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 told WorldNetDaily (WND) 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 WND reported 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 Homeshool 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, WND 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 blogon, 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 WND 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 WND has 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.
(18 June 2008, WorldNetDaily) (to index)

* HOUSE OF LORDS IN BRITAIN VOTES TO LOWER AGE OF CONSENT - In a press statement from Colin Heart, Director of the Christian Institute he says: I regret to inform you that last night the House of Lords voted in favour of lowering the age of consent in Northern Ireland from 17 to 16.

Peers voted 146 to 66 against Lord Morrow's amendment to keep the law unchanged. Although saddened at the result, it was not unexpected.

There were several good speeches highlighting that this move is deeply unpopular and sends out the wrong signal to Ulster's young people.

Opposing this measure was the right thing to do. I want to thank those Peers who spoke and voted against the proposal.

Thank you for your prayers and support.
(1 July 2008, The Christian Institute) (to index)

* OBAMA OPPOSES BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE - Gay rights moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign Tuesday after Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's announcement that he opposes a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

In a letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, the presumptive presidential nominee said he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution" and similar efforts in other states.

Obama's position on Proposition 8 was announced at a club event Sunday after a move by Arizona Sen. John McCain, the expected GOP standard-bearer in November, who last week told officials of Protect Marriage, a coalition that gathered 1.1 million signatures for the California measure, that he backs their efforts "to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman."

For both campaigns, the decision to get involved in the same-sex marriage debate carries political risks.

California is one of three states with same-sex marriage bans on the November ballot. While the state is seen as Obama country, and Arizona is McCain's home state, Florida, the third state seeking to limit marriage to a man and a woman, is a swing state that will be a major prize in the November election.

Obama is skating gingerly past his previous position on the issue.
(1 July 2008, San Fransico Chronicle) (to index)

* OBAMA SEEKS TO WIN EVANGELICALS - Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday that if elected president he would expand the delivery of social services through churches and other religious organizations, vowing to achieve a goal he said President Bush had fallen short on during his two terms. "The challenges we face today — from saving our planet to ending poverty — are simply too big for government to solve alone," Mr. Obama said outside a community center here. "We need an all-hands-on-deck approach."

Some Democrats have previously backed similar efforts, but Mr. Bush’s version, a centerpiece of his first-term agenda, has been a lightning rod for criticism from those concerned about the separation of church and state and those who argued that
Mr. Bush had used it to further a conservative political agenda.

In embracing the same general approach as Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama ran the political risk of alienating those of his supporters who would prefer that government keep its distance from religion.

But Mr. Obama’s plan pointedly departed from the Bush administration’s stance on one fundamental issue: whether religious organizations that get federal money for social services can take faith into account in their hiring. Mr. Bush has said yes. Mr. Obama said no.