DOMINIC JOHANSSON: Kidnapped by the Swedish Police for Homeschooling

"This is one of the most disgraceful abuses

of power we have ever witnessed"

 (Mike Donnelly, Home School Legal Defense Association lawyer)

Abducted by the Gotland Authorities in Sweden for Being Homeschooled: Dominic with his mother


The Johansson's Family Homepage



It was one year ago today, June 25, when armed police, at the behest of Social Services of Gotland, stormed an Indian bound jetliner in Stockholm, Sweden, and forcibly removed the Johansson family. Their crime? They had briefly home schooled their only child in a land which looks upon home schooling families with contempt, and just this week passed a new education law making home schooling illegal across the Swedish landscape. This story examines the life of the Johanssons and the December 2009 Swedish Chamber Court Decision which essentially holds a family captive on the Swedish island of Gotland.

When cultures collide

(Click photos to enlarge.)


"Lives in the shadow"


Mother earns Masters but "lacks ability"

A bereaved mother's "present state" 





Parent's agony labeled "lack of skill" during supervised visits














Terrorized into submission



Catch 22: cruelty at its utmost 




How to understand this case?

Article (in Swedish) from the National Daily Newspaper Expressen
Links in Swedish and English to the Johansson story


Swedish Child Taken From Homeschooling Family

Whitney Ann Dotson October 7 at 7:42pm 

HSLDA recently recounted the story of a 7 year-old Swedish child (Dominic Johannson) who was mercilessly torn from his family's arms and placed under the observation of his country's social workers. Months later October 6, the boy's parents finally received word concerning the visitation rights of their only child: a maximum two-hour visit every two weeks. Since this horrific experience, Mrs. Johannson has suffered depression so severe as to require hospitalization, Mr. Johannson is presently receiving mandatory psychological treatment, and little Dominic has endured trauma-induced seizures. What provoked such governmental measures? No conviction could be mustered but the subject of homeschooling. 

Ironically to some, the country of Sweden resides under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Though the Swedish state itself makes no direct reference towards banning homeschooling, Sweden Embassy's head of public affairs, Mr. Berglind, infers from the Education Act. "Homeschooling in isolated cases, " Berglind states, "MIGHT be an acceptable substitute if a particular circumstance exists." In simpler language, homeschooling might legally concur only in certain cases deemed worthy by the state. Circumstances specifically summoned were heavily populated areas, or children affected by learning disabilities. 

If there is any wonder as to the family's innocence, let me explain the situation further. Just before this occurence, the Johannson family intended upon a life in India. The family contacted the school department and notified them of their intention of homeschooling and departure from the country, but received no initial response or help. They were understandably shocked when the institution dragged them into a court hearing. The judge, however, cleared the family's name and declared them innocent. Apparently, this judicial hearing meant little to the social workers that caused the above distress. Meanwhile, the Johannson family suffers. 

Please, friends, help fight this! You can voice your utter disgust by contacting the Swedish ambassador of the United States: 

*Swedish Ambassador Jonas Hafström can be reached: 

By email: ambassaden.washington@foreign.ministry.se 
By phone: 202-467 2600 
By fax: 202-467 2699 

*Urge him to persuade the Swedish government to return Dominic to his family, and declare the many benefits of homeschooling. 

Perhaps if enough people are informed, Swedish parents will have less to fear from their government. Perhaps America's leaders will look upon the fierce opposition of the American people towards the Child's Rights charter and recognize the inevitable havoc it creates on the family! 



Home schooled boy snatched

from plane in Sweden

Home schooled boy grabbed by police on plane in Sweden

Help reunite this persecuted family!

By Don Hank

Christer and Annie Johannson are a Swedish couple from Gotland that attempted last year to home school their son Dominic, a bright and happy 7 year old, just prior to their leaving the country to take up residence in India. They made all the right moves, informing the school of their plans.

Home schooling was — and still is — legal in Sweden (there is discussion about banning it) and when Christer asked the principal of the local elementary school if he could supply some teaching materials, he agreed to do so.

But in the meantime, some locals decided that these parents should not be allowed to do this. The reasons for this are no more clear than they are legal, but 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.




The Johannsons were on the plane, which was due to leave the gate in one minute when the Swedish police descended on it. Like commandos, they stormed the plane and took Dominic into custody, without stating any reason for doing so. Dominic was so traumatized he later threw up. Annie later fell unconscious to the floor of the police station. The police did nothing to help. Four days later, she stopped breathing in front of social workers, who also did absolutely nothing to help.

Can you even imagine this insanity?

The full story is given below (NOTE: the English version is below the Swedish version), but please come back after you have read it so you can help get Dominic back home where he belongs:


I called Christer some time after this happened and we had a long talk. He had not seen Dominic in a while, was only allowed short visits and had spent the  night before and most of the that day crying. Annie has been in bed with a heart condition that was exacerbated by the abduction of their son. (Tonight Christer emailed me that he had fallen into a state of semiconsciousness with an irregular heart rhythm.)

I was very impressed by what a kind and gentle person Christer was. He told me “ever since I was born I have only wanted to help people.” He described how he had traveled to help earthquake victims in India in 2000. He had, unfortunately, been thwarted by the large unruly crowds and was unable to help. I am not easily fooled, but I knew this was a genuinely good man with a kind heart. We both broke down crying when I ended the conversation telling him that God loves him, Dominic and Annie, that this was part of God’s plan and that everything would be all right.


After this conversation, I wrote an email to the Swedish authorities, and would like you to do the same. Please, if you have limited time, just write in the subject line “Please return Dominic Johannson to his parents. Thanks”

Dear Reader, Christer and Annie are actually giving you a rare privilege to help reunite a frightened little boy with his parents who love him with all their hearts. Remember what Jesus said: inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.

These words are just as true today as they were 2,000 years ago. God will bless you for just taking a few moments out of your busy day and sending an email to the Swedish authorities pleading their case. Pray that God will give you the words to write and then pray that the icy hearts of the authorities will be melted by reading these words.

Here are the emails of some of the authorities involved. The first two, Sofi Rosenqvist and Caroline Palmqvist, are the ones responsible for the decision to separate Dominic from his parents. The third is Lena Celion, a politician who thinks that kidnapping was the right thing to do.  Apparently, according to her statements in the interview, she thinks children have a right to go to school but not necessarily to be with their parents and definitely not to be home-schooled by people who care about them rather than taught by strangers teaching for money.

Please tell them your opinion of their thoughtless actions, but be as polite as you can. YES, THEY ALL READ ENGLISH!

Pattern in Swedish here:

Hej pa er,

var vänlig och ge Dominic Johansson tilbaka till sin föräldrar.

Hälsningar fran USA

The 4th is the address for a politician who may be able to help. To save time you can copy them all into your browser at once.





Here is some contact info for Swedish government officials:


I especially recommend the Swedish Ministry of Education and Research. Send at least one email to the Minister of Education, but there are others too here:


Then if you have time left, please send a few words of encouragement to Christer and Annie:


Finally here is a petition supporting the right to homeschool in Sweden:


Now, there is one more job and it is the most important: Pray that God will have His way here and that this experience, as terrible as it has been for this family, will bring them closer together and will bring them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, who, as you recall, told the stoners “whoever is without sin, cast the first stone,” and THEN said to the woman: “go and sin no more.”

God bless!


My letter to the Swedish authorities:

I am a friend of Christer Johannson and have seen several documents pertaining to his case, namely, the seizure of his son Dominic by the Socjaltjänst in Gotland.

It is obvious that the authorities have misrepresented the Johannsons’ case to the public and I would like to help shed light on this.

Please consider, for example, the following misleading article:


In an attempt to whitewash perpetrators in a sensational case of child abuse, this article ignores important facts of the case, such as the following.

  • The Johannsons originally requested study material so that Dominic could be temporarily home-schooled in anticipation of their permanent move to India, and the school originally agreed to supply this material.
  • Inexplicably, the principal changed his mind and the school board started to fine the Johannsons exorbitant amounts of money for not sending their son to school, even though they knew that the parents had properly applied for homeschooling materials and were soon moving to India. I understand that, unlike the former Soviet Union, Sweden has no law that bans citizens from moving away, so once the authorities were notified that the Johannsons were leaving, they should have let them go. This would have obviated all the unnecessary trauma to Dominic and his parents.
  • The Johannsons then asked for a meeting with the school board, to which they are entitled by law under such circumstances. The person in charge, Lena Celion, failed to meet with Dominic’s parents, in violation of the law.
  • Later, Mrs. Celion was quoted in the above-linked news article saying a child has the right to go to school. However, this is misleading, because it suggests that the parents denied Dominic an education, whereas they only decided to move to the mother’s country, where the boy would no doubt have a right to citizenship and would no longer be under Swedish jurisdiction.

I remind you that a few years ago, at the time of the great tsunami, it was widely reported that Swedish pedophiles had been flocking to Thailand as a place to have sex with boys, some of them quite young.

At that time many people here in America were outraged that the authorities in Sweden had done nothing to stop these evil criminals.

Now in an ironic twist, the Swedish government is trying to stop good, loving parents from traveling to Asia to give their child a better life and to steep him in a culture that will teach him diversity first hand — something he could never accomplish in Sweden with its rigid attitudes and dictatorial polices. Many of us are starting to see a pattern here: In Sweden, pedophilia is viewed with tolerance, but parents who wish to give their children the best possible life are considered criminals. Do you not see something terribly wrong here?

I am absolutely baffled at these actions on the part of the Swedish government. How can they be justified?

I ask that particularly in view of the fact that, as I understand it, Dominic vomited when the police seized him and separated him violently from his parents. The police apparently did nothing to intervene. From what I have learned about child psychology, one of the most clear-cut signs that a child is being severely abused is vomiting. Clearly, the authorities abused this child.

Now, imagine a child whose loving parents come to school and force him to come home with them for the day. Can you imagine a child under these circumstances being so traumatized by his parents that he throws up? Of course you can’t. Yet the authorities continue to insist that what they did was good for the child.

The fact that the people who made the decision occupy positions of power in government does nothing to mitigate their guilt. Rather it exacerbates the heinousness of the crime they committed.

Further, instead of remedying the severe trauma done to Dominic by quickly reuniting him with his parents, the authorities further traumatize him by banning further contact with the parents and allowing only very short “visits.” It is my understanding that Dominic, who was very close to his parents and had a warm and loving relationship, was so traumatized that he hardly responded to his father’s first words when they were reunited under very strained and difficult circumstances. This is a clear indication that the child was brainwashed to alienate him from his own parents — another instance of cruel child abuse.

Despite the misleading article linked above, there is nothing noble about this act on the part of the officials, no excuse whatsoever. They pose as champions of children’s rights but that is hypocritical. No human being with a beating heart could call their action by any other name except kidnapping and no one who knows the Johannsons’ story will call it “protecting children” or think of these pompous officials as heroes. Through their incompetence, these authorities may well have destroyed this child’s trust in others for the rest of his life! Every one of them deserves to be fired.

What strikes me about this case is that, here, for the first time, a country other than Germany has adopted such an inhuman approach to ‘child protection.’ In Germany, there are several grassroots groups (I am a member of one) that have arisen to oppose these tactics and it is common knowledge that the authorities there (das Jugendamt) began to use these cruel tactics around the time of the Third Reich.

Now my question to the Swedish government is this:

Why are you reverting to the cruel tactics of the Third Reich? Do you not have the imagination, natural kindness and good will to devise a family-friendly and child-friendly way to deal with unique and special families like the Johannsons? Can’t you tolerate a dissenting viewpoint? After all, the Johannsons  represent true diversity, not the stultifying politically correct type that is rammed down children’s throats in schools throughout Europe by ideologically indoctrinated teachers, many of whom have never traveled abroad or lived in a foreign culture.

Finally, is Hitler not officially condemned throughout Europe? If so, then why does Sweden — like Germany — now wish to resurrect his cruel policies that led to so much misery in Europe?

We thought we had rid the world of him. But now it seems he is back.


Don Hank



Mejlstorm mot socialtjänsten

Förespråkare för hemundervisning rasar mot omhändertagandet av sjuåring

Socialtjänsten på Gotland har hamnat i hetluften efter omhändertagandet av en 7-årig pojke i somras. Förespråkare för hemundervisning världen över rasar över beslutet.
– Mejl strömmar in hela tiden. En del är väldigt extrema, s

äger Marika Gardell, chef för individ- och familjeomsorgen.

Det var i slutet av juni den 7-årige pojken omhändertogs under uppmärksammade former i samband med att familjen skulle flytta utomlands.

Flera skäl
Det skäl som i första hand nämndes var att föräldrarna vägrat att låta pojken gå i skola. Men skälen var fler och det framkom också i den dom från den 13 augusti där länsrätten slår fast att pojken ska beredas vård enligt LVU (lag om vård av unga).
I domen nämns både fysiska omsorgsbrister och psykiska omsorgsbrister, bland annat i form av isolering, samt att pojken isolerats från kunskapsinlärning.
- Hemundervisning är i sig inget skäl för omhändertagande enligt LVU, det är dessutom ingen fråga för socialtjänsten, säger Marika Gardell, som blivit måltavla för den storm av protester som strömmat mot Gotland sedan händelsen blivit internationellt känd.
Bland annat har organisationen HSLDA, Home School Legal Defense Association, med säte i USA engagerat sig hårt i fallet. I förra veckan fick såväl Marika Gardell som ett flertal av Sveriges ministrar ett brev som i skarpa ordalag kritiserade "tvångsomhändertagande av barn av hemundervisningsskäl".

- Det har kommit extremt mycket mejl och brev den senaste tiden, från hela världen. Jag har inte en chans att hinna svara på alla, säger Marika Gardell.
Men hon vill gärna tydliggöra att det inte var på grund av hemundervisningen som pojken omhändertogs.
- Det måste finnas andra saker när ett sådant beslut fattas, säger hon.
Det kan handla om brister i föräldraförmågan eller en tillfällig sådan brist.
I brevet från HSLDA skriver man att "godtyckliga" skäl används vid omhändertaganden. Marika Gardell menar att det inte är möjligt att fatta beslut enligt LVU på godtycklig grund.
- Det sker i så många steg och slutgiltigt är det alltid en domstol som tar beslutet, säger hon.

Umgänge medges
Den 7-årige pojken är fortfarande omhändertagen, men föräldrarna får träffa honom.
- Umgänge med föräldrarna medges alltid, såvida det inte inte handlar om övergreppsproblematik, säger Marika Gardell.
Pojkens föräldrar har överklagat domen om omhändertagande till kammarrätten. Beslut därifrån väntas senare i höst.

Eva Carlsson Daun
0498-20 24 09

Gotlands Tidningar


Also see http://www.metrobloggen.se/jsp/public/permalink.jsp?article=19.10864174




http://www.helagotl and.se/nyheter/ artikel.aspx? ArticleId= 5350456

En rättighet att gå i skola"

Politiker tar strid för pojke

Barn och utbildningsnä mnden tar strid om den 7-åriga pojke som inte får gå i skolan för sina föräldrar. 
Pojken skulle ha börjat i årskurs 1 i höstas men släpptes aldrig iväg till skolan. 
Barn- och utbildningsförvaltningen vände sig till länsrätten för att med hjälp av vitesföreläggande försöka tvinga föräldrarna att låta pojken börja skolan.

Till en början beslutade länsrätten att föräldrarna skulle betala 250 kronor om dagen. När det inte hjälpte, tyckte länsrätten att det inte var någon idé att fortsätta kräva pengar av föräldrarna.
Det beslutet har nu barn- och utbildningsförvaltningen överklagat till kammarrätten.
- Det är att åsidosätta skollagen, säger Lena Celion, ordförande i barn- och utbildningsnämnden. 
Hon påpekar att det är kommunens plikt och föräldrarnas skyldighet att låta pojken gå i skola.
- Det är hans rättighet.
- Vi gör det här för pojkens skull, säger Lena Celion.


Court Upholds State-Sponsored 

“Kidnapping” of Homeschooled 


A pretty amazing story about Swedish government social workers targeting a family and taking away a child due to what looks like trumped up charges, but who can really know unless they're involved in the case? Although I work in public schools, I do agree that parents have a right to home-school their children. In fact, if we're not careful, we may see parents completely bypassing public schools because they have access to better technologies and resources than K-12 education facilities.

As someone with Swedish ancestors (my father's family immigrated to the United States from Sweden), I'm disappointed that Swedish courts would deprive a child of his parents because they disagreed with the "poor" decisions those parents may have made in regards to the child's education.



Dominic-fallet nu en världsnyhet

Nu har omhändertagandet av familjen Johanssons son Dominic som Världen idag skrivit om, blivit en världsnyhet.

I slutet av december toppade tv-kanalen CBN News sina tv-sändningar med nyheten om den gotländska pojken Dominic Johansson.
”Polisen kidnappade familjens Johanssons barn på flygplatsen”, sa man i reportaget som tog upp bland annat att Dominic inte fick fira jul hos sina föräldrar eftersom socialtjänsten har infört begränsningar i umgänget.
I inslaget intervjuas även Roger Kiska, advokat, från organisationen Alliance defense fund som arbetar hårt för att återförena familjen Johansson.
– Man behöver mer än vaccination och hemundervisning för att hålla pojken, säger han.
Nyhetsreportern Paul Strand rapporterade från Washington att Alliance defense fund är oroliga över att omhändertaganden liknande det svenska fallet även kan komma att äga rum i USA om landet skriver under FN:s barnkonvention.
– Det är en socialiststat som försöker ge alla familjer en ideologi som många inte delar, särskilt inte kristna, säger Roger Kiska, till CBN News.

Erik Lundström


Subpages (1): Letter from Blaze
Ccm Warren,
Feb 23, 2010, 11:13 AM