Saturday, December 6, 2014

Family Abuse

Breastfed, Homebirthed Babies Taken Away From Parents for Not Using Hospital Posted on December 5, 2014 Written by http://medicalkidnap.com
FA Note: Agenda 21’s intends con­trol over all sec­tors of life includ­ing that of birth and child rearing.
The Rengo Fam­ily place­ment hear­ing was continued… again…to Fri­day morn­ing at 9 a.m
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jason Over­street, rep­re­sent­ing the 42nd dis­trict in Wash­ing­ton, and who has taken an inter­est in this case, just posted an update on his Face­book Page:
The polit­i­cal pres­sure being exerted by an out­raged pub­lic is very obvi­ously rever­ber­at­ing from the Governor’s office on down.
The state wrapped up within 20 min­utes, try­ing at the close of their argu­ment to intro­duce new exhibits show­ing med­ical prob­lems with one of the babies. The only prob­lem was that the diag­no­sis for pneu­mo­nia, ear infec­tions and reflux were well after the babies had been removed from their breast feed­ing mother.
The State fum­bled, with the defense object­ing to the hap­haz­ard man­ner in which the State intro­duced those doc­u­ments. The State, real­iz­ing its mis­take, with­drew one of the doc­u­ments and moved on.
At that point the defense team pro­ceeded to sys­tem­at­i­cally dis­as­sem­ble the State’s premise–the fam­ily argues; there are “men­tal health issues” in the home; and the par­ents weren’t ade­quately using the rash cream.
When the defense ques­tioned the CPS super­vi­sor as to whether or not the par­ents’ reli­gious beliefs were a con­sid­er­a­tion in this case, the State objected and the com­mis­sioner was very leery of the issue, demand­ing that the defense pro­ceed care­fully. I’ll leave you to think about that one.
The State is on thin ice and they know it. At one point dur­ing cross-examination, being point­edly ques­tioned by one of the defense attor­neys ask­ing incred­i­bly dam­ag­ing ques­tions to the State’s case, the court com­mis­sioner had to ask the CPS super­vi­sor on the stand to speak up because “your voice is fad­ing.” Mine would have been fad­ing too.
UPDATE 2 – 12/3/2014
Peter Wag­ner of KGMI News and Talk Radio in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton has also reported on the story, inter­view­ing the family’s attor­ney, Stephen Pid­geon.
UPDATE 1 – 12/3/2014 King 5 News has reported on the Rengo fam­ily case: Cou­ple fights for cus­tody of chil­dren after home birth
UPDATE 12/2/2014 – Hear­ing Extended to Wed. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jason Over­street, rep­re­sent­ing the 42nd dis­trict in Wash­ing­ton, and who has taken an inter­est in this case, just posted an update on his Face­book Page: The Rengo Fam­ily place­ment hear­ing was moved up this morn­ing to 10 a.m. from the sched­uled 4 p.m. hear­ing. I will with­hold com­ment on that move. Secu­rity was heavy. The court­room was packed.
The allot­ted time­frame was 1 hour with an expected deci­sion on place­ment either with the par­ents or a semi-permanent out of fam­ily place­ment. If your a poker player, this will be your “tell.”
The State Attor­ney General’s Office stood in place of the County legal team in the pros­e­cu­tion of this hear­ing. A rare move indeed. Attor­ney Gen­eral Fer­gu­son, the same AG who is per­se­cut­ing Chris­t­ian busi­ness own­ers for refus­ing to par­tic­i­pate in wed­dings that con­flict with their closely held reli­gious beliefs, sent his legal team to take over in an attempt to spare the State embarrassment.
The Attor­ney General’s Office took the entire hour, dis­cussing police reports where no arrests were made, save one, prior to the birth of the chil­dren. No men­tion of the babies’ health and wel­fare was even attempted by the State.
The court com­mis­sioner was frus­trated at the State’s extended attempt to muddy the water, even com­ment­ing on the rare nature of such extended tes­ti­mony on a case that should be cut and dried after a forcible tak­ing of chil­dren from their parents.
The hear­ing was extended to tomor­row at 2:30 on the 4th floor of the What­com County Cour­t­house, where he demanded that the State rap up and allow the family’s legal team to present it’s case.
Con­sti­tu­tional Attor­ney Steven Pid­geon peti­tioned the court for a writ of habeus cor­pus, ask­ing that the charges be laid or the chil­dren be released to the par­ents. The writ of habeus cor­pus, a fun­da­men­tal tool of lib­erty guar­an­teed by both our State and Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tions, was ignored by the court, the clerk stat­ing that they hadn’t even seen one in 20 years, with one judge refus­ing to even look at the writ.
There is much talk of “more to the story.” There cer­tainly is. There always is. If you are tempted to make that state­ment, ask your­self where your infor­ma­tion is com­ing from and what the valid­ity of that infor­ma­tion actu­ally is. This is not a com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion, it’s true. I shud­der the hor­ror of your fam­ily, or mine, under a micro­scope of the bureau­cracy that is CPS.
UPDATE 12/1/2014 Con­sti­tu­tional Attor­ney Stephen Pid­geon has agreed to rep­re­sent the Rengo Fam­ily in an attempt to reunite babies Levi, Morna, and Daniel with their par­ents. He will accom­pany the fam­ily to the hear­ing tomor­row, and the pub­lic and the media are encour­aged to show up at the:
What­com County Cour­t­house
311 Grand Avenue
Belling­ham Wash­ing­ton
Tues­day Decem­ber 2nd – @ 9:00 A.M.
More details to fol­low. A Face­book Page has also been setup for the family.
by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
All three of their babies have been taken away from them and placed in the care of strangers. Levi was 10 months old when his mother, local singer and song­writer Erica May Rengo, gave birth to his twin brother and sis­ter, at their home in Belling­ham, Washington.
“Our birth was glo­ri­ous,” she said, and the twins were report­edly healthy, full-term babies, who had no prob­lem quickly fig­ur­ing out how to breast­feed. The lit­tle fam­ily was over­joyed until CPS stepped in to “help.”
It is another med­ical kid­nap­ping accord­ing to the par­ents. The Ren­gos have cho­sen a whole­some, holis­tic lifestyle, based in their Chris­t­ian faith. But CPS has stepped in to over­ride the par­ents’ deci­sions. Now Erica and Cleave are liv­ing what they call a night­mare, sep­a­rated from their chil­dren for rea­sons that don’t make any sense at all to them.
Deci­sion to Home Birth - It was only nat­ural for Erica to choose nor­mal, family-centered birth. Erica her­self was born at home, and says that her mother was a home­birth edu­ca­tor and La Leche League leader (a world-wide sup­port and edu­ca­tion group for breast­feed­ing moth­ers). She and Cleave chose a birth-center birth with their first baby, but decided to birth at home the sec­ond time. She knew that her body was per­fectly designed to work for birth. She believed this was the direc­tion God was show­ing them for the birth. Erica was very care­ful dur­ing her preg­nancy to watch her diet and exer­cise, in prepa­ra­tion for the birth. She read, researched, and prepared.
She describes her home­birth as “exquis­ite” and “empow­er­ing.” Morna Kai Grace and Daniel Clemente were born into their par­ents’ lov­ing arms.
The birth was per­fect. There were no com­pli­ca­tions with the birth or after­wards. But Erica and her hus­band Cleave agreed to allow the local para­medics in when some­one called them, in an effort to appease con­cerned fam­ily mem­bers who were fear­ful of their deci­sion to birth at home. That is where their prob­lems began.
The Med­ical Sys­tem Gets Involved - Some­time after the babies arrived on Octo­ber 2, para­medics arrived to find the twins nurs­ing and every­body doing fine. The twins each weighed over 5 lbs, and the para­medics allegedly ver­i­fied that every­one appeared healthy. The para­medics allegedly rec­om­mended that they go to the hos­pi­tal for eval­u­a­tion, which is stan­dard pro­ce­dure for EMTs.
The Ren­gos say they declined, telling them they didn’t want to expose their new­borns to the dirty envi­ron­ment of the hos­pi­tal. They were plan­ning to fol­low rec­om­men­da­tions they had found, which stated that new­born twins should stay home for the first six weeks of life, to give their immune sys­tems the oppor­tu­nity to build up.
CPS Shows Up - The par­ents’ believe that because they chose not to go to the hos­pi­tal at that time, some­body called CPS. A cou­ple of social work­ers showed up the next day, and wanted to see all of the chil­dren. CPS told Erica that they were “here to help.” But Erica says that is not at all what happened.
When the social worker found some eczema on Levi’s skin Erica told her that she was treat­ing it with some herbal reme­dies, includ­ing com­frey and cal­en­dula, as well as apply­ing coconut oil and giv­ing pro­bi­otics. She was also doing an elim­i­na­tion diet to try to locate what could be caus­ing the skin con­di­tion. Even though it was in the heal­ing process, the social worker became crit­i­cal that Erica wasn’t treat­ing his eczema with steroids, a treat­ment option that Erica wanted to save as a last resort because of the side effects. The CPS agent would later tes­tify to the judge that Erica had neglected to treat him completely.
Even so, the eczema was the only thing wrong. Erica says, “right away they found out that the chil­dren were not in dan­ger.” The twins were com­pletely healthy; the house was clean; and there are no drugs or alco­hol involved.
The Ren­gos agreed to take the chil­dren to a pedi­a­tri­cian, who said the babies were doing fine.  The only con­cern was that the twins were slow to gain weight. At the time, Erica was try­ing to main­tain a sup­ply for three breast­feed­ing babies. She says she fol­lowed the pediatrician’s advice to sup­ple­ment with for­mula, and the babies promptly got back on track with weight gain.
This was allegedly ver­i­fied by a nurse sent out by CPS to check on them.
Erica May and Cleave are holis­tic in their approach to life and health, pre­fer­ring nat­ural alter­na­tives, like herbs and diet changes, to med­i­c­i­nal treat­ments. Those things appear to be options only if CPS is not involved.
CPS Takes Cus­tody of Children - On Novem­ber 6, CPS showed up at the front door while Erica was softly singing and play­ing her gui­tar to her rest­ing babies. When she checked the door, they told her that they were there to take her chil­dren, cit­ing neglect for not giv­ing Levi steroids for his eczema, and the home-birth with­out med­ical pre­na­tal care with the twins, as well as the alle­ga­tions of abuse, accu­sa­tions which Erica had already assured them were com­pletely unfounded. She also had pre­na­tal care, just not with a doctor.
With one baby on her back, the fright­ened mother fled out the back door with her chil­dren to a neighbor’s house, but police and CPS “hunted her down,” and took these breast­fed babies from their moth­ers’ arms. The twins were 5 weeks old.
Erica broke down into sobs as I spoke with her. “My chil­dren were safe and healthy with me.” Since they have been taken by CPS, Levi has report­edly had pneu­mo­nia, and has report­edly been diag­nosed with “behav­ioral prob­lems” because he screams and cries all the time.  He is scream­ing, Erica says, because he wants his mom and dad.
Why Are Chil­dren with No His­tory of Abuse Being Taken Away from Lov­ing Par­ents for Med­ical Reasons? Chil­dren who have allegedly not been abused in any way have been taken by CPS from lov­ing par­ents for rea­sons so flimsy that it has left the Ren­gos and their friends stunned. Sev­eral of their friends write that Erica is “a great mama.”
“This is not the right thing to do to moth­ers and chil­dren,” Erica empha­sizes. “If they thought we needed help, they should have brought help in, not taken the chil­dren out. They have suf­fered and I have suf­fered since our separation.”
Erica feels that she and her chil­dren are being abused by the sys­tem. When they sep­a­rate babies from their lov­ing moth­ers, she says “they are dehu­man­iz­ing peo­ple. The out­come of that is so much worse than any kind of dis­pute for med­ical reasons.”
Cleave and Erica were sup­posed to have their vis­i­ta­tion with their chil­dren on Mon­day, but there wasn’t a social worker avail­able to super­vise the visit. Levi’s first birth­day is on Black Fri­day. The day will be black for Erica and Cleave, but for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons than the hol­i­day retail­ers. They will miss their first child’s first birth­day because CPS won’t have any work­ers avail­able to super­vise a visit that day either.
The Stress­ful Sep­a­ra­tion of Infants from Parents - Erica is a bro­ken­hearted post­par­tum mother who wants noth­ing more than to be at home with all of her chil­dren by her side. Research shows that infants do not com­pre­hend sep­a­ra­tion from their mother; they feel aban­doned when they aren’t with her. Has it really come to the point where CPS can jus­tify the emo­tional trauma to the chil­dren sim­ply because par­ents don’t choose to fol­low every rec­om­men­da­tion of the med­ical associations?
In Pres­i­dent Obama’s immi­gra­tion speech last week, he asked, “Are we a nation that accepts the cru­elty of rip­ping chil­dren from their par­ents’ arms? Or are we a nation that val­ues fam­i­lies, and works to keep them together?”
Yet it is this very nation whose Child Pro­tec­tion Ser­vice agen­cies have ripped tiny babies from their par­ents’ arms sim­ply for the crime of dis­agree­ing with a med­ical deci­sion. If this could hap­pen to a fam­ily who has only sought the most nat­ural of care, then whose chil­dren are safe from CPS? Should this type of appar­ent med­ical tyranny be tolerated?
Erica May and Cleave Rengo face a court date on Decem­ber 2. They don’t know what they will face then. Sup­port­ers are hop­ing that their story will be shared far and wide, and their chil­dren can be returned home quickly.
The Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton is Jay Inslee. His office num­ber is 360–902-4111. You can email him from here.
The par­ents next court date is Decem­ber 2, 2014 at 4:00 p.m. at the What­com County Cour­t­house, 311 Grand Avenue, Belling­ham Washington.

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