Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Imagine you’re sitting with your family on a plane, ready to take off. Suddenly, armed men burst onto the plane and snatch your child. Kidnapping? Nightmare? Or the real experience of the Johansson family, just three years ago? Hear more on today’s Home School Heartbeat, with host Mike Farris.

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Mike Farris:
This week, Mike Donnelly, HSLDA’s Director of International Relations, has been updating us on the changing climate of homeschool freedom in Sweden. Mike, even before the 2010 change to the basic education law, there was an example of hostility toward homeschooling that made international headlines. Tell us about it.

Mike Donnelly:
Mike, on June 26, 2009, Dominic Johansson, then 7-years-old, was with his mother, Annie, and father, Christer, on an airplane, just minutes from taking off from Sweden. They were leaving Sweden to reunite with Annie’s family in her home country of India. They were going to go there and minister in orphanages. They’d also had enough of the local Swedish bureaucracy, who had denied to even discuss their homeschooling application for over a year.

On that fateful day, Swedish police marched onto that plane and took young Dominic into state custody, where he’s been since then. This ongoing cruelty of this “state-napping,” as it were, is hard to understand. The initial reason they took Dominic was homeschooling. Now, Swedish officials are even trying to terminate the parental rights of this family. HSLDA and the Alliance Defense Fund have been representing this family at the European Court of Human Rights, and we hope and pray that they’ll be reunited.

Mike Farris:
Well, Mike, while we wait for the European Court of Human Rights to determine the admissibility of the case—grant review that is—I ask the listeners to pray for this case. I’m Mike Farris.