Exile as parenting tool

I learned that a girl I have went to school with has died.

 

People die all the time. Normally it is a tragedy for the family involved. However the interesting thing about her death is not that she has died but how she died.

 

She was killed down in Syria. Years back when she was a teenager and one of my classmates her parents came to think that she had become too Danish. You know in Denmark it is legal to drink alcohol with the child-safe percentage below 16.5 when you are 16 years of age and of course she just did what every other student in her class did.

 

So she ended up in Syria. The social services removed her siblings to put the parents under pressure because in Denmark it is illegal to make use of exile as a parenting tool.

 

Unfortunately she did not come back and while the actions of the social services did save the lives of her siblings the war in Syria claimed her life - A life which in reality ended 7 years ago when she was exiled from the civilization.

 

May she rest in peace. I will not write her name due to her siblings. There is no need for them to be pushed into the media, if someone from the media reads this post.

 

It is illegal for parents to exile their children in Denmark. However it seems to be allowed in the United States. I saw this piece in Washington Post about Sofia Roberts from Fairfax, Virginia who was shipped to Siberia. Her life will be over sometime in March 2014 if she is not back in the United States again because then she will not be allowed to enter the United States due to some kind of VISA problem.

 

It is very cruel parenting we see there. How the social services in Fairfax, Virginia can allow her half-siblings to remain in custody of those two parents is hard for me to believe.

 
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