| A German appeals court has not only affirmed a lower court’s decision that ripped a 15-year-old homeschooler from her family and subjected her to a forced stay in a psychiatric hospital because she is homeschooled, but also ordered her parents to be given psychiatric evaluations, an international rights organization says.
Joel Thornton, president of the International Human Rights Group told WND that fears the state will use those court-approved tests to destroy the family of Melissa Busekros are very valid.
“The trouble is this emboldens the state again, only now it’s at a higher level, and the courts still are agreeing with them. This could put Melissa back into the psychiatric system where she could disappear from sight entirely,” he said.
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The family’s five other children also are endangered now because of potential court rulings that could be based on any evaluation of the parents, he said.
The appeals court ruling came despite the fact that all three of the lawyers representing Melissa Busekros clearly stated in their request to the court the family had accepted a compromise offered by a lower court for her to return home under government supervision.
“In spite of [that] … the appeals court held that the family refused the court’s initial compromise to let Melissa become an outpatient,” Thornton said.
For the Busekros family, it’s a huge setback.
“[A] fear is that Melissa will be returned to the psychiatric clinic system in Germany and ‘disappear.’ This would leave the family with no way to know where Melissa is or how she is doing. She could become a ward of the state and completely lost to her family,” Thornton said.
Besides the other children in the family, there are further ramifications, too, with the decision raising questions of larger government attacks on homeschoolers in Germany, where that choice of education is illegal because the government wants to stamp out any “parallel” societies utilizing a worldview different from the state’s.
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Members of the German homeschool community previously have taken their battle for the right to teach their children Christian basics to the Human Rights Court for the European Union, asking for affirmation of the statement in the European Convention on Human Rights that: “In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”
However, that court just last year affirmed a German court which had ruled the parental “wish” to have their children grow up without anti-Christian influences “could not take priority over compulsory school attendance.”
The international court said schools represent society and “it was in the children’s interest to become part of that society.”
The German government’s defense of its “social” teachings came to light 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.” |
