Christines' Story Not Your Ordinary Travesty
By Steve Trinward
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If this story sounds familiar, it should; similar things are happening to families all over this land … and all in the name of “the children”. If this story makes your flesh crawl and your stomach churn … Congratulations! You still have a heart and a mind capable of trolling through the major media and government lies to find a smidgen of the Truth!
The
Christine Family
Brian and Ruth Christine must wish they
had never decided to stop in
But back in 1998, they decided to change all of that. They bought a small bus, painted it (white and tan, with green mountains and trees), converted it for living quarters, and began a series of trips with their two young daughters. After a few trial runs, it was evident that this “life on the road” suited them all.
They spent the next two years traveling around the country, adding another daughter to the clan, meeting new friends and experiencing a variety of communities. Ruth was homeschooling the children from the outset, while also helping them to interact with the social life in whatever community they happened to be in at the time.
All was fine until they got to
At the time they were just passing
through, though they had been praying regularly, hoping to find a setting
suitable to settle down for a while and raise their growing family. (Ruth was
once again expecting at this point.) The pastoral community of
As Brian put it, in a wistful retrospective Guest Opinion in the local Daily Courier last November: “Our daughters could feed various animals and spend many happy hours playing outdoors…” The motorhome was parked on the edge of the farmer’s land, adjacent to the Josephine County Library.
The
First Attack on the Christines
On
The caller had known just how to get the police’s attention: by claiming possible “child abuse” because a child “appeared dehydrated.” (The fact is, one of the girls WAS a bit dehydrated, having just rebounded from an illness, during which she had refused to eat. She had resumed eating, and was recovering normally.)
The SCF workers claimed at the time of the taking that all three daughters were “undernourished and only days from certain death.” The three girls were admitted to the local hospital and held for four days. The SCF folks also noted a bandage on the forehead of one of the other daughters, covering a 3-inch cut that the parents said had occurred in a simple fall. That, in combination with the somewhat slender bodies of the children (the family were all vegetarians) was all they needed to declare “abuse,” and split the family. They also cited the Christines’ unorthodox lifestyle as evidence of “mistreatment” of the children.
(As Brian noted in his Guest Opinion. “The reason we live our lifestyle of travel is because we wanted to be together 100% of the time. We live according to our religious beliefs, including the way we school, spend our time, spend and make our money, eat, sleep, travel and take care of our health.” It would seem in retrospect that the Christines are being pilloried for simply choosing to live outside the lines of conventional sheepdom.)
The aftermath of this event got worse and worse. Alleging sexual abuse, despite no evidence or claims to sustain the charge, an SCF worker stripped the girls naked, and took photographs of their bodies, with genital close-ups. Attempts to introduce these into evidence at court hearings were met by Judge Allan Coon’s rejecting them and calling them “pornographic.”
Nevertheless, the SCF subjected each of the girls to painful and invasive sexual examinations.
Further violations of the family’s wishes included the administering of “live virus” vaccinations, the placing of Bethany Christine in a public primary school, where, as Brian notes, “prayer is not allowed and the mention of God is punishable. The list of violations,” he concluded, “of religious belief, personal security and basic human rights, is too long for this article. SCF has a mission to ‘Help bring families back together’. My question is, Why do they break them up in the first place?”
(Note: One observer of these proceedings has written a commentary in defense of the Christines: Roger Fredinburg, whose on-air radio interview with Ruth Christine last winter caused the Oregon State Police to question him about recent events. In that commentary he tells about his questioning, and of being shown ‘before and after” photos of the Christine children, allegedly showing the “abuse” of each at the hands of their parents.
Fredinburg notes that the detective who showed him the photos “… had no way of knowing that I worked in the manufacturing of film for 3M Company for nearly a decade and that my job for much of that time, as a Quality Control Inspector, was to test and manipulate photographs to determine the products’ range and viability for customer use.”
In Fredinburg’s words, “The before photo of the children taken by SCF immediately after their abduction by the state is a manipulated photo intended to show a less than favorable example of just how thin the kids were at the time. This photo has red eye varying grain patterns and fluctuating contrasts, a good indication it has been tampered with.
The
"after" photo
"The after photo shows happy little girls who are well fed and clean. One girl looks like she is obese now. … I might accuse the SCF of child abuse. You can’t put little kids on fattening diets after they have been vegetarians without greatly risking their health.” The rest of Fredinburg’s commentary is well worth the read, as a consideration of how much work there is to do in regaining this part of our freedoms.)
The upshot of it all was the legal aspect: both Brian and Ruth were charged with first-degree criminal mistreatment of the children. Brian was additionally charged with fourth-degree assault, for resisting the taking of his children.
(Ironically, or perhaps just
fortunately, another child has escaped the SCF machinery. At the time of the
taking, Ruth was pregnant with the Christines’ fourth child. When Olivia (now
11 months old) emerged from her mother, they were visiting Ruth’s own mother in
Over the next year, Ruth and Brian
Christine did everything they knew how to, attempting to get their children
back, while still obeying the law. They initiated community petitions, and
wrote letters to newspapers and legislators. They filed forms and affidavits,
charging repeated malfeasance and illegal actions on the part of the SCF and
other
The
Breaking Point
On
The minivan was discovered abandoned about a mile away. Police investigators found from witnesses that Brian and his daughters had been joined by a man and a woman, presumed to be Ruth, switched to an SUV, and driven away, leaving the minivan and a station wagon. They were also on the lookout for the family’s bus, which was also missing.
Over the next four days the Oregon
State Police had a bulletin out on the ‘fugitives,” who were “considered armed
and dangerous.” On Friday, August 3, Brian Christine was arrested in
neighboring Missoula, Montana, after being stopped for speeding, on Oregon
warrants for armed robbery (he “stole” his children), kidnapping (ditto!),
custodial interference (a procedural definition) and unauthorized use of a
motor vehicle (this charge is still not quite clear). He is still in
Yellowstone County Jail in
Two days later, on Sunday, August 5,
Montana police arrested Matt Gerawan, when he came home while his house was
being searched for the missing Christines, and charged him with aiding an
abduction. That evening, they found Ruth and her three daughters, in a house
just west of
Now Ruth, in her
Enter the Cavalry - Edgar J. Steele
The most recent twist in the
Christines’ case is the entry of Attorney Edgar J. Steele into the picture.
Steele made recent news waves by attempting to represent JoAnn McGuckin in her
efforts to save family, home and property from the machinations of a local
political clique in
Although he has yet to meet either of the parents face-to-face, he has spoken to them many times by phone.
His summary of the current situation:
"The state is now moving to terminate parental rights, with a "permanency hearing" (a sort of nominal required review of custody at regular intervals) set for September 20. I'll be there if at all possible, but the real action will be on the Termination petitions that were just served on them in jail, to allow the girls to be adopted by the foster parents with whom they have lived this past year. This is going to be near impossible to prevent, but we're going to try, nonetheless.
"I have yet to see or hear anything to indicate that the Christines are anything but doting parents,” he declares. “You have to ask yourself why Oregon is so intent upon destroying this family that it drove the parents to the desperate act of love that they employed in rescuing (I refuse to dignify the Oregon SCF Nazi position by using its term "kidnapped") their three beautiful little girls from the Oregon snatch-n-sell operation.”
“I haven't seen any of the paperwork in the files, but the only reference to a child's skull fracture that I have seen was in a pretty sloppy newspaper report. Past experience tells me that the one girl's scalp cut when initially seized (with a band-aid and gotten in a fall - kids do fall down now and again, of course) could easily have been sensationalized with the infamous media license.
With regard to Ruth’s pregnancy, Steele notes the irony of the situation:
“To allow abortion, the state mandates that
one does not exist until birth; therefore no custody can be ordered or applied
for until the baby is born.
"At birth,
Finally, on the criminal charges
themselves, Steele admits, “This is going to be tough to beat, with Brian's
list the most imposing. All charges relate to the original child
"abuse" allegations and the rescue mission that Brian allegedly
undertook.” He also notes that, “although
"You just gotta love how the legal system works, don't you?” he concludes.
“In the NFL they call it "piling on" and you get a personal foul. Of course, when it's the referees doing the piling on, they just call it more "anti-government" and lawless activity, and add it to the list of charges….”
Baby Seized by State Police from Mother’s Hospital Room