World
Court Takes Custody of 5 Homeschoolers
Dale Hurd
CBN News
March 25, 2007
CBNNews.com -- A court in eastern Germany has taken custody of five children away from their homeschooling parents, but has not yet removed the children from the home. The parents, Bert and Kathrin Brause of Zittau, lost custody of their children, Rosine, Jotham, Kurt-Simon, Lovis and Ernst, to the local youth welfare office.
The parents can only regain custody by placing their children in public school, and the children may be physically removed by the state at any time.
According to court documents translated by the
International Human Rights Group, the parents were also ordered to pay all court costs. The judge’s order was based solely on the parents’ unwillingness to send their children to the public school, in violation of Germany’s mandatory school attendance law.
The case in Zittau, in the eastern state of Saxony, is a separate case from the one involving the Busekros family in Bavaria, where a 15-year-old girl was taken from her homeschool family and put into a mental ward for treatment of “school phobia.” The parents no longer have custody of the girl, Melissa.
There are only about 300 to 500 homeschoolers in Germany, and
many have been jailed and fined. Some have lost their businesses and others have fled Germany with their children to other countries.
The court decision in Zittau came despite the fact that the judge admitted that the children were well-educated under the direction of the Philadelphia school, a German homeschooling umbrella organization to which their parents belonged.
The court accused the parents of not providing their children with a public school education as they themselves had received.
The family applied to educate their children at home because the parents believe it is their duty before God. The judge stated that the parents’ obedience to God put the interests of their children “second.”
Court documents show the judge also complained that the children answered her with the same opinions that their father had voiced; showing that they have not had the opportunity to develop independent personalities. This echoes the Busekros case in Bavaria, in which the Erlangen Youth Welfare Agency told a court that the daughter was influenced too much by her father, and was not developing a personality of her own.
The judge accused the parents of abusing their children by keeping them from public life (in public school) and “forcing” the children to follow their own lifestyle.
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