The Gorber Plea

September 6th, 2008

The Gorber Plea

More than one thousand people have signed, in support of the plea of the Gorber children. Six of the nine children were taken away from their parents in January this year and put into state custody by the German authorities, for strange reasons: 5 girls - Sarai (17), Prisca (15), Thea, (12), Esther (10), Rebecca (8), and a boy - David (3).

The Gorber Family lives in a remote village in Southern Germany. The parents are religious people and had practiced "Home Schooling" according to the Philadelphia Model for more than 10 years up to January 2008.

The ostensible trigger for the breakout of actions against the family was the illness of the mother during her last pregnancy. During the treatment of her illness the mother temporarily suffered from a type of delirium, which in turn had to be treated in a clinic earlier this year. In this situation the German authorities started investigating actions, and some people in the family's social circle and neighborhood started discriminating actions against the parents, spinning suspicious rumors, about the parents and their supposed attitudes, to the state authorities.

Some alleged the parents were crazy Christians, using force against their children to make them believe in the bible.
The mother, was reported as suffering from paranoia. One person also told the authorities that the father would be violent and may possibly, in the extreme case, commit suicide and murder the children.

The German authorities, without really questioning and carefully verifying such rumors, decided to take the children away from the family, in a surprise raid, on the children, and for the parents.

Nobody in the Gorber family knew of these plans. Neither the children nor the parents. The children pled to stay at home with their parents, but this was not met with agreement and did not happen.

Without explaining to the children the rationale for their actions, the authorities instead started to investigate the children's psyche, trying to ascertain whether they were adequately compliant with the requirements, conceived by the psychologists, of being able to function in a pluralistic society.

They looked at whether the children were adequately educated for normal life in Germany. However these standards are pretty questionable.

Their Christian values in particular, and belief in the bible became a big issue. It was decried that the children had adopted their Christian beliefs from their parents without criticism.

A formal psychiatric examination proved that there is no indication of any cognitive or mental disorders of the children. They are very well skilled and have excellent social capabilities.

In the meantime it also turned out that the authorities could not even identify one real factual reason to justify their seizure.

The children challenged all the allegations against their parents The told everybody that their father is a lovely father and never did them any harm. They have been requesting, since earlier this year, to go back to their family and they continue to request this. Only David, the 3 year old boy was allowed to return to his parents, early August, whilst his 5 sisters still suffer from the separation from their parents, and from the life in the children's home under state custody, which is really painful for them. They do not wish to live together with other children who suffered violence, sexual harassment and other troubles in their families.

"We are quite different and our family is quite different", the Gorber children stated.

"We are not in trouble at home. We like our home and our parents, and we really want to go back to them as quickly as possible.", they've stated again and again.

It, therefore, can be clearly concluded that in the case of the Gorber family, there are more ideological and very subjective reasons than anything else, which give rise to the German authorities being reluctant to hand the Gorber children back to their parents. What makes it additionally difficult is certainly the fact that it is delicate issue for the authorities to admit failures in their assessment of the situation.

All the Gorber children can not understand that the authorities carried out their actions. They feel this is an attack against them and their parents. The oldest daughter is claiming compensation for the loss of her family life and all the trouble she underwent in the public home. For this reason the children are relying and ask for the support of everyone, in order to be allowed home as soon as possible. It is the aim of the Gorber initiative to provide the children with as much assistance as possible, by people signing their plea and these signatures being submitted to the German authorities in order to bring an end to the sorry state of affairs.

At the end of September, a German court, will need to reach a conclusion, in the continued proceedings. The options are either to let the children return to their family or to further remand them in a state children's home, separated from their family.

Everybody signing the Gorber plea will be giving their personal support to the children's and their lawyer's request to be relieved from the painful separation from their family, in which their four siblings live: Miriam (20), Benjamin (18), David (3), and Anna (6 months).

Webform for the registration of the support of the Gorber plea -> Online registration

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