Posted on 03/22/2007 2:09:49 AM PDT by Man50D
Five "well-educated" children have been ordered into state custody by a court that applied to a second family a ruling taking a 15-year-old homeschooler from her family and sending her to a psychiatric ward.
The action fulfills a dire forecast from a human rights group that the government's success in the first case would encourage officials to act against other families in Germany.
The newest ruling comes from a court in Saxony and affects five members of the Brause family, according to officials with the International Human Rights Group.
Its president, Joel Thornton, earlier had told WND that, "There is an increased fear among homeschoolers about whether their children are next," after Melissa Busekros, 15, was removed from her home and ordered first to a psychiatric ward, then a foster home, because of her "school phobia."
Thornton told WND the ruling in Saxony means that while the government officials have not yet taken the five children from the family home, they have permission to do so at any time.
"Apparently, Germany has decided that it can determine when and where the children go to school; and where they live while doing so," noted Thornton. "The youth welfare, supported by the police force, can take the children out of the home at any time with or without notice."
The decision, according to the IHRG, said the well-being of the children "can only be achieved by their attendance in the public schools."
According to a CBN report, the legal custody of Rosine, Jotham, Kurt-Simon, Lovis and Ernst Brause was taken away from parents Bert and Kathrin and given to the local youth welfare office.
The parents reportedly can regain custody of their children only by placing them in public school.
In the order, which was based solely on the parents' decision against sending their children to public school, the family also was told to pay court costs estimated at $4,000.
The judge had concluded that the children were well-educated, but accused the parents of failing to provide their children with an education in a public school. The court noted that one of the daughters expressed the same opinions as her father, showing they have not had the chance to develop "independent" personalities.
That circumstance and others echo the case involving Melissa Busekros, a case on which IHRG has been working for several weeks.
"We are gearing up to continue the fight in Germany for the right of parents to control the education of their children in accordance with their sincerely-held religious beliefs. This will be an expensive battle, and we ask you to pray about helping us fight the good fight," the IHRG said.
"Our efforts must be bathed in prayer, so we ask you to please continue praying for Melissa and the Busekros family, as well as the Brauses. No parent should have to watch their children being forcibly removed from their home because of their religious beliefs," the group said.
The newest decision came even though a United Nations report included some new criticism of the German school system.
"…it should be noted that education may not be reduced to mere school attendance and that educational processes should be strengthened to ensure that they always and primarily serve the best interests of the child," the UN report said.
"Distance learning methods and homeschooling represent valid options which could be developed in certain circumstances, bearing in mind that parents have the right to choose the appropriate type of education for their children, as stipulated in article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," it continued.
A separate report out of Berlin also noted that in the German school system, children from poor families and immigrant backgrounds are at a disadvantage, and the system does not provide equal opportunities.
The IHRG reported that the work on Melissa's case continues. As WND has reported, the 15-year-old recently released a letter through which she pleaded for permission to return to her home and parents.
I want to ask you for help, to get my right to go back to my family, as I wish," Melissa Busekros wrote in an English letter hand-delivered to the IHRG.
It was more than six weeks ago she was taken by youth welfare officials accompanied by police officers from her home first to a psychiatric hospital in Nuremberg, and then later to a foster home.
"I am not sick as the doctor said and my family is the best place for me to live," she said in her letter.
The removal order in Melissa's case has been affirmed at the appellate level, where a judge also ordered her parents, Hubert and Gudrun Busekros, to be given state-sponsored psychiatric tests, raising fears that the results of those tests will be used by the government to remove the family's other five children.
Thornton said even those German families who already have fled to other countries because of Germany's homeschool ban are moving into hiding because of the possibility they could be returned to face German fines or jail time for homeschooling.
The IHRG reported it is working on several fronts to try to help Melissa and her family, with several German lawyers evaluating their options for an appeal, all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if needed.
The case has gotten the attention of the German community already.
Christian activists say the case is an assault on religious liberties and the right of a Christian family to homeschool their daughter," said Speigel Online International's English-language edition.
The case has been widely reported in Christian and conservative media in the United States, with some commentators comparing the authorities to Nazis. Activists are being encouraged to pray for the girl and petition German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while one Web site is even calling for a boycott on German goods," the report continued.
Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republican of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole."
Melissa had fallen behind in math and Latin, and was being tutored at home. When school officials in Germany, where homeschooling was banned during Adolf Hitler's reign of power, found out, she was expelled. School officials then took her to court, obtaining a court order requiring she be committed to a psychiatric ward because of her "school phobia."
Drautz said homeschool students' test results may be as good as for those in school, but "school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens."
Just last year the Human Rights Court for the European Union ruled in another similar case that any parental "wish" to have children grow up without the public school's anti-Christian influences "could not take priority over compulsory school attendance."
The German government's defense of its "social" teachings and mandatory public school attendance was clarified during an earlier dispute on which WND reported, when a German family wrote to officials objecting to police officers picking their child up at home and delivering him to a public school.
The Minister of Education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling…," said a government letter in response. "You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers… In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement."
In Melissa's case, the local Youth Welfare Office arrived at the family home with about 15 uniformed police officers to take her into custody. They had in hand a court order allowing them to take her into custody, "if necessary by force."
The Home School Legal Defense Association, the largest homeschool organization in the U.S. with more than 80,000 member families, said the case is an "outrage."
Practical Homeschool Magazine noted one of the first acts by Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools, and school-related issues.
In 1937, the dictator said, "This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."
The IHRG said Americans also could contact:
Youth Welfare Office Director: Edeltraud Höllerer Rathaus Rathausplatz 1 91052 Erlangen Tel. +49 9131 86-2844 Fax +49 9131 86-2438 Mail: edeltraud.hoellerer@stadt.erlangen.de Or stadtjugendamt@stadt.erlangen.de Responsible Official Monika Muzenhardt Mail: monika.muzenhardt@stadt.erlangen.de Local Court Erlangen Family court Richterin Frank-Daupin Mozartstraße 23 91052 Erlangen Tel. +49 9131-782 01 Fax +49 9131/782-361
Ping.
Emigrating is not a crime. In fact, many homeschoolers do just that - Austria is a preferred place, because of the same language, the right to settle down there and work (thanks to the EU!) and Austria has no obligation to attend a private or public school.
Although the specific law may have been enabled by the Nazis, the obligation to attend school for nine years in Germany is 300 years old and a Prussian idea.
We have lots of private schools, most of them religious (protestant or catholic), but some are even private. These schools are all under the control of the state in order to guarantee a minimum level of education (i.e. a private school may not teach that 2+2=3), but also get financial support from the state.
This is old news but the parents are still in jail. I followed it since it started and pretty tragic.
6-22-2002
The Death of Free Speech and Individualism
In the New World Order of America
by Edgar J. Steele
(Text of speech given at annual conference of Council of Conservative Citizens in Atlanta, Georgia on June 22, 2002.)
Another case I tried just last month involved a young man and his wife, whose children were taken from them by Oregon ’s Child Protective Services while the family was visiting Grants Pass. Allegedly due to criminal mistreatment – they were skinny and one girl had a small cut on her forehead – on an anonymous tip. Brian and Ruth Christine are the young parents.
They refused to cooperate for several months, because they felt they had done nothing wrong, so CPS said it would adopt them out. The Christines were home-schooling Christians. At trial, the state made a big point of there having been a copy of the Declaration of Independence taped to the inside wall of the converted bus that served as the family’s home.
The Christines took their children back at gunpoint and fled the state. They were tried for kidnapping, robbery and other, lesser, charges. The wife received 7 ½ years and the husband 12 ½ years, primarily because of a conviction on the robbery charge (not guilty on all kidnapping charges).
We are appealing the main charge now – robbery – which shouldn’t stand up in the face of Oregon case law which says one cannot be convicted of robbery merely for taking something which is used in the execution of another crime. You see, Brian took the state car the kids were in at the time and drove it 2.1 miles, where he left it unharmed, keys in the ignition.
Again, these folks were politically incorrect: poor, white, vegetarian, home-schooling Christians.
Rather the opposite is true. Just imagine yourself into the situation of a orthodox muslim girl growing up in Germany. If your parents have the possibility to "homeschool" you you have NO chance to develop your own personality or to break free out of their religious dungeon. Due to our laws i.e. the Turks have to deal with kids in the meantime who already were breathing the odour of freedom. We made good experience with this practice.
There is a wide consensus among the German society that homeschooling is not wanted because we like to see the childrens right on free information assured. On one hand many parents are simply not able to teach their kids due to their own incapability on the other hand it is quite likely that religious extreme parents i.e. deprive the kids the basic information that they need to survive in our society and that they need to think in a free manner. In registered schools certain standarts are guaranteed. Parents have the right to give their kids in private schools that meet that standart and also provide i.e. a religious program of their choice. Nevertheless the individual right of the kids on information will always be more important than the collective right of the families on self-determination in Germany.
It might sound quite offensive, but Evangelical Christian parents (that are those who usually try to homeschool kids in Germany from the Christian side) practically do not play a role in our country since they are only very few people. Pratically irrelevant. It is unlikely that our laws are changed just because of this handful of Christian homeschoolers since we have to deal with much bigger groups (i.e. the 3.7% muslims in Germany) and their wish to open a parallel society. It would be idiotic to do so, since the outcome of such a policy would be for sure disastrous. Then we are not speaking about the Busekos or whatever family anymore, then we are speaking about 500.000 trapped muslim kids. As I already said - Christian parents have the possibility to found religious schools that fit into our basic standarts. Then their kids are provided with the basic information the German society considers as nessecary and the beliefs of their parents at the same time. I have no problem with that.
Therefore homeschooling is forbidden in Germany and that will not change in the future. Other countries, other attitudes.
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