Medical Kidnapping Update in CA

CPS Destroying Rengo Family: Demands Erica Separate from her Husband to Get Children Back Posted on April 27, 2015 Written by healthimpactnews.com

Cleave, Erica, and their three chil­dren. CPS demanded that Erica sep­a­rate from Cleave against her will.

It has been more than three months since the dra­matic arrest and cap­ture of Erica May and Cleave Rengo’s 3 small chil­dren by CPS in Cal­i­for­nia, where Erica shouted to reporters: “Send a mes­sage to Amer­ica for me. Chil­dren don’t belong to the gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment belongs to the people.”

Erica and Cleave are from Wash­ing­ton State, and say they were on their way back to Wash­ing­ton to attend a required CPS meet­ing when Cal­i­for­nia law enforce­ment inter­vened and took away their chil­dren. (See: Rengo Fam­ily Chil­dren Taken Back into State Cus­tody in Wash­ing­ton, As Fam­ily Tries to Flee CPS.)

Erica Reaches Out to Media. After a period of media silence, Erica has reached out to sev­eral media out­lets, includ­ing Health Impact News, Epic Times with Robert Scott Bell, and The Cap­tain, a blog-talk radio show that is pop­u­lar with those fight­ing injus­tice in the CPS sys­tem. She says that the tyranny against her fam­ily is con­tin­u­ing, and she is expos­ing what she is call­ing “enslave­ment” by the sys­tem. The home­birthing, breast­feed­ing mother of three wants the world to know what has hap­pened to her fam­ily. She told Robert Scott Bell:

“I know that this has been affect­ing a lot of peo­ple over the nation. I don’t want to be silenced by what’s going on, because peo­ple need to know, and they need to know how to pre­vent sit­u­a­tions such as mine, so that the gov­ern­ment doesn’t have a chance to get involved and inter­vene in the way that they have in my home.”

The lat­est devel­op­ments are that Erica May and Cleave have sep­a­rated, and the chil­dren are allegedly being med­ically abused while in state fos­ter care. The babies have also been sep­a­rated from each other. Erica reports that she has learned that not even the twins are together in the same fos­ter home, a devel­op­ment that is dev­as­tat­ing to her.

See the orig­i­nal story on Med­ical Kid­nap here. Breastfed, Homebirthed Babies Taken Away From Parents For Not Using Hospital

Like the sep­a­ra­tion from their chil­dren, the couple’s sep­a­ra­tion is not by choice. CPS is “try­ing to make [Cleave] out to be a mon­ster, but he’s not,” Erica told Health Impact News. She reports that CPS has told her that she must leave him and get her own place, in order for them to con­sider giv­ing the babies back to her. She is also required to see a ther­a­pist, of the state’s choos­ing, and attend domes­tic violence/sexual assault classes. Erica reports that she is com­ply­ing with their demands. She feels that she has no choice, because noth­ing is more impor­tant to her as a mother than get­ting her babies back.

Erica has main­tained since her very first con­ver­sa­tion with us that Cleave is not abu­sive. She has explained that some around them have inter­preted their reli­gious view­point that the hus­band is the head of the wife as being evi­dence of abuse. Dur­ing their involve­ment with CPS, she says that lawyers and social work­ers alike have tried to pit hus­band against wife. She made it clear as she spoke with the Cap­tain on his blogtalk radio show that “we love each other.”

 “If a cou­ple can’t have a decent argu­ment from time to time with­out the police show­ing up and mak­ing a report and mak­ing that a foun­da­tion for tak­ing our chil­dren away, then where is our free­dom of speech?”

The cou­ple says that they took their vows before God, not before a judge or agent of the law, and they con­sider them­selves mar­ried. But because of the court’s involve­ment, this union is being torn apart. She feels that they are being manip­u­lated into com­pli­ance, with the con­se­quences of not sub­mit­ting being the loss of her chil­dren for­ever. “Maybe” she can get them back if she can jump through all the hoops. “I’m cer­tainly not hap­pier being sep­a­rated from him.”

Babies Have Numer­ous Med­ical Issues in State Care. The chil­dren are also not bet­ter off under state care, Erica asserts. One of the pri­mary com­plaints when the state stepped in was Levi’s eczema, which she was treat­ing, effec­tively, with holis­tic meth­ods such as cal­en­dula cream and coconut oil. She had just begun see­ing pos­i­tive results using Kan­gen water when the chil­dren were seized.

How­ever, since they have been out of her care, the chil­dren have been sick, includ­ing pneu­mo­nia, thrush, severe yeast infec­tions, ear infec­tions, and more. She says that each of them has been on antibi­otics and other med­ica­tions. Daniel has a very severe case of thrush, includ­ing vis­i­ble blis­ters in his mouth. He has been pre­scribed a non-organic Sim­i­lac for­mula that he does not appear to be adjust­ing to well.

This doesn’t sit well with his mother, who prefers all-natural and organic reme­dies and foods. This is not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing that she planned an unas­sisted home­birth and breast­fed all of the babies. Nat­ural is a way of life for her that is allegedly being stolen away from her children.

The chil­dren allegedly have dirt and chaf­ing in the folds of their necks; their nails are long and untrimmed; and Erica finds uncleaned poop remain­ing in the creases when she changes their dia­pers dur­ing vis­its. Levi has report­edly even had panic attacks. Erica May is very con­cerned about their health. She only gets to visit them about 6 hours a week total, when CPS doesn’t can­cel the vis­its for one rea­son or another. Cleave sees his chil­dren even less. His vis­its have been lim­ited to once a month.

Erica says that she misses singing to her babies, caress­ing them, and “meet­ing every lit­tle need they have.” She really wants all of this night­mare to come to an end. She and Cleave have not com­mit­ted any crime, nor have they ever abused or neglected their chil­dren, she asserts. They have no crim­i­nal charges against them.

One of the alle­ga­tions against them is that the babies were not gain­ing enough weight. In fact, once their case went to court, Erica says that the weight issue emerged as the pri­mary rea­son for the state of Wash­ing­ton seiz­ing the babies. Since they were taken, how­ever, Erica has learned that the growth charts that were used to con­demn them are charts that com­pare the twins’ weight to sin­gle­ton charts. This makes for an unfair, and inac­cu­rate, assessment.

They Never Should Have Let Them in the Door. Erica says that she wishes that she and Cleave had under­stood their Con­sti­tu­tional rights. She told Robert Scott Bell that they did not real­ize that they did not have to let the para­medics in when they came to the door, and that they did not have to let the social worker in with­out a warrant.

A neigh­bor had called the para­medics after what Erica describes as the per­fect, “glo­ri­ous,” and “empow­er­ing” unas­sisted home­birth of the twins. They were born healthy, with no com­pli­ca­tions, and started breast­feed­ing right away. A nosy neigh­bor allegedly took it upon her­self to call the para­medics, “just to make sure every­thing is ok.” It was, but Erica and Cleave were under no oblig­a­tion to let them in. They didn’t know that. One of the para­medics rec­om­mended that they go to the hos­pi­tal to get checked out. When they refused, stat­ing that they didn’t want to expose their new­borns to the germy envi­ron­ment of the hos­pi­tal, the para­medic allegedly told them that he was going to call CPS.

When the CPS social worker came, she did not have a war­rant. Erica reports that she did not real­ize that the 4th Amend­ment pro­tected her right to refuse her entry. Like many par­ents, she felt that she had noth­ing to hide, so she invited the worker into her home, treat­ing her with kind­ness and respect. That kind­ness was rec­i­p­ro­cated with the ulti­mate seizure of her 3 babies.

4th Amend­ment to the United States Con­sti­tu­tion – “The right of the peo­ple to be secure in their per­sons, houses, papers, and effects, against unrea­son­able searches and seizures, shall not be vio­lated, and no war­rants shall issue, but upon prob­a­ble cause, sup­ported by oath or affir­ma­tion, and par­tic­u­larly describ­ing the place to be searched, and the per­sons or things to be seized.”

Erica: This Is Not What Ances­tors Fought and Died for

Since that day, Erica’s world has been turned upside down and her fam­ily has been ripped apart. She has been dev­as­tated to learn that Amer­i­can cit­i­zens have more rights to pro­tect per­sonal prop­erty, like homes, cars, or elec­tron­ics, than we do our own chil­dren. She tear­fully asked the Captain,

“How are peo­ple still func­tion­ing? I look out­side my win­dow on a reg­u­lar basis, and I’m like, wow, the world’s still going on. My world doesn’t feel like it’s going on. My family’s torn apart, and my chil­dren are being sub­jected to med­ical abuse and prob­a­bly exper­i­men­tal drugs for all I know. This is NOT the coun­try that my ances­tors fought and died for. This is noth­ing other than men­tal and spir­i­tual and emo­tional enslavement.”

Related Posts

• Breast­fed, Home­birthed Babies Taken Away From Par­ents For Not Using Hospital
• WA par­ents get cus­tody of babies taken after unas­sisted births
  Filed Under: Family Autonomy, Police State, Property Rights
   
  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 it’s 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.
  Attor­ney to court: Charge par­ents or give babies back
  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.
  See Also: Why are Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als who Deliver Babies in Hos­pi­tals Choos­ing to have their Own Babies at Home?
  Related Posts

• Larimer County, Col­orado Agenda 21 Advo­cates “Steal” Protestor’s Child
• Another Med­ical Kid­nap­ping at Boston Children’s Hos­pi­tal: Baby Seized Over For­mula Disagreement
• CPS Destroy­ing Rengo Fam­ily: Demands Erica Sep­a­rate from her Hus­band to Get Chil­dren Back
• Arkansas Takes Away 7 Home­school Chil­dren because Father had Unap­proved Min­eral Supplement
• Chicago Lurie Children’s Hos­pi­tal Takes Baby Away From Fam­ily for Seek­ing a Sec­ond Opinion
  Filed Under: Agenda 21, Family Autonomy, Police State