Fearing that their son danced in a gang and failed to change his behavior, two London parents cheated on him in a trip to Gan, where they enrolled him in a strict internet school and left him.
On Thursday, the judge ruled that they were acting in his best interest.
The boy, who is now 14, took his case to the London Senior Court after his parents took him to travel in March last year in the West African nation, their home country. The boy, however, was born in Britain and in court claimed that he was worse, educational and social in Gani.
“The decision belongs to what I consider to be a generous ambition of parental decision in which the state has no dominance,” justice Anthony Hayden said in its judgment.
Although every teenager challenged his parents, and may have even dreamed of withdrawing them to court, the case in the London court can reveal less about family tensions than concerning concerns that some parents immigrants have for their children in the midst of growing fear of a knife in Britain.
The boy’s father told the court that he did not want his son to be “another black teenager stabbed to death on the streets of London.” (According to the British Law, the boy and his family may not be named.)
The judge, criticizing his parents for using tactics, agreed that he was exposed to a higher risk in Britain than in Gani.
“I recognize that it is, in many ways, sobering and a rather depressed conclusion,” Judge Hayden said.
Although the crime rates of the knife in England and Wales are lower than their recent climax in 2019, According to the latest government dataincreased 4 percent in 12 months before March 2024. And several high cases of fatal stings have made fear.
Black children make up the disproportionate proportion of a knife offender, the data show. But there is a misconception that black children, especially boys, are more sensitive to gang violence, said Bruce Houlder, founder of Fighting Knife Crime London, non -profit organizations. London demographics, with a higher black and immigrant population than the rest of Britain, also contributed to this perception, he said, but the data indicates that poverty is a greater indicator of violence than race.
“Communities of immigrants are very often examples of good parenting,” Mr. Houlder said.
The verdict may also appoint a precedent for other parents who want to send their children back to their home countries, although the court is likely to consider the stability and education system of each host country, said Amean Elgadhy, a lawyer specializing in family law at a family representing family.
Two years before the family decided to send him to the capital of ACCRA, Ghan, a boy, then 12, he crossed from a conscientious and diligent student to the adolescent who began to cut school and go into fights, according to his parents’ account in court records. The school also suspended him for two days.
His parents worried that his rebellion signaled a more dangerous turnaround: that he was a vacuum in the gang orbit. He befriended the older boys and dealt with an expensive mobile phone and jacket that his parents did not buy, according to court documents. In one incident, his parents found a knife that was hiding in the garden, the documents said.
The boy’s school in London and a police officer recorded the concern that the gang could nurture him, especially after the incident when his phone was hacked and the other student posted his messages online, he would seem to cause a rival group. Terrified, the boy refused to go to school, his father testified.
“No, Dad, you don’t understand, these guys come with knives and rifles after school to attack to be dead,” the father of his son recalled.
The boy denied she was in a gang. “He feels that his parents portrayed him as a criminal in Gangland, whom he complains hard,” said the boy’s lawyer James Netto.
In Gani, the boy was harassed, he told the court, claiming that the security guard had managed him at the boarding school. (The school rejected the claim.)
After the family agreed to bring him out of school, the boy went to live with his relatives and enrolled in internet teaching. He cares, he told the court that he was lagging behind his British school colleagues. The move to Gan also broke off his relationship with his two older sisters, his lawyer said, and left him isolated in a country he does not see as his own.
Deeply dissatisfied in Gani, the boy tried to intervene a British high commission at ACCRA and Child Services in London. In the end, the British non -profit organization for vulnerable children, children and families across the borders connected him to Mr. Netta’s office, the lawyer said.
In an interview, Mr. Netto said that the conclusion of the judge that the boy was safer in Gani, threw a broad and unjust light as “a rather damn indictment of young blacks in London.”
