Our good friend Ruby Harrold-Claesson has been removed from Domenic Johansson’s Case in Sweden. Please read the two reports below. One from the HSLDA and the other from WND.
Ruby Harrold-Claesson
Judge banishes family’s custody lawyer
Chief of Nordic Committee for Human Rights told she’s off case
An internationally known human-rights lawyer who had agreed to work on the case of a Swedish family whose son was taken into custody by agents of the government social-services program for being homeschooled says she has been banished from the case.
Ruby Harrold-Claesson, the president of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights and a well-known advocate for families in disputes with social-services agencies over the custody of their children, had been working on the case of 9-year-old Dominic Johansson, who was taken in a state-sponsored abduction in mid-2009.
His parents, Christer and Annie, had been in a dispute with local government officials over their plans to homeschool him as the family prepared to move to India, Annie’s home country.
Police, with instructions from social services, on June 25, 2009, boarded a jet preparing to depart on an international flight to India to take Dominic into custody, where he’s been since.
An e-mail from Harrold-Claesson obtained today by WND confirmed she would appeal the determination, and Christer Johansson told WND, also by e-mail, a new lawyer had called him to introduce himself.
“So I said, ‘Hold on a little, where is my lawyer Ruby?’ He said she was removed from the case by the court [be]cause our son’s lawyer made a complaint against her.”
He said the court apparently removed Harrold-Claesson because the lawyer made an attempt to see the child in the school setting where social-services agents have put him.
“I will not accept any other lawyer than Ruby,” Johansson told WND. “I just can’t start over again.
“Funny thing, Ruby has been asking the social services for the case documents, investigations and all, but they refused to send it to her. This lawyer on the other hand got it all before I knew about him.
“I will refuse this lawyer and demand Ruby to be accepted!” Christer Johansson wrote…
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June 14, 2010
Sweden Denies Due Process to Family
In a stunning display of bureaucratic indifference and contempt of due process rights, a local Swedish court has removed a highly qualified attorney from the Johansson case…
Appointed only after much back-and-forth with the judicial system, attorney Ruby Harrold-Claesson has now been removed from the case after she attempted to visit Domenic’s school with his parents just a few weeks ago. Harrold-Claesson is president of the Nordic Human Rights Committee and a well-known human rights attorney in Sweden who specializes in working with families whose children have been taken away from them by the state. Following her attempt to visit Domenic, social workers immediately retaliated by cutting off all phone contact.
Unlike most Swedish lawyers who are, in all cases, both appointed and paid for by the courts, Harrold-Claesson aggressively and tenaciously fights an often uphill-battle against social services agencies, guardians ad litem and judges that just go along with the recommendations of social workers. She has taken a number of cases to the European Court of Human Rights.
HSLDA Staff Attorney and Director of International Affairs Mike Donnelly commented that this action goes against the basic notions of fairness.
“Ruby’s dismissal by the court is shocking in light of the most basic understanding of fairness and due process,” said Donnelly. “One of the principal requirements of due process is that a person be represented by counsel of their choosing, to a fair and impartial judiciary, with an opportunity for a full and fair hearing of all the disputed facts. By removing Harrold-Claesson, the court has dramatically interfered with Mr. Johansson’s right to counsel and called the fairness of the entire process into question.”
