Tuesday 13 July 2010

The Johansson case - a correction

A few days ago I was wondering about the reasons for Dominic Johansson being taken into care. I picked up on this comment by somebody close to the family;

''Christer was once involved in an alternative on-line news mag that expressed politically incorrect ideas and as near as anyone can tell, this was the reason his home schooling plans were opposed.'

I speculated in a post that this on-line magazine might have had something to do with the physical punishment of children, but am now happy to make it clear that it was nothing of the sort. It is in fact called Vaken which means 'awake' or 'wake up' and I don't think one could really call it 'politically incorrect' at all. Raving mad and anti-Semitic, yes; but not politically incorrect! After all, they replace the word 'Jew' most of the time with 'Zionist', thus conforming to the most up-to-date and acceptable left wing version of anti-Semitism. It is full of the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the Jews taking over the world, the freemasons, 9/11, all the usual nonsense in fact. I am not over keen on anti-Semitism, but I really cannot see anything on this site to justify taking a man's child from him. Which still leaves the central mystery of this whole affair unchanged; why was Dominic Johansson taken by social workers?

It is intriguing to see the rather ambiguous statements by Jonas Himmelstrand, the president of the Swedish National Association for Home Education, (ROHUS). He said of this case;

'Homeschooling was not the only issue regarding taking Dominic Johansson in custody by the social services. But having read the court verdict with all the issues, there stills seems to be no reason for this severe action. The young boy has most likely been much more hurt by the custody action than the conditions in his family. One cannot avoid the thought that the prejudices and lack of knowledge about homeschooling, could have been the pivotal reason for the custody action.'

Home schooling was 'not the only issue'. We have heard that the child had some tooth decay, but this was only discovered after he had been taken into care. He had not had the usual vaccinations, but while this is a little unusual it would not be grounds for taking somebody's child. The Vaken website is barking mad, but I can't see this being a reason. Notice that Himmelstrand says, ' prejudices and lack of knowledge about homeschooling, could have been the pivotal reason'. Once again, it is hinted that the home education was not the only or even the main reason. On the Friends of Dominic Johansson site, there is this curious statement;

'By December 2009, the Johansson family had been terrorized by the Social Board of Gotland for more than sixteen months; had their home swarmed and searched by armed Swedish police'

Now why on earth did the police raid the Johanssons' home? What were they looking for? This could hardly have been in connection with home education; there must have been something else going on. There are tantalising hints about this business scattered all over the place. One thing which I have noticed is that the people who are writing about the case a long way from Sweden always seem to think that it is only about home education. Those actually in Sweden, particularly those who have dealings with the family, are saying that home education was not the only reason for the actions of the social workers. Irritatingly though, they never tell us what those other reasons were.

Incidentally, people have contacted Google in an attempt to have this blog taken down. This is not the first time that this has been done; in fact it is the fifth. The first person to try this stunt was our own Mike Fortune-Wood of Home Education UK last year. This is usually done by telling a lot of lies and accusing me of all sorts of bizarre things.. Google are used to this now and they never take any action. Judging by what has been said, I gather that the latest effort was by somebody connected with the Johansson case.

6 comments:

  1. It all comes back to "not knowing" the whole truth...is it ever possible to really judge in these cases? I know a family that got itself into this sort of mess last week; I am convinced that I know the realities of the situation....but there is always the niggling feeling inside that I hope I got it right!

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  2. Teacher Julie says-It all comes back to "not knowing" the whole truth...is it ever possible to really judge in these cases? I know a family that got itself into this sort of mess last week; I am convinced that I know the realities of the situation....but there is always the niggling feeling inside that I hope I got it right!

    how do you know this family did HCC make a sly phone call to you Julie? didthe missing Jan Lewis tell you about them are they not doing home education the right way?

    HCC tell Lies about parents and children Julie you dont want to belive everything they tell you!

    we still here LOL and still complaing to HCC Peter write every week to them LOL after all every child matters!

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  3. Simon... Not sure if this is relevant, butthere are a couple of articles here on the links between right wing evangelicalism and anti- Semitism
    http://www.evangelical-times.org/Website_Pages/ArticleDetail.php?articleID=4340
    and
    http://www.evangelical-times.org/Website_Pages/ArticleDetail.php?articleID=4397

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  4. Thanks for those links, Julie. There are two completely different strands in the USA about this. On the one hand are the Christian Zionists who are awaiting the Second Coming and are rock solid in their support of Israel. Some of them do voluntary work in the Israeli army. The of course there is the more traditional view of the Jews as Christ killers and Deicides.

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  5. This lot however seems to either be claiming that the current Jews aren't real Jews at all - or you can have the British Israelite sort of view that some other group (eg in this case the British and Americans) are the real lost 10 tribes etc. Take your pick of mad ideas.....however, as you say, madness of this type is not normally considered a reason for removing children from the family.

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  6. You have my email address Simon, why don't you ask the questions directly to me ???

    http://ga.helagotland.se/nyheter/artikel.aspx?articleid=5846703

    Translate with Google

    It's a nice thing of you to think that authorities never do anything wrong, sorry to make you disappointed!

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