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Swedish man on trial today for taking his son home from foster care

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GreenCardSeeker
, 12-20-2010 at 10:45 AM (886 Views)
Today Gotland district court held its main proceedings against Christer Johansson, who's charged with kidnapping or possibly unlawful deprivation of liberty.

The story from Gotlands tidningar, translated by me:

"Dad on trial for kidnapping

- I only wanted to see my son. That's how the man in his 40's explained it who was today on trial for illegally having abducted his son placed into foster care.

It was last November, when the man was meant to have had a supervised meeting with his son, that he pulled his son into his car and drove away. For a couple of days he kept his son with him before the police could arrest him.

Today the main proceedings took place at Gotland district court. The prosecution against the man was charged as kidnapping, or possibly unlawful deprivation of liberty.

The man explained his actions with having to see his son, but he doesn't feel he's committed any crime.

The court considers it proven that he's committed the acts he's been indicted for, but before a sentence and sanction is delivered, he's to go through a major investigation by forensic psychiatry.

Hence the main proceedings won't end for another four weeks. Until then the man remains in jail."
http://www.helagotland.se/nyheter/ar...icleid=6523999 for the source.

If sentenced to prison, he faces at least one year. My hunches tell me they've already made up their minds about sentencing him to forensic psychiatric care instead, under the LRV law. For people new to this story, all Christer did was take his son back to see his relatives instead of staying with the social services. See http://friendsofdomenic.blogspot.com/ for the full story.

I guess most people on this forum are unaware of this story. Anyway, his son was taken from his married parents in June of last year due to the government deciding his parents were not fit to take care of him. Now after taking his son home from state custody, he's facing either years in prison, or involuntary commitment at a psych ward. The government sure gets upset when you try to take back "their property."
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Comments

  1. teacherone's Avatar
    why was he taken in the first place?
  2. GreenCardSeeker's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by teacherone
    why was he taken in the first place?
    That's a somewhat complicated question. The seven-year-old boy had not been abused and nothing had been found to warrant his seizure. The family was about to leave the country and move to India, after the family had been in a quarrel with the government for some time. One of the main reasons was that they home-schooled him instead of sending him to public school. The Swedish LVU law doesn't require proof of any abuse or neglect though, the social services is quite free to take children into custody still. When it was time for the court hearings, they had added a couple of other reasons like unfixed cavities in the boy's teeth, not having vaccinated him etc, but they could never prove that he had actually suffered any harm.

    So I'd say it's about the government deciding it has more of a right than the parents to raise this child.