Seven
homeschooled children in an Arkansas family have been taken into custody by
deputies after authorities reported they found in their home a mineral
supplement that was not approved by the federal government.
According to Health
Impact News, the product, called
MMS, can be purchased online and used to purify water. The family said the
water was used on the garden.
The report said the product “has been used in
Africa by the Red Cross to treat malaria,” but its presence in the home of the
Christian family — the father is a pastor — was reported by an anonymous
caller. Deputies responded by asking the parents to step outside into the cold
winter air and answer questions. They were then served with a search warrant,
and the house was searched for five hours with the children inside.
Friends launched an
immediate social media campaign, including a Bringthestanleykidshome page on
Facebook and a GoFundMe page, to help Hal and Michelle Stanley organize a legal defense
and obtain the children’s release from state custody.
Health Impact News released a copy of an email
composed by Michelle Stanley after the raid.
“The DHS has come and stolen our kids from us
under the guise of ‘protecting our children,’” she wrote.
She said the dispute started a month earlier
when an anonymous caller complained about the family allowing the children to
be barefoot.
When an investigator arrived, “We showed her
some of the ’200 and something’ pair of shoes and told her (actually the kids
told her) how it was their preference to go barefoot and that it was like a
tradition to briefly run out in the snow barefoot and take a picture of the
footprints.”
Then weeks later, “several people showed up at
our door, all obviously here for the investigation and we welcomed them in.”
“However they desired us to step outside in
order to speak privately with Hal and I and not in front of the kids. I tried
to tell them it was much warmer inside and that it was nothing for the kids to
go to the back of the house for us to have privacy talking. They refused and
insisted on us stepping outside.”
She continued: “After stepping outside they
issued us a search warrant and said we could not enter our house or talk to our
kids until the search and the investigation was through. … They said the charge
was that we had a poisonous substance in our house and that the kids were being
exposed to it and it endangered their welfare.”
Regarding the supplement, she continued, “Never
has it been used in any way to ‘poison’ our kids or even expose them in such a
way as to endanger their lives.”
She said eventually “6 intimidating brute
looking males and 1 DHS female all lined up in our den to tell us they would be
taking our kids into their custody for 72 hours.”
That time period, however, has extended to more
than a week already, family supporters said. Their GoFundMe support team
reported the parents were allowed to see the children Saturday.
“This family is a Christian family, who
homeschools their children. They live a peaceful, [quiet] life and are
wonderful parents. I have know[n] them for over 20 years, my children have
grown up with theirs. Hal is my former pastor. If this can happen to this
family [it] can happen to mine, it can happen to yours,” wrote the page
organizer.
The county sheriff’s office declined to respond
to WND requests for comment, and messages left with the state police and state
health and human services department were not returned. One state
investigator’s answering machine on Monday said he was out of the office Oct.
13-17 and would return the following week.
Health
Impact reported the product is sodium
chlorite and is available on Amazon or eBay.
The report said studies have investigated its
possible beneficial effects in cases of Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and
Parkinson’s, but the government said it can be turned into a bleach that would
be poisonous if taken, the report said.
Local television station KARK reported the
family explained it used the substance for purifying water for their garden.
The “Miracle Mineral Solution” has been cited by
the FDA for being able to be turned into bleach.
Hal Stanley told the station, “If they had asked
me if I had MMS, I’d say yes and give it to them.”
The mother noted in her email the anonymity of the
complaint.
“We asked who made the charge and if anyone
could just make any accusation and they have to act on the call regardless of
its validity. They said it could be a hateful neighbor, a prank caller, someone
with malicious intent and they still would have to act on the call,” she wrote.
“The call was anonymous and therefore the caller was protected while all our
rights were taken away.”
At a website called Medical Kidnap, one reader,
Jacquie Trump, noted that government authorities, under the standard used
against the family, should lose their own children, because “there are
dangerous chemicals in their own homes.”
“Bleach,
draino, toilet bowl cleaner, tylenol, stain, varnish, glues and the list goes
on and on. It is criminal that this gestapo organization can break into your
home and terrorize anyone at anytime over anyone reporting anything.”
WND
long has reported on government disputes with homeschoolers. In December, a homeschooling mother in Virginia
filed a lawsuit against six social workers after they seized her two children
and placed them in foster care.
One of the social
workers claimed a diabetic 4-year-old’s blood glucose levels were too high. The
case was brought on behalf of Vanessa Wilson against workers from the Riverside
County Department of Social Services Child Protective Services by the Home School Legal Defense Association.
The claim explains officials “then deliberately kept the children
separated from their mother, in spite of clear evidence that the separation was
unnecessary – and concealed that evidence from Vanessa and the court.”
WND
has reported on other
cases in which authorities have taken children from their families, including
when authorities in Germany dispatched a SWAT team armed with a battering ram
to take custody of several homeschooled children.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/7-homeschool-kids-stolen-by-sheriffs-deputies/
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