Daniel and Bianca Samson pose for a photo with their two daughters. | ADF International
Advocates for a Romanian Christian couple whose daughters were removed by Swedish authorities on alleged “religious extremism” grounds have taken their custody fight to Washington, more than three years into the separation.
Supporters from the Romanian American community rallied Friday morning outside Sweden’s embassy in Washington to back Daniel and Bianca Samson. The Samsons have been separated from their girls, Sara and Tiana, since December 2022.
Advocates say the dispute traces back to a false abuse claim Sara, then 11, made after an argument about being denied makeup and a smartphone. She soon admitted it wasn’t true, but child welfare officials still removed both sisters from the household.
Prosecutors found no evidence of abuse. Authorities still refused to return the girls, pointing to the family’s habit of going to church three times a week and its media choices as proof of what they called religious extremism.
In court, the father testified that the parents were branded “religious extremists” to justify splitting up the family. He said lawyers cited household habits such as a ban on nail polish, the absence of a television and Bible story readings that officials called violent.
Romania’s government has backed the couple. Sen. Titus Corlatean and Chicago-based Pastor Cristian Ionescu traveled to Washington to join the protest, one of several held last week in cities including Brisbane, Stockholm, London and Copenhagen, according to Fox News.
Ionescu leads Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church and heads the Romanian Pentecostal Churches’ Union in the United States. He said he prays similar government overreach never happens in America. Having fled Romanian communism four decades ago, he said the growth of socialism in political races worries him.
Whenever socialist and communist figures gain ground, he claims, a totalitarian government follows. Romanian authorities under communism stopped short of seizing children, he said, but pushed beliefs at odds with Christian teaching and punished parents who resisted.
Romanian lawmakers acted in June, when the Senate passed a resolution, without dissent, urging Sweden to send the Samson girls home immediately. Corlatean, who sponsored the resolution, said Swedish officials dismissed the appeal, offering what he called a show of cooperation with no follow-through.
The two girls are Romanian citizens, Corlatean said, and he charged that Sweden had violated both its diplomatic ties with Romania and international law. Because the sisters aren’t Swedish nationals, he argued, Sweden is holding them against the wishes of the country whose citizenship they carry.
The father claims that each daughter has attempted suicide and the elder daughter has now been moved to an adult psychiatric ward.
Corlatean said the daughters constantly ask to rejoin their parents and return to Romania, and that welfare officials keep falsely claiming the girls don’t want to come back.
After the family went public, Swedish officials cut off all contact and signaled plans to rename the girls, Samson said. He believes the renaming is a step toward forced adoption.
The parents have lost over a dozen times in Sweden’s courts over the past three years, according to Samson. Their last attempt to regain custody failed in March when the European Court of Human Rights — the Strasbourg tribunal that hears complaints under the European Convention on Human Rights — ruled the case inadmissible.
Corlatean said he wants Washington to stand with the family and recalled a 2015 case involving the Bodnariu family, a Romanian Norwegian Christian family whose five children — including a breastfeeding infant — spent seven months in Norwegian foster care after the parents were accused of spanking them.
In that case, Corlatean said, members of Congress and the Senate, along with the State Department, sent letters and pressured Norway, and the intervention helped.