Sara Samson, 12, is on her fifth suicide attempt in the care of Socialförvaltningen - Sweden's child protective services - after she and her sister we
Sara Samson, 12, is on her fifth suicide attempt in the care of Socialförvaltningen – Sweden’s child protective services – after she and her sister were abusively removed from their family in December 2022.
Living in Sweden for eight years, the Samson family is going through a hard-to-imagine tragedy with Sweden’s child protectice services – Socialförvaltningen Hässleholm.
Two of the family’s daughters, Sara and Tiana, have been taken into custody, separated and placed hundreds of miles away from each other and their parents.
The case story
Daniel Samson, 37, and Bianca Samson, 34, left Deva (Romania) and decided to settle in Sweden in 2016, he as a sales manager and she as a nurse.
On December 2, 2022, Barnskyddet stepped in and took in their two daughters, aged 10 and 11 at the time. The reason: alleged domestic violence and religious extremism.
Sara Samson
Tiana Samson
As Tribuna Românească has documented the abuses in the cases Bodnariu vs Barnevernet (Norway) and Furdui vs Jugendamt (Germany), the case of the Samson family seems to be an exact re-enactment of a Romanian family being abused by child protective services in the West, especially in the Nordic countries.
During a family talk, the eldest daughter, Sara, asked her parents to buy her make-up and a smartphone. Her parents replied:
“You’re too young, you’re still a child and you’re very beautiful, it’s not appropriate at this age to wear make-up. I got you a laptop with internet access, and at school and at home you have everything you need,” said Romanian Senator Titus Corlățean, who is involved in the case.
The parents knew that, as the girls had told them, the children at school were using their smartphones to access pornographic sites. The girl threatened the parents that if they did not give her what she wanted, she would tell the school that they were being abused at home – which she did.
The social services, Socialförvaltningen, intervened without any investigation – again similar to the case of Bodnariu and Furdui – and took the girls from the family. Tiana, the youngest girl, said from the start that the whole story was made up by her sister, that they were loved in the family and not abused.
Following procedure, the police launched an investigation and after about two months concluded that there had been no abuse and closed the case. This did not prompt Socialförvaltningen to return the girls to the family.
Tiana and Sara are currently placed in foster families, far away from each other and their parents, in psychologically and socially difficult living conditions. Because of the pressure they are under, forced to lie about being abused at home, Sara has resorted to various methods of suicide in a repeated cry for help.
Help me! I need help. Social services have ruined my life.
I just want to die. I want to go home. I hate social services. They have ruined my life – she wrote.
Two weeks ago, Sara’s fifth suicide attempt was recorded – so far she has used poison, pills, a noose and a piece of tin to slit her wrists, and last time a knife, only to be stopped in time by her foster family. After these desperate attempts to regain her freedom, the Swedish authorities subjected her to drug treatments that further damaged her health.
Parents are allowed to see their daughters for one hour every six weeks.
Bianca, the girls’ mother, has left Sweden with the family’s three other children. She is in Romania for their protection.
Case presented in the Romanian Senate
In a press conference held at the Romanian Senate on Monday 17 June, Senator Titus Corlățean and MP Ben Oni Ardelean accused the Swedish authorities of “illegally, abusively and against the will of the parents” of the two girls, Romanian citizens. The two dignitaries were actively involved in the cases of Bodnariu, Furdui, Rotundu and others.
Senator Titus Corlățean: “Both parents have an honourable profession, they are people with a good economic status, they provide everything their children need.
This separation of the girls has since accelerated, with parents expected to see the girls for no more than one hour a month, then one hour every six weeks. The girls are being separated in violation of international conventions – the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which makes it very clear that brothers and sisters must be kept together.
We have seen this kind of film in other situations and, based on the evidence we had at the time, we had to act. Because we are dealing with a system that lacks humanity, that separates children from their parents for no real reason – there are very clear prejudices that also touch on religious freedom and privacy – but rather reaches the political level. And unfortunately I have to say that we have seen a lack of sensitivity and a lack of response, a lack of respect for the Romanian state in relation to all the discreet diplomatic steps that we have been taking for a year and a half in relation to Sweden.
We are in a crisis situation where the girls’ lives are in danger and there is absolutely no reaction from the Swedish state,” said Senator Corlățean.
Ben Oni Ardelean MP: “There are indeed dramas that we have witnessed over the last ten years, the first famous case was the Bodnariu family, but as my colleague said, we have had many cases all over the world. They all have one thing in common, in one way or another, and that is children.
Another common factor is that the kind of child protective organisations, institutions that were set up long ago for real child protection, have become Gestapo.
I have often said that these institutions have become places, entities that persecute families, especially those with many children and especially those who want to raise their children in the tradition, in the Romanian Christian identity that they have.
As in Romania, the law [child protective law in Sweden] is absolutely similar, it’s just the good faith of the law enforcement that makes the difference.”
The two dignitaries publicly warned the Swedish authorities to put an end to these abuses. They called for the family to be reunited and for the two girls to be returned to Romania.
Socialförvaltningen abuses
- Violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child regarding the separation of children from their parents and from each other.
- Violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 2 – the Swedish state does not respect the religious and cultural identity of the Romanian family.
- Violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 6 – the Samson family did not receive the case file from the Swedish authorities in time to prepare their defence in court.
- According to Resolution 2232 adopted by the Council of Europe in 2018, entitled Finding a balance between the best interests of the child and the need to keep families together, on European practices in the process of removing children from their families, placing them in state care and reuniting them with their families, Socialförvaltningen staff were obliged to provide the family with the necessary advice and assistance at an early stage and in a positive way, to build a relationship of trust and cooperation with the parents in order to avoid major interventions – which they failed to do.
- The will of the two girls is ignored, the child protection service ignores their wish to go home
- On the contrary, the authorities are forcing them to lie.
- The parents asked for the girls to be counseled by a priest/pastor, but this was refused.
(to be continued)
Tribuna.US
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