Veranstaltungen

September, 5th, 2008

The Gorber Plea

(MEDRUM) More than thousand people signed the support of the plea for the children of the Gorber family. Six children have been taken away from their parents by the German authorities and put under public custody for strange reasons:
Sarai (17), Prisca
(15), Thea (12), Esther (10), Rebecca (8), and the boy David (3).

Some People living in the surroundings of this family started a campaign against the parents early this year telling the public authorities rumors about the parents and their supposed attitudes. Some people alleged that the parents would be crazy Christians using force against their children to make them believe in the bible. The mother who suffered during her pregnancy at this time would suffer from paranoia they reported. They also told the authorities that the father would be even able to use brute force against himself and the children, possibly committing even suicide in the extreme case.

The German authorities, without really questioning and verifying such rumours carefully, decided to take the children away from the family in an attack of big surprise for the children, and their parents. Nobody in the Gorber family concurred with that action. Neither the children nor the parents. The plea of the children who wanted to stay with their parents at home was not accepted and had no success at all. Without explaining the children the rational for the actions the authorities rather started to investigate the children's mind and thinking trying to find out whether they are children complying with the requirement of the social life and the education in public schools as conceived by psychologists to be adequate for a pluralistic society.

They looked at the children whether they are adequately educated and trained for the standard life in Germany. However, the standards are pretty questionable. In particular, Christian values and the belief in the bible became a big issue. Thus, it was criticized that the children adopted the Christian belief from their parents without criticising the parents views. It, therefore, can be clearly concluded that in the case of the Gorber family there are more ideological, very subjective reasons than anything else which triggered the reluctance of the German authorities to hand the Gorber children back to their parents. A formal psychiatric examination proofed that there is no indication for any cognitive or mental distortions of the children. They have very good skills and excellent social capabilities. Besides the authorities assumed that the parents may have mental problems. But it turned out that nobody could even identify one real factual reason which may proof such an assumption and justify the decisions taken against the parents.

The children opposed to all rumours against their parents. They told everybody that their father is a lovely father and never did any harm to them. They have been claiming since early this year to get back to their family and continue to claiming that. Nevertheless and although there is not any substantiated damage, risk or indication that the parents
are not reliable people the authorities still insisted on the conduct of a
further psychiatric examination with the parents. Only David, the 3 year old guy was allowed to return to his parents early August whilst 5 sisters had to remain in the public home and still suffer from the separation from their parents because  the life in kthe public home taking care for children under public custody is really painful for them. They do not wish to live together with other children who suffered from violence, sexual harassment and other troubles in their families. "We are quite different and our familiy 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 get back to them as quickly as possible.", they stated again and again. All the Gorber children can not understand why the authorities undertook their actions. They feel this as an aggression against themselves and their parents. The oldest daughter even claimed compensation for the loss of her familiy life and all the troubles she had to undergo in the public home. For this reason the children rely and ask for support of everybody in order to get get back to their 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 the plea and submitting these signatures to the German authorities in order to terminate the sad action. At the end of September a German court has to come to conclusion on the further proceedings. The options are either to let the children return to their familiy or to further host them in a public home separated from the family.

Everybody signing the Gorber plea will provide his personal support for the children's request to be releaved from the painful separation from their family in which the four others sisters and brothers live: Miriam (20), Benjamin (18), David (3), and Anna (6 months).