By Harvey Jones<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sara and Tiana Samson have committed no crime, and neither have their parents. Swedish prosecutors said so themselves. Yet three and a half years after social workers pulled the two Romanian girls out of a classroom in H\u00e4ssleholm, the Swedish state still refuses to give them back, and the reason it has offered the world is that their family went to church too often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Friday, that scandal arrived on American soil. A crowd of Romanian-Americans gathered outside the Swedish Embassy in Washington to stand with Daniel and Bianca Samson, the Christian parents who have been separated from their daughters since December 2022. The rally was one of a coordinated series of demonstrations spanning Bucharest, Madrid, Rome, Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, and Brisbane, a global pressure campaign aimed at a government that has spent years pretending not to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The facts of the case are not seriously in dispute. Sara, then 11, told officials at her school that her parents had abused her. She was angry that they would not let her wear makeup or have a smartphone. Within days she admitted she had invented the story, and her younger sister Tiana confirmed it. Prosecutors investigated and found no evidence of abuse. In any sane system, that would have been the end of it, an unfortunate episode resolved by a child\u2019s confession and a clean police file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, Swedish social services kept the girls. Pressed to justify the separation, officials pointed to the family\u2019s habits. They attended church three times a week. The girls did not paint their nails. The home had no television. The parents read their daughters Bible stories, which Daniel Samson says authorities characterized as violent. Out of these ordinary marks of a devout Christian household, the Swedish state constructed a charge of \u201creligious extremism\u201d and used it to keep two little girls from their mother and father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever Swedish social workers believed they were protecting Sara and Tiana from, the protection has been catastrophic. Daniel Samson says both girls have attempted suicide repeatedly in state custody, six or seven times by his count, and that his eldest daughter has since been placed in an adult psychiatric facility. He reports that Sara began using drugs while in the state\u2019s care. The girls have been shuffled through foster placements and, according to the family, are now barred from seeing their parents at all after the Samsons took their story public. Daniel fears the government\u2019s stated intent to change the girls\u2019 names is the prelude to forced adoption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The children themselves have left no ambiguity about what they want. In a phone video reported by Christian media, Tiana pleaded, \u201cJust please take me home, I don\u2019t want to be here anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her father has drawn the obvious conclusion about what Swedish officialdom thinks of families like his. \u201cAs soon as you confess your belief, you have a target on your back,\u201d he warned, urging Christian families to leave the country altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What began as one family\u2019s nightmare has become a genuine diplomatic rupture. In June, the Romanian Senate unanimously adopted a declaration demanding that Sweden immediately repatriate the girls, who hold Romanian citizenship, not Swedish. The measure was championed by Sen. Titus Corl\u0103\u021bean, a former foreign minister who traveled to speak at the Washington rally, and it carried the backing of Romania\u2019s foreign ministry, justice ministry, child-protection authority, and presidency. This is no activist petition. It is the formal position of a NATO ally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sweden\u2019s answer, Corl\u0103\u021bean says, has been a bureaucratic shrug. He told Fox News Digital there was \u201cno reciprocity in this relationship, no positive answer,\u201d describing months of diplomatic engagement that produced nothing. Elsewhere he has been blunter, calling Sweden an \u201copen-air concentration camp\u201d for the Samson girls and vowing that Romanian communities worldwide will keep marching. \u201cWe are going to be in the streets,\u201d he promised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Samsons have exhausted the legal system that failed them. The family has lost 14 times in Swedish courts, and in March the European Court of Human Rights ruled their final appeal inadmissible. Europe\u2019s celebrated human-rights architecture examined a case in which the state severed a family over church attendance and could not find a question worth answering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pastor Cristian Ionescu of Chicago\u2019s Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church, who fled communist Romania four decades ago, came to the embassy rally with a message aimed as much at Americans as at Sweden. \u201cI see a surge of socialist and communist politicians,\u201d he told Fox News Digital, recalling that the regime he escaped persecuted parents who resisted the state\u2019s efforts to catechize their children in an ideology hostile to Christianity. Romania\u2019s communists never confiscated children outright. Sweden\u2019s social democrats have gone further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is precedent for American pressure working. When Norway seized the five children of the Bodnariu family in 2015 over allegations of spanking, members of Congress and the State Department leaned on Oslo, and the children came home within months. The Bodnarius stood in the Romanian Senate chamber when the Samson declaration passed, living proof that Western governments return stolen children when the cost of keeping them gets high enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Swedish Embassy, for its part, says it cannot comment on or intervene in individual cases, points to its constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, and assures the public that its social workers possess specialized knowledge about children\u2019s needs. The gap between that self-congratulation and two suicidal girls begging to go home is the whole story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Sweden has bet that the world will lose interest before it has to admit error. The crowds outside its embassies on three continents suggest the bet is going badly. A state confident in its righteousness does not need to hide two Romanian girls from their parents, their government, and the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sara and Tiana belong at home. Every day Sweden refuses to say so, it indicts itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is kind of crazy, but not surprised in Sweden. The Scandinavian countries are liberal nutjobs who hate religion and the Bible. In some you can be prosecuted for quoting Bible versus. And if the girls tried to commit suicide, one now institutionalized, what depravity is going on in Swedish foster care? Is keeping the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17982,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions\/17982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-17.png\")
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The Cost Has Been Paid by the Children<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Romania Has Had Enough<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Warning for America<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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