Supremacist supports mom’s bid to get kids

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/06/2008 (5396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She’s described as a devoted mother who takes cookies and soft drinks to a neo-Nazi meeting defending hate speech.

She’s also a loving parent dedicated to getting her two children back after they were seized by Manitoba Child and Family Services, according to one of Canada’s most notorious white supremacists.

Paul Fromm, executive director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression  — and disgraced former teacher fired from an Ontario public school board in 1997 for links to neo-Nazi groups  — told the Free Press the children’s mother has been in ongoing written correspondence with his organization seeking help.

"They seem like well-adjusted, normal people," Fromm said. "I think if children are being sexually molested or starved (by their parents), that’s wrong and the state has a right to look at that. But because the parents have unusual or non-mainstream beliefs, shouldn’t put them at risk… you’re turning their world upside-down."

A girl and boy were seized by the provincial government agency this spring due to concerns their father ¬ — an alleged neo-Nazi — was filling their minds with hate and marking one child’s body with racist graffiti.

The Free Press is not publishing the names of the parents to protect the identity of the children.

Fromm, who identifies himself as an advocate for "white nationalists," said he met the parents in Winnipeg last December at a three-hour group meeting focusing on Fromm’s involvement in Canadian court cases defending hate speech against minority and religious groups.

A source told the Free Press that school officials contacted Winnipeg police in March after the girl showed up in the morning with disturbing scrawlings on her body, including a swastika and a series of numbers that reference Hitler and the white supremacy movement. A CFS application for guardianship recently submitted to the Court of Queen’s Bench also identifies concerns about drug and alcohol use in the home.

No one was home at the couple’s Winnipeg residence Tuesday afternoon.

Fromm said the children’s mother is "articulate," and he urged the couple to work with their lawyer in the court process.

A search warrant has been executed by police on the family’s home, where a computer and several items were seized. A police spokesman said the father of the children had recently been interviewed about "hate crimes involving children," but no criminal charges were laid and the file was turned over to CFS.

The mother of the children is named in the CFS application as unfit to parent, based on her relationship with her husband. He is the young boy’s father and girl’s stepfather.

"They don’t want to lose the children… in my view, the state should be held to the absolute strictest proof before they take the child from the parents," Fromm said.

Fromm said the parents should have freedom of speech about their opinions. "The parents have the right to have their beliefs and raise their children according to those beliefs."

The case was adjourned Monday to June 23, after the couple’s lawyer resigned.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca