Parents sent to jail for homeschooling

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

*Perilous Times*

*Parents sent to jail for homeschooling
*
'Words escape me, it's unconscionable, incredible, shocking,' says attorney

Posted: June 18, 2008

A mother and father who have been homeschooling their children each have
been ordered by a German judge to serve three-month prison terms after a
prosecutor said he was unhappy with fines the family paid and he wanted
the parents jailed.

The sentences for Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek were announced in
Germany's equivalent of a district court today in the state of Hesse,
according to a staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense
Association. The group, the premier homeschooling advocacy organization
in the world, has been monitoring and helping in the Dudeks' case since
before a federal prosecutor announced his intention more than a year ago
to see the parents behind bars.

"Words escape me, it's unconscionable, incredible, shocking," HSLDA
staff attorney Mike Donnelly said that after he got word of the
sentence. "They'll appeal of course."

He said the prosecutor's agenda is clear, with the mindset: "You guys
are rebelling against the state. We're going to punish you."

Donnelly said work was begun immediately to pursue an appeal through the
court system in the German state.

He described the sentences as "breathtaking."

It was just a year ago when it was reported that the prosecutor, Herwig
Muller, appealed a lower court's imposition of fines against the Dudeks.

The prosecutor said at the time he would demand jail sentences of three
months each for the parents. Muller also said he would not permit the
case to be resolved with probation for the parents.

A newspaper reporter in Hesse, Harald Sagawe, said the parents
previously paid fines because "they did not send their children to
school, for religious reasons."

He continued, "The parents, Christians who closely follow the Bible,
teach their children themselves. Two years ago the court had also dealt
with the Dudeks. That case, dealing with the payment of a fine, had been
dropped."

Judge Peter Hobbel, who imposed the fines, also criticized school
officials for refusing to answer the family's request for approval of
their "private school."

Arno Meissner, the chief of the government's local education department,
said he would enforce the mandatory school attendance law against the
family, and he said he resented the judge's interference.

"His duty is to make a judgment when the prosecutor brings a charge and
to stay out of administrative matters," Meissner said at the time.

The attitude is typical of some officials in Germany, where
homeschooling has been stamped on since the Nazi era, critics say.

Practical Homeschool Magazine has noted one of the first acts by Hitler
when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of
Education and give it control of all schools and school-related issues.

In 1937, the dictator said, "The youth of today is ever the people of
tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of
inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at
a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and
therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for
the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no
one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and
its own upbringing."

Joerg Grosseleumern, a spokesman for the the Netzwork-Bildungsfreiheit,
a German homeschool advocacy group, said in Hesse a family's failure to
follow the mandatory public school attendance laws violates not only
administration regulations but the criminal code.

"It is embarrassing the German officials put parents into jail whose
children are well educated and where the family is in good order," he
wrote in an earlier alert about the situation. "We personally know the
Dudeks as such a family."

Officials in Hesse have said not even the family's efforts to move out
of the region would halt their prosecution.

HSLDA officials estimate there are some 400 homeschool families in
Germany, virtually all of them either forced into hiding or facing court
actions.

Just weeks ago, it was reported the Dudeks warned about a new German
federal law that also gives family courts the authority to take custody
of children "as soon as there is a suspicion of child abuse," which is
how the nation's courts have defined homeschooling.

"The new law is seen as a logical step in carving up family rights after
a federal court had decided that homeschooling was an abuse of custody,"
said the letter from Juergen Dudek to the HSLDA.

The letter said local "youth welfare" offices' new authority includes
"withdrawal of parental custody as one of the methods for punishing
'uncooperative' parents."

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has
commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government "has a
legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that
are based on religion."

Drautz said schools teach socialization, and as was reported, that is
important, as evident in the government's response when a German family
in another case wrote 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 recent years Germany has established a reputation for cracking down
on parents who object, for reasons ranging from religious to social, to
the nation's public school indoctrination of their children.

WND has reported several times on custody battles, children being taken
into custody and families even fleeing Germany because of the situation.

One of the higher-profile cases on which it was reported was that of a
teen who was taken by police to the psychiatric ward because she was
homeschooled.

The courts ruled it was appropriate for a judge to order police officers
to take Melissa Busekros, 15 at the time, into custody in January 2007.

Officials later declined to re-arrest her after she turned 16. She was
subject to different requirements and simply fled state custody and
returned to her family.