by Leo Hohmann, Leo’s Newsletter:
This is a redline, high alert story that speaks to the broader issue of parental authority in a supposedly free society
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) is under fire for taking custody of five children after a pediatrician reported their parents for allegedly refusing to vaccinate their nine-month-old baby due to their religious beliefs.
LifeSite News reports that the homeschooling parents, Isael Rivera and Ruth Encarnacion, were later arrested for “familial kidnapping” last month when they fled to Texas to escape the DCF.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The department launched an investigation into the family in February, after their pediatrician filed a 51A child “neglect” report when the parents declined vaccination for their baby boy on religious grounds. Massachusetts allows religious exemptions for child vaccination.
“The doctor said if we didn’t vaccinate, he’d have to report us,” Rivera said, according to Boston Broadside.
Encarnacion’s attorney, Kevin Larson, said that there wasn’t “any basis” for the neglect report. “I don’t think a 51A should have been filed in the first place,” he told COMFLM reporter Janet Aldrich, who noted that “the doctor’s appointment said the child was completely healthy” and the baby “just needed the shots.”
The DCF left a notice on the family’s door demanding a home visit, which the parents refused, Boston Broadside reported.
What followed was a dramatic escalation, according to the newspaper. Fitchburg police, at the direction of Leominster DCF allegedly surrounded their apartment, banging on doors and circling the property for up to 30 minutes, leading Encarnacion to hide in the closet with the five children.
The police and DCF came back “in greater numbers the next day,” and the family decided to flee Massachusetts for Texas.
That triggered a nationwide manhunt by local, state and federal law enforcement authorities.
Before the family was reported missing, the DCF filed a “care and protection” petition with the Fitchburg District Court for an emergency order to take custody of the children, which the judge granted. Neither Rivera, Encarnacion, nor Larson have seen that order, Aldrich said.
Larson accused the DCF of having “overstepped their bounds” with the “very drastic steps” the agency took to get the children.
Hopefully this plays out in the courts on favorable terms for this family. What they have experienced to date is way outside the bounds of what anyone in a so-called free country should ever have to endure.
Is this the “democracy” that neocons and neolibs are talking about when they say they are “defending our democracy?”
If so, I shudder to think what they would define as totalitarian.
Parental authority is shaping up as the defining issue in 2025. If they can undermine parents ability to educate and care for their own children, what can’t they do in the name of peace and safety?
Another lesson to be learned from this disturbing story is that parents cannot trust just any doctor to have their interests at heart. The pediatrician in this case was the one who triggered the entire chain of events that turned law-abiding and loving parents into being treated like dangerous criminals. He is the one who reported them as guilty of “neglect,” when in fact the only thing they “neglected” to do was get their kids vaccinated and they had every legal right to do that under the state’s religious exemption.
California made it so their radical liberal public school teachers CAN NOT BE REMOVED