Swedish couple enduring USA poverty to keep son
By John Brinkley
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This article was published in USA TODAY on November 5, 1983. |
Karl Lilja, his wife, Bozena, and their 2-year-old son, Alan, are holed up in New York City - refugees from the Swedish welfare state.
When welfare authorities in Stockholm ordered the Couple to surrender Alan to the state they fled the country. It was their only recourse after attempts to fight the order had been defeated and the Swedish Police were looking for me," said Lilja.
The Liljas abandoned their spacious apartment in the smart Stockholm Suburb of Bromma and arrived in New York in December. They now live in a vermin-infested room in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighbourhood.
An investigation ordered by social worker Anders Fall resulted in the ruling that would have made Alan a ward of the state. While the family was in Fall's office, Alan banged his head lightly on a desk. Because the child didn't cry, Lilja said. Fall wondered aloud if Alan might not have been better off in a mental hospital.
The investigation turned up a report from a day-care center that described Alan, then 11 months old, as "still a baby." He was "a quiet child" and was "not happy." His father, it said, was "a little strange."
Indeed, the report complained that it had been "impossible to get him to understand how we operate" and observed that Karl and Alan had "no eye contact." There were, however, no accusations of child abuse or negligence.
Lilja said Fall offered Bozena government funds to leave Karl and take Alan.
Swedish welfare authorities refuse to discuss the case, but Alan would have been among 24,000 children removed from their homes - and now ward of the state.
That statistic contrasts with 162 children under state care in Norway, 710 in Denmark and 552 Finland. In Great Britain, nearly seven times as Populous as Sweden, 15,000 children are in custody.
Complained Tuffa Birch-Iensen, leader of a group called Swedish Campaign for the Family: "The bureaucracy has gone mad. There is today an absolute industry in becoming foster parents. People earn a very good living at it"
Lilja, 42, a former social- worker, was training to be a Pentecostal Priest - before be fled Sweden. Until recently, the Liljas supported themselves by doing odd jobs, such as dish-washing - until a lawyer advised them that they were violating federal law prohibiting aliens from working without work permits.
Asked how he earned the money needed for survival, be replied, "That is a problem, yes,"
It is. The landlord Is threatening to evict the family for non-payment of rent; Consolidated Edison Co. is threatening to cut off their electricity; and they never were able to afford gas service. Their gas range collects dust while Bozena, 21, cooks their meals on a two-burner hot plate that Karl bought for $3.
And the Liljas can not think of returning to Sweden. Alan probably would be seized at the airport, said Birch-Iensen, "and they will in all likelihood never see him again."
The Liljas only hope is the verdict of the Swedish supreme court, now deciding on Alan's fate.
A Family's Flight From the Welfare State