The German homeschool parents who faced a SWAT team’s
battering ram when police demanded to take their children into custody for
being homeschooled are back in court.
This time, they face the possibility of four-year jail terms
from a judge who has warned, “The law is the law.”
WND
reported in 2013 when the government took custody of
the children of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, then ages 7-14, from their
Darmstadt, Germany, home.
The SWAT team, authorized by a judge to use force if
necessary, took the children and told the Wunderlichs they wouldn’t see them
again soon because they were violating federal law by homeschooling.
Although there was no claim the
children were being mistreated, a team of 20 social workers, police and special
agents stormed the family’s home. The Home
School Legal Defense Association reported
at the time that Judge Koenig of the Darmstadt family court signed the order
authorizing the immediate seizure of the children by force.
“Citing the parents’ failure to cooperate ‘with the authorities
to send the children to school,’ the judge also authorized the use of force
‘against the children’ … reasoning that such force might be required because
the children had ‘adopted the parents’ opinions’ regarding homeschooling and
that ‘no cooperation could be expected’ from either the parents or the
children,” HSLDA said at the time.
Dirk Wunderlich told the homeschool group: “I looked through
a side window and saw many people, police and special agents, all armed. They
told me they wanted to come in to speak with me. I tried to ask questions, but
within seconds, three police officers brought a battering ram and were about to
break the door in, so I opened it.”
It was weeks before the children returned home. A year
later, an appeals court decided both social workers and parents should be
criticized, but the action against the children was “disproportional” to the
allegations. The decision returned custody of the children to their parents.
“We have won custody, and we are glad about that,” Dirk
Wunderlich said then. “The court said that taking our children away was not
proportionate – only because the authorities should apply very high fines and
criminal prosecution instead. But this decision upholds the absurd idea that
homeschooling is child endangerment and an abuse of parental authority.”
Now a report from
HSLDA says the next time the Wunderlichs
appear in court for homeschooling, they could each face four years in prison.
“We had hoped the judge, who seemed open-minded and
friendly, might give us a chance,” Dirk Wunderlich told the organization. “But
no, he said he could not: The law is the law.”
The parents each were fined about $1,000 during their recent
court appearance.
Dirk described how the family even tried to move away.
“We wandered around Europe for years looking for a place
where we could live peacefully and raise our children without this pressure,”
he told HSLDA. “But we had to come back here. It isn’t easy to get jobs in
other countries always. And besides, this is our home. We are Germans. Why
should we have to leave our country to do home education?
“With the help of HSLDA and with the prayers of our friends
and supporters, we will go forward,” he said. “This is not right, and we must
stand up against this injustice. The state cannot be allowed to dictate to
parents how children are educated. Homeschooling must be fought for.”
The German Supreme Court has already rejected all appeals by
the Wunderlichs. And in November 2014, the court reaffirmed in a separate case
that Germany has an equal interest with parents in the raising of children.
Michael Donnelly, HSLDA’s director of global outreach, was
outraged.
“Four years in prison? For homeschooling?” Donnelly said.
“German courts seem incapable of recognizing what most democratic countries
understand – that parents, not the state, should decide how to educate their
children. Home education is and ought to be a legal and valid alternative in
Germany, just like it is in most European countries. Instead, German courts
come down on the side of violating parental rights. It’s a terrible decision.”
Donnelly said the notion that homeschooling threatens
democracy is backwards.
“What really threatens democracy,” he said, “is when the
German authorities try to stamp out ‘parallel societies.’
“In a pluralistic democracy there must be acceptance for
families who have different ideas about how to educate their children. Home
education has proven its value to the point where a complete ban ought to be an
obvious violation of human rights. So no, we don’t plan to stop fighting for
these families.”
HSLDA, meanwhile, is urging Congress to support a plan that
would allow homeschool families facing persecution to move to the United States
for protection.
German homeschool families are being targeted with a
Nazi-era law that never was overturned
It was 1938 when a law was adopted under Adolf Hitler’s
leadership that eliminated exemptions for homeschoolers to compulsory education
laws.
Just a year before, Hitler himself said: “The youth of today
is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves
the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the
people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted
and therefore unspoiled. 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.”
Homeschooling
has been banned in Germany since then.
WND has reported over the years on a
German teen who was ordered into a psychiatric ward for being homeschooled and parents who were sentenced
to jail terms for homeschooling their children.
The
current German government has endorsed Hitler’s view of homeschooling. In 2003, the German Supreme Court handed down the Konrad
decision in which “religiously or philosophically motivated” homeschooling was
banned. Four years later, the German Federal Parliament changed a key provision
of German child protection law, making it easier for children to be taken away
from their parents for supposed “educational neglect.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/homeschool-parents-who-faced-battering-ram-back-in-court/
Comments
Homeschooling is far superior to
public schooling. Students remain 2 grades ahead of their age group and it
consumes NO TAX DOLLARS. We need to push back and end the homeschooler abuse we
are seeing here in the US before it’s too late. State Laws and federal
regulations need to be repealed.
The notion of State “ownership” of
children resurgence is traceable back to the UN. That’s why we are beginning to have
unconstitutional Medical Kidnapping and Homeschooler home invasions by State
Child Destructive Services. In the US
these cases need to be heard in US Courts, not CPS Kangaroo courts. The establishment of the Department of
Community Supervision in Georgia in 2015 will set up these Marxist courts. This
is a really bad law and needs to be repealed along with our regionalism laws HB
1216 and HB 277. These are laws leaked
into the system by Marxists. There are federal bounties paid to these CPS
Departments for each adoption that results from their unconstitutional acts. This also needs to be repealed. Lawful child abuse prevention should not be
abandoned and replaced by this new corrupt system. Our US Constitution is being
torn to shreds by UN Marxists and our own corrupt federal and state
governments.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party
Leader
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