the authorities since she knew from experience she couldn't trust them. Among other things, she was forced to 'entertain' one of the boys sexually with her hands.

Her family was not briefed on any of the fights she had been in. During the autopsy, evidence of 19 punches and kicks is found on her body, with 43 bruises. Initially, criminal charges would be filed against two of the boys, but these didn't lead to any prosecutions, since Elin was dead and couldn't testify. During police investigations, at least one of the boys pleads guilty to assault, but this didn't make any difference. The staff remained skeptical of there having been fights at all at the orphanage. "Neither I or the staff ever saw them punching each other or anything like that," one of them said.
In her room, a farewell letter is found along with her diary. As she writes during her short stay here:

"Let me go, let me run away from Boberg. Let me run off and get out, I can't take this any more."

"Please, I can't deal with this. I'll let go of my knives and fly off to heaven."

"My life is ruined, thanks to the Linköping social services."

"The only thing they do is destroy other people's lives, so stay away from them. If your parents need help, just tell them to ignore getting help, because that's the safest."

Elin had apparently intended to become a writer and was in the process of composing a memoir entitled My Sad Life, but this life became simply too much for her to bear.

About a year later, during the summer of 2009, Elin's little brother Simon is allowed to return to Susanne from his foster home - now the social services feels she can take care of her children again. Alas, if only they had made that decision a little more than a year earlier...

(All of the names in this story have been replaced and are those used in mass media articles written about her case.)

The following links will take you to many news stories about Elin's tragic story. You will have to use Google Translate if you do not read Swedish.

Sveriges Radio: Om fallet Elin - "Mitt sorgliga liv"
AFTONBLADET:  Hennes dotter orkade inte leva, Elin, 13, blev slagen på hemmet – mamman fick inget veta

To read more on Elin, simply copy the following Swedish text into your net search engine: 
Carl Bobergsgården Elin

Watch this video to obtain a better understanding of the overreaching power of Sweden's LVU laws, watch this video.
 

Donations

While family resources come to an end, the battle for justice rages on

After 15 months of legal battles, the Johanssons have found themselves in dire financial straits. To this point, they've not accepted financial help, instead relying upon personal means and savings, as they've battled for the return of their only child, Domenic, who is now 9 years old. As you can imagine, such a battle against a government entity having endless resources has taken its toll financially, emotionally and physically on the family. As a result, the Johansson's resources have come to an end, while the battle for their son rages on. 

Help this family by using the Donate button at the top right of Domenic's blog today. While your donation is not tax deductible, 100% of the funds go directly to the Johansson family. This is a worthy cause, that of restoring family dignity, independence, justice and human rights in Sweden. When justice finally prevails for the Johansson family, the happy consequences will have potential to be felt and enjoyed around the world.

For those just learning of the case: On June 25, 2009, armed police stormed an India bound airliner and forcibly removed then 7 year old Domenic, separating him from his parents. Their crime?  Home schooling. 

In preparation for their impending move to India, the family chose to home school Domenic in an effort to reduce disruption to his schooling as they relocated. Domenic's mother, Annie, was born and raised in India, living in Sweden with her Swedish husband, Christer, for approximately 8 years before the family finally sold all they owned and began what they thought would be a journey back to Annie's home and large, extended family.

At the time Domenic was seized by Sweden, home schooling was still legal in the country, but legislation had just been introduced in the Swedish parliament outlawing the practice, emboldening those in authority who are opposed to educational freedom. Home schooling is now illegal across the Swedish landscape and fines of $3000.00 for home schooling were just announced by the Swedish government last week.

Domenic has languished in foster care since he was forced off the India bound airliner moments before take-off. He is allowed to see his parents only one hour every five weeks and has been forced to sit in a public school classroom in Sweden, when he rightfully should be living with his parents and extended family in India. 

Ironically, Domenic's mother holds a Masters Degree in English, yet her high level of education has meant absolutely nothing to Swedish authorities. A once very close bond between father, mother and child has been forcibly destroyed by powers in Sweden purely for ideological and arbitrary reasons. To learn more about this travesty of justice, please spend time browsing this blog.

Guest Writer: Daniel Hammarberg

The Domenic case is far from unique
By Daniel Hammarberg, human rights activist and author of The Madhouse: A critical study of Swedish society

Since Sweden introduced barnavårdslagen, "the child welfare law," in 1924, the act which enabled the state to take children into custody without their parents' consent, quite a few Swedes have faced relocation into foster care on dubious grounds. As the supply of foster homes wasn't nearly enough to meet the new demands of the grandiose plans for solving societal ills through foster care, the state swiftly established orphanages where sometimes upwards of 30 children were brought up. In the mid 20th century, at the peak of the days of unbridled foster care, no less than one in 30 children at any given time resided in foster care - half of them in actual families, the other half in orphanages. Since then, the proportion of the total population has gone down somewhat, but these dreaded child institutions are still around, now referred to as HVB-hem - treatment homes.


Two opposite developments have taken place; on the one hand, the poverty that afflicted early 20th century Sweden was nearly eliminated during the 1950's and 60's. On the other hand, as the original reasons to take children into state custody were disappearing, social workers created new reasons to seize children. While before, children could be taken due to their parents not being able to afford their sustenance or outright physically abusing them, now questionable psychological theories on the development of children see the light of day, instead. Delusional Freudian beliefs are now used to justify separating a child from his or her family. As the legislation upon which the foster care system was based has progressed, not only is actual harm to the child used to make a case, but now also projections of psychologists on the future development of the child are heavily considered.

While the early incarnations of barnavårdslagen, "the child welfare law," were fairly specific on the grounds upon which to take a child into custody, these later developed into general clauses which in today's LVU law lets the government seize children if "... any other condition in the home" warrants it as per §2, or as far as the conduct of the child goes - "... any other socially destructive behaviour" as per §3. What is considered to meet these conditions is for the social workers as a profession to decide, and the administrative courts that try the cases rarely question the opinions of the social workers.


Any use of naked force and oppressive measures will eventually meet resistance, and in Sweden as a possible counter, we've witnessed the use of Newspeak for what was previously a blatantly controversial use of state authority. The 1924 law didn't mince words when it laid down the rules, and here children could be described as "degenerates." An orphanage was still called an orphanage, and society didn't need to disguise its aims to any noticeable degree. 

In today's society, the same public authority circulates such phrases as barnens bästa i centrum, "the best interests of the child," and similar. The government insists it's only doing what's right for the child these days, with little regard for birth family bonds which are so very critical for a growing human being, without which a person has little hope of becoming a well-adjusted adult. Children can be mercilessly torn from families where an independent observer will have little understanding for the state's actions. Perhaps "the best interests of the child" is merely Newspeak for the state's willingness to seize children from families that refuse to conform and cooperate with the state. The "care" it's felt that the children "need" is rather the oppressive measure of a covertly totalitarian state that's ensuring that society won't have to deal with functional families independent of the state, with the strength that's inherent in an intact nuclear family.

Over the years, several horror stories have emerged from the Swedish foster care system; in the 1970's, Sweden's political elite made use of girls placed at orphanages as prostitutes, some as young as 14 years old, in what was called the Geijer affair. In 1983, German magazine Der Spiegel published an extensive article entitled "Kinder-Gulag" im Sozialstaat Schweden on the state of foster care at the time, likening it to the Soviet system of Gulags. Back then, Europe still enjoyed good investigative journalism as well as a European Court of Human Rights that still had the ability to influence the way public authorities operated. Not so today, when mass media is oh so silent on the topic of foster care abuses, and the ECHR is virtually useless as an institution for the individual families to seek redress for their grievances due to being flooded with cases.


There have been other cases recently, similar to the Domenic one. During the summer of 2009, an Iranian man named Esmail and his Swedish wife Susanne, who have three children together, found these taken at the airport as they were leaving for Iran after having only made a brief stop in Sweden. An anonymous report about alleged child neglect had been made against them, and still today they've not been able to get their children back.


The future looks even more bleak. In a parliamentary bill the other year, 2008/09:So555, the Left Party of Sweden wanted to make it a crime attempting to leave Sweden with children who had legally been taken into state custody, and the authorities were going to be alerted whenever anyone with a LVU order on them attempted to leave, just like criminals. To support the bill, they quoted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the CRC. The bill was voted down, but overall when one browses the bills that have been written on the LVU law, they all have one thing in common - the call for greater jurisdiction and possibly more spending as well.


To learn more about the state of contemporary Swedish society, feel free to have a look at my new book "The Madhouse" where I cover all the things above in greater detail; for now only available as an E-book but soon to be available in print as well.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046ZS2PA


Or take a peek at my new blog at


http://www.danielhammarberg.com/

Swedish court ignoring family

OneNewsNow: Swedish court ignoring family
Swedish Official at European Court may be blocking potentially embarrassing Johansson Hearing 

A Swedish home-schooling family has been trying to get their son back from foster care since he was taken away by authorities more than a year ago, but an attorney for the family believes the courts have turned a deaf ear to their situation.

A judge recently upheld the decision of Swedish social service officials to keep Domenic Johansson in foster care and away from his parents. Mike Donnelly, director of international relations and staff attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), tells OneNewsNow Domenic's parents have argued that they are a.....read more.

HSLDA Analysis of Sept 2 court opinion

HSLDA: Government’s Claws Dig Deeper in Johansson Case

On September 21, 2010, Swedish Administrative Court Chief Judge Peter Freudenthal handed down his decision in the case of Domenic Johansson of Gotland, Sweden, dashing the hopes of his parents for reunification with their son, who has been kept in foster care for over one year. Dominic was seized by Swedish authorities from the plane he and his parents had boarded as they were moving to India, his mother’s home country. Authorities cited untreated cavities in the boy’s teeth, failure to vaccinate, and homeschooling as reasons for taking him into custody.


After multiple appeals, Judge Freudenthal has upheld the decision of Swedish social services officials, who are the engineers behind the case. Domenic has been kept from his parents since June 25, 2009, and has only been allowed to visit with them once every five weeks with a supervised 15-minute telephone call once every two weeks. It has become increasingly apparent that the social workers have no real intention of reuniting this family, and that they have simply transferred Domenic from the Johanssons to the foster family. Domenic is now in the public school system.


Friends, family, and a university professor of psychology testified that the Johanssons are more than capable of parenting Domenic and caring for him. Despite this testimony, and the willingness of the family to do whatever the state wants them to do, Judge Freudenthal decided to go along with the assertions of the social workers that Domenic was better off in the care of the state. Meanwhile, Freudenthal spent almost as much time discussing the fees the appointed lawyers would collect as he did explaining the rationale for the state’s continued custody of Domenic.

About six months after Sweden took him hostage, and where he remains as such today.

Ruby Harrold-Claesson, a noted international human rights lawyer and president of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights (nkmr.org), represented Christer Johansson before being removed from the case on the motion of Eva Ernston, Domenic’s appointed attorney. Harrold-Claesson has developed a practice of fighting Swedish social services, a system she calls increasingly “evil.”

“Held Hostage”

“I have never in 20 years of practice seen a case more badly handled,” says Harrold-Claaesson. “This family has been so traumatized that they may never recover. The Swedish government has grossly violated this family’s human rights, both under Swedish law and under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Under the ECHR people have the right to leave their country. But in this case the social services took this poor little boy and...READ MORE

Guest Writer: Helen E. Lees

Yesterday we announced this blog open to guest writers who have been following the Johansson case. Today, we are happy to introduce Helen E. Lees, a graduate student at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her PhD thesis "considers what happens to the self of parents and other adults upon discovery of the possibilities of elective home education." Due to her research, she brings interesting insight to the tragic story of the Johansson family. We continue to accept articles from guest writers. Send your submissions for consideration to: returndomenic@aol.com

Domenic and the New Paradigm

By Helen E. Lees

 http://bham.academia.edu/HelenLees

Domenic and his father in happier times.

The case of the parents of Domenic looks as though it is an unfolding brutal tragedy of misunderstandings. This is backed up and informed by doctoral research that I have been conducting at the University of Birmingham in the UK between 2007-2010. This research highlights empirical data on the discovery of home education and other educational alternatives, suggesting that in order to understand such a lifestyle and way of seeing education and the upbringing of children, one needs to have undergone some kind of 'conversion' experience. As a result, those in favor of home education who have, it seems from my research, experienced this kind of conversion, are living in 'a different world' from people who believe in mainstream schooling.

The philosophical understanding that underpins this idea comes from Thomas S. Kuhn, who wrote 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' in 1969. Kuhn says that when people discover a new way of doing things, they change paradigm and what results is an incommensurability of understanding and communication between those in the old world/paradigm and those in the new. My research shows home education is a 'new' paradigm and also that consequently- involved in education as a field with diverse options - is the problem of incommensurability: although people are talking about essentially the same thing (education), different ways of doing things means that when people have an understanding coming from a particular paradigm or 'worldview', they cannot easily understand other people in an alternative paradigm and with another 'worldview'. It requires effort for people in the 'old' paradigm to see - literally - from the point of view of those in the 'new'.

It seems that social services have a lack of understanding and an inability to understand home education practice and choices. They are, it seems, only seeing the situation from their own point of view. My research suggests why they might be so intractable in their views with regard to Domenic being in the care of his 'alternative' parents. Kuhn also talks about the strong resistance from those in the 'old' paradigm towards those in the 'new' paradigm. If we apply this to Domenic's case, it makes some sense of the strong and continuing resistance that social services seem to have displayed against Domenic's parents: if social services give in and return Domenic, it threatens their belief that their worldview and opinions are the 'correct' ones. This is a strong and world-shattering threat that must be guarded against at all costs at the level of their personal self; although it is likely to be dressed in professional language and rationale.

In the UK, there are many examples of social services having a very weak grasp of the basic concepts of home education and seeing it, as a result, as poor education. The problem of incommensurability is a global one. Of course, home educating has been highlighted through various academic research to constitute another (personally and socially positive) way of life, so it is not just about education. It is also about lifestyle. If a mother wants to follow natural medicine practices for example (a very Indian and Vedic attitude), this is a life view. It is also a life view that is valid on its own terms. If it is seen from a medical/scientistic perspective it loses validity. From following the case of Domenic Johansson being taken and kept from his parents it strikes me forcibly that what is happening is not fact based on sound judgment, but facts based on a determination to maintain validation of a particular worldview that is not and - in a democracy - cannot be allowed to be seen as the only valid worldview.

Gotland social services do not have all the answers and are not in possession of the truth. Their worldview is not the only valid one. Their facts can be seen differently. A child has the right to be brought up in the worldview of its parents and parents have the right to bring up their child in their own worldview. Using this argument, the only clause that would substantiate violation of respect for a particular worldview or paradigm of living would be substantial and substantiated profound harm to the child. I do not see any evidence of such harm having been perpetrated against Domenic by his parents. They seem, from what I have read, heard, seen, felt and personally judged, to have a solidly loving attitude and a valid worldview.

My research backs up the Johansson's claims that the situation they are experiencing is unfair. Why is their son away from and out of their care? It doesn't make sense from any worldview, actually. Whilst this non-sense is unfolding, Domenic, of course, is changing his worldview... Domenic's parents are having to agree to change theirs. A dominance in perspective creates totalitarianism at the level of personal choice. A democracy is founded on personal choice. Adherence to a worldview - for anyone - is not secured by taking children from their parents.

Helen E. Lees

http://bham.academia.edu/HelenLees