(Sorry, video is in German only)
These parents, Camelia and Petru Furdui from Romania, who now live in Walsrode in northern Germany, must feel themselves transported to their homeland during the time of Communism which they probably only know from their own parents’ stories –but they are living in that model member state of the European Union, Germany!
On April 26, 2021 local Child Protective Services removed their seven children, David, Naomi, Estera, Natalia, Ruben, Albert, and Lea from their care without advance warning and placed them with foster families and in children’s homes. At that point Lea was just over a year old; she recently celebrated her second birthday without her parents and siblings.
After the initial reason given for this drastic measure, an accusation of child abuse, proved to be without basis in fact, the new charge now is that the children’s religious upbringing (the parents are members of a Pentecostal church) is “out of step with the values of the majority society.” A charge like that is clearly a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion and of the right to bring up one’s children. The “Basic Law”, the German constitution, says in Article 6,
(2) The care and upbringing of children is the natural right of parents and a duty primarily incumbent upon them. The state shall watch over them in the performance of this duty.
(3) Children may be separated from their families against the will of their parents or guardians only pursuant to a law and only if the parents or guardians fail in their duties or the children are otherwise in danger of serious neglect.
An upbringing that is “out of step with the values of the majority society” is conspicuously absent as a legitimate reason for separating children from their parents.
Of course one may wonder whether this description of events by the parents Furdui corresponds to the facts, or whether there’s not more to the story — after all, CPS are usually very circumspect when it comes to the removal of children. In this context I note with interest that when one googles “Furdui Walsrode” there are dozens of media reports, mostly from secular media in fact, which bascically tell the same story as the Furduis. I find it hard to believe that no secular journalist could find a legitimate reason for removing those children — if such a legitimate reason were to in fact exist.
Based on other reports about the treatment of Christian parents by German authorities and about the causes of conflicts between Christian immigrants to Germany and the German school system and CPS a very likely scenario would involve one or more of the Furdui school children speaking up in school against some of those values of the majority society which in German schools are increasingly being communicated across the curriculum, such as the full equivalence and legitimacy of all sexual inclinations and expressions. Combined with the immigrant status of the Furdui family I can see CPS taking such action, for examle after a complaint by the school about those maladjusted immigrant children.
And after all, this buzz phrase about being out of step with the values of the majority society fits in very well with this scenario, coming as it does about from a segment of academia which equates conservative Christianity with fundamentalist Islam and paints the horror scenario of parallel societies which the state has to combat.
Mind you, I am not even imputing malicious intent to the CPS officials. In the modern, “progressive” view religion is not just unnecessary, but many aspects of a traditional Christian view of mankind and the world are considered wrongheaded and even immoral (such as the insistance of lifelong marriage between one man and one woman, the disapproval of sex before or outside of such marriage, the condemnation of abortion, the insistance that men and women cannot be arbitrarily exchanged and that a person cannot change his or her sex (or “gender”) at will, etc.). And children have to be protected from wrongheaded and immoral opinions. However, Germany claims to be a country governed by democratically defined laws, and in such a country the standard for measuring the legitimacy of any government action has to be the law, not officials’ individual sense of morality.
If you want to contribute to the family’s legal costs, please use this GoFundMe link.