Bodnarius family
The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed a legal challenge against Norway s child services agency for removing children from their Pentecostal parents.
Five children, including a 3-month-old baby, were taken from the Bodnarius family home in 2015 and placed in care.
The authorities claimed that parents, Ruth and Marius Bodnarius, had used corporal punishment (spanking) on their children, something that is illegal in Norway. It later emerged that authorities in the family s community had believed that the family s Christian beliefs could handicap the children s development.
Ruth, a pediatric nurse, admitted that they did occasionally spank the children for bad behavior.
A family’s four-year European legal challenge ends
17 December 2020
The Christian Legal Centre’s Roger Kiska comments on the latest judgment in the ECHR case of the Bodnariu family, who are challenging Norwegian child services for wrongly taking their children away.
According to Statistics Norway, 54, 592 children received care measures from child welfare services in Norway in 2019 alone. That represents nearly 3% of the children in Norway. Nearly 20% of those involved Norwegian-born children to immigrant parents. These statistics represent real families and real-life trauma for everyone involved.
In the fall of 2015, the five children of Ruth and Marius Bodnariu became part of these statistics when they were separated from their parents, their friends and school, and from each other into 3 different households, hours apart from each other. In fact, in many ways, the Bodnarius have become the very symbol of Norway’s staggering child welfare statistics.
Christian Concern
17 December 2020 Issued by: Christian Legal Centre
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) today dismissed a nearly four-year long challenge of Norway’s child services agency for having taken a Christian family’s five children, including a three-month old baby, into care without fully investigating their concerns about abuse in the family.
The Bodnariu family brought a case against the Norwegian government arguing that the basis of the removal of the children was related to the lead social care worker’s prejudices against the family’s Pentecostal faith and for failing to properly investigate the matter before taking steps to separate the family.
15 December 2020
God delights in justice. As part of our Let Justice Shine series, we’re telling the stories of several people we’ve supported through the Christian Legal Centre and cases we’ve taken on, seeking and pursuing Godly justice.
Reza grew up in Iran, in a Shia Muslim family. He attended a mosque, fasted, prayed and attended all the religious festivals. “That was the faith I grew up with,” he explains.
“Islam was part of me.” As he got older, he got into trouble. Eventually he fled Iran, fearing for his life.
He arrived in the UK in 2003, seeking asylum. But his application was refused and he ended up on the streets. He began shoplifting and became addicted to drugs. Living on the streets he met Leigh, who had also become drug-addicted and then homeless. They both made use of a church-run soup kitchen, and over time their relationship with church members grew.
12-10-2020
Preacher Mike Overd. (Screenshot credit: Christian Concern/YouTube)
Four Christian preachers in the United Kingdom, known as the Bristol Four, will challenge the Avon and Somerset Police Departments over their arrests following an incident caught on video in 2016.
Christian Concern reports Mike Overd, Don Karns, Mike Stockwell, and AJ Clarke are bringing their lawsuit against the police for assault, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, misfeasance in a Public Office, and infringement of their Human Rights, in particular articles 9, 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The case raises significant questions on the right to freedom of speech and the freedom of Christian preachers in the UK to exercise their religious beliefs and to have the right to freedom of assembly in public.