Any Germans present?
Can this be for real?
Who did he report it to…The tooth fuehrer?
That’s bloody ridiculous.
No no no…please God no…
Am I dreaming?
maybe she was swiss and he thought he might strike gold
Damn article didn’t mention what law she broke.
You’ve gotta be bleeping kidding me!
I too would love to know what law she broke. Any German here know?
I could see the dentist charging the mom anyway for the session despite not being able to get the work done, but WTF?
The dentist should’ve got the mom’s permission to gas her. Going to the dentist involves necessary medical procedures, and like other medical procedures there are ways of getting around anxiety and fear.
But I agree! Dayum…reporting her? Sheesh. That’s one pissed off dentist.
The thing is, the article is so short you just KNOW there has to be more to the story and it isn’t being told.
I suspect there was more going on here than we know from this source…
Go to Google news and search for Wernigerode. The Expatica article is most interesting.
This did not occur at a dentists office. This occured at school and the mother was not present at all.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A longer article I’ve read (it’s in Norwegian so there’s not much point in linking to it) says that part of the purpose of this dental visit was to collect statistics, and all children were required to participate to make sure the statistics were accurate. The girl went to a private dentist rather than use the school dentist, and when called in to the school dentist’s office refused to open her mouth. The parents were fined because the dental visit was considered part of the school requirements (because of the stastics part) and they did not ensure that their daughter fulfilled her requirements.
Still doesn’t make much sense to me (couldn’t the family just arrange for their private dentist to send the information to the school?), but it’s not as simple as fining a family for having a daughter who’s afraid of the dentist. More like a power-happy school dentist and principal, I’m thinking, but that’s getting out of GQ territory…
If I remember correctly my teeth were looked at once in primary school and once in the first few years in secondary school. Of course the dentist was not a school employee but made the rounds of the schools in the district/county (Kreis) on behalf of the Kreis public health office (Gesundheitsamt). We also had some basic health exams and a tuberculosis screening. I remember these occasions as enjoyable because of the mild excitement and because we skipped an hour’s having to sit still in class.
The main rationale of these exams was generally understood to be catching dental/health problems in children whose parents were clueless enough not to regularly take their children to regular pediatricians/dentists.
The dental examination was an examination, i.e. the dentist looked at your teeth and prodded possible holes; when he found something you didn’t get your teeth drilled but just a note for your parents. Of course an eight-year-old who had previously a less than enjoyable experience in a dentist’s chair might not fully appreciate this.
Why the fine? pour encourager les autres, evidently. That the court upheld the fine indicates to me that there is a legal basis, i.e. a schedule of fines in Saxony-Anhalt state law for not complying with mandated health exams.
BTW this seems to have made the international media (via that Reuters story) but not the national or even the regional media (I looked in a German press search engine and on the web site of the state capital’s main paper). The local paper appears only fortnightly and the court appears not to have a Web site.
That no names are given (usually an indicator of doubtful factuality in this kind of story) does not speak against the Reuters story, though, because it seems to be fully based on the court’s press release and German courts usually don’t publish full names in this kind of press release.
Another, more detailed version of the story - seems to be based on a news story on private TV. The “made headlines nationwide” claim is a bit of an overstatement, though - I would have noticed.
Also an article in a regional newspaper with some more information not contained in the English-language stories. The two persons on the photograph are the student in question and her mother
According to the latter article, between the school dental exam on 12 August and the fine being imposed on 29 November there were talks between the mother and the dentist and the principal with both sides being intransigent and tempers heating. The mother claimed in court that making her daughter open her mouth was a Vergewaltigung (literally, using violence on someone to force make him/her to do something, but in normal use the German name for the crime of rape). My speculation: if she used that unfortunate language beforehand the doctor/administrator concerned, being human, might well have been moved to throw the book at her, hard. That word would certainly have had that kind of viscereal effect on me if I had been in his/her place.
The article also quotes the judge on the rationale for such exams being mandatory: “For there is not only the ideal world of parents [who take care of theit children] but there also are those [parents] who do not take care of their children”.
What I make of this whole affair: Inept handling of a special case, followed by a breakdown of diplomacy and a verbal escalation, both sides feeling personally attacked. A good thing this has ended with a fine of 100 EUR plus about the same amount of court costs - people have murdered other people over this kind of tempest in a teapot (so called by the judge).
A legal nicety: according to this article the end result was not a judgement by the court but the parents (the plaintiffs) withdrawing their suit after the judge made it clear to them that he’d have to find against them otherwise.
And with that, the General Question is answered, yes?
ok by me manny. I promise I won’t pit ya.
