Monday, October 29, 2012
Aaron's Law in statute: ORS 30.868
Are your children and grandchildren protected from parental, family, church-sponsored or other non-stranger abductions? Only if the child(ren) is(are) abducted from Oregon.
Talk to your legislators and Congressional delegation. Here is the model legislation:
30.868 Civil damages for custodial interference; attorney fees. (1) Any of the following persons may bring a civil action to secure damages against any and all persons whose actions are unlawful under ORS 163.257 (1)(a):
http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/030.html
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Aaron's Law at work: Taking the 5th 142 times
By Sean Aaron Cruz
The disappearance of 8-year
old Kyron Horman more than two years ago triggered the largest search effort in
Oregon
Last seen in the company of
his step mom, Terri Horman, the multiple searches turned up no trace of the
child. Law enforcement has named no suspects or persons of interest, officially, although those terms most certainly
describe Kyron’s step mom and her close friend DeDe Spicher, unofficially.
Both women have stubbornly
refused to account for their whereabouts during the crucial two hours on the
morning of June 4, 2010 , when Kyron vanished from the face of the earth, as
did these two women, albeit temporarily in their cases.
Earlier this year, with both
the criminal and family law courts at a stand still, unable to move forward,
Kyron’s mother Desiree Young filed a civil suit against Terri Horman, alleging
that the step mom knows where Kyron is and whether he is dead or alive.
As reported in The Oregonian
yesterday, DeDe Spicher invoked the 5th Amendment 142 times during a
recent deposition.
Spicher declined to answer any questions posed
by Young's lawyers on Oct. 5 that involved Terri Horman, Kyron's stepmom, or
Kyron -- each time asserting her Fifth Amendment constitutional right not to
incriminate herself.
Spicher also declined to answer questions about
where she was on June 4, 2010 .
"Are you aware that Kyron Horman has disappeared?" asked Young's lawyer, Elden Rosenthal.
"Are you aware that Kyron Horman has disappeared?" asked Young's lawyer, Elden Rosenthal.
"I'm asserting my Fifth Amendment right," Spicher replied, according to a transcript filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Spicher even declined to identify a photo of Terri Horman, or whether she knew Terri Horman's husband, Kaine Horman, Young, or had ever met Kyron.
This civil suit is
authorized by Senate Bill 1041 (2005), known as “Aaron’s Law” for my late son
Aaron Cruz, who died earlier that year as a consequence of his abduction from Oregon
With the passage of Aaron’s
Law, Oregon became the first state in the nation where child abduction creates
a civil cause of action, providing family members with new tools when law
enforcement and the courts fail to act, and yet there is a child missing.
The civil suit filed by
Kyron’s family is the first under Aaron’s Law, and thus first in the nation.
“There is no other case like this,” the judge hearing the suit said, and as
this process moves forward, there will be many places where precedent will be
established and challenged.
Already there is the
question of whether a person (Spicher) can take the 5th in civil court to shield another person
(Terri Horman) when neither has been charged with a crime or has been named by
law enforcement as a suspect or person of interest.
Aaron’s Law is triggered
when a person violates Oregon
A violation of Custodial
Interference I is a Class B felony, good for up to five years in prison, but
the statute is rarely enforced.
Historically, there is a
high degree of certitude that a parent or family member who abducts their own
child will suffer few consequences, and those only after court processes that
stretch out for years and drain every economic resource and emotional reservoir
available to the family.
Aaron’s Law is designed to
change these circumstances.
My own four children
disappeared into Utah
Aaron’s Law is designed to reach anyone,
any person or organization, who provides logistical, planning, financial or any
other support to the abduction of an Oregon
The civil suit empowers Kyron’s mother
to depose witnesses, and DeDe Spicher, who is not a family member, unrelated to
Kyron Horman in any way, connected only through Terri Horman, is about to
become a very public example of the power of Aaron’s Law.
This is how Aaron’s Law will eventually
have a deterrent effect.
I hope that the principles of Aaron’s
Law will be enacted in every state, protecting every child in the nation.
Abducted children are very nearly always taken out of their home state, and
international abductions have been trending upwards for years.
If you participate in the abduction of
an Oregon
Aaron's
Law is waiting for you now.
~~~~~
Sean Aaron Cruz, serving as
Oregon State Senator Avel Louise Gordly’s chief of staff, led her 2005
workgroup on parental and family abductions, which culminated in the passage of
Senate Bill 1041 on a dramatic unanimous vote in the Oregon House of
Representatives.
Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signs SB 1041 “Aaron’s
Law”
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Mother of missing child Kyron Horman claims Constitutional rights
Desiree Young, whose 7 year-old-son Kyron Horman was kidnapped more than two years ago, filed motions in Multnomah County Circuit Court today, arguing that the civil case should be heard, and that further delay would violate her constitutional rights.
Terri Horman, stepmother of Kyron Horman and the defendant in the civil case, has filed a motion to abate the civil proceedings for at least two years, asserting that her constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment are threatened.
And thus, the opening salvos in the Kyron Horman civil suit will address issues of rights guaranteed by the US and Oregon constitutions.
This civil suit is the first filed under Oregon’s landmark 2005 child abduction statute, Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law”, which provides child abduction victims with new tools when the criminal and family law systems are unable to move forward, and yet there is a missing child.
Under Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first and (so far) only state in the nation where abducting a child (violating Oregon’s Custodial Interference in the First Degree statue) creates a civil cause of action.
Thus, everything that happens going forward in the Kyron Horman case will be first in the nation.
Local Portland news channels are beginning to devote more resources to understanding the issues that will be at trial, and there will be many.
KGW-8, for example, consulted with Tung Yin, a legal scholar at Lewis and Clark Law School in this story filed by Nigel Duara of the Associated Press:
http://www.kgw.com/news/Kyron-Hormans-mother-fights-lawsuit-delay-164788256.html
The story includes a link to the legal arguments filed today.
Aaron’s Law was written with Constitutional rights in mind, including the right to parent your child without criminal interference from third parties, and the child’s right NOT to be abducted by ANYONE, including family, friends, neighbors, hangers-on, mopey in-laws, ex-family, church groups, and other criminal associates.
The nation’s criminal and family law systems treat the issue of time, the value of time in a child’s life and in the child’s relationships to parents and family, as if time has no importance.
Both systems also provide few tools or options for victims, who are usually put in the position of helpless spectators to processes that are failing to produce a missing child.
Aaron’s Law provides new tools to resolve and deter child abduction cases.
Aaron Cruz died in Payson, Utah from long term medical neglect, abandonment and heartbreak in the course of his Mormon abduction and the shunning imposed on his father by officials in the Mormon Church.
Aaron’s Law also recognizes that many child abductions involve multiple perpetrators, and is triggered by the Oregon Custodial Interference I statute that reaches to any person who takes, entices or keeps a child wrongfully, who provides planning, logistical or financial support to the abduction.
Aaron’s Law followed on the work of the Senate President's 2004 Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions, and was informed by Sean Aaron Cruz’s personal experiences as the father of four children who disappeared from Oregon in a Mormon abduction that began in 1996.
 |
| Governor Ted Kulongoski signed Aaron's Law in 2005 |
Terri Horman, stepmother of Kyron Horman and the defendant in the civil case, has filed a motion to abate the civil proceedings for at least two years, asserting that her constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment are threatened.
And thus, the opening salvos in the Kyron Horman civil suit will address issues of rights guaranteed by the US and Oregon constitutions.
This civil suit is the first filed under Oregon’s landmark 2005 child abduction statute, Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law”, which provides child abduction victims with new tools when the criminal and family law systems are unable to move forward, and yet there is a missing child.
Under Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first and (so far) only state in the nation where abducting a child (violating Oregon’s Custodial Interference in the First Degree statue) creates a civil cause of action.
Thus, everything that happens going forward in the Kyron Horman case will be first in the nation.
Local Portland news channels are beginning to devote more resources to understanding the issues that will be at trial, and there will be many.
KGW-8, for example, consulted with Tung Yin, a legal scholar at Lewis and Clark Law School in this story filed by Nigel Duara of the Associated Press:
http://www.kgw.com/news/Kyron-Hormans-mother-fights-lawsuit-delay-164788256.html
The story includes a link to the legal arguments filed today.
Aaron’s Law was written with Constitutional rights in mind, including the right to parent your child without criminal interference from third parties, and the child’s right NOT to be abducted by ANYONE, including family, friends, neighbors, hangers-on, mopey in-laws, ex-family, church groups, and other criminal associates.
The nation’s criminal and family law systems treat the issue of time, the value of time in a child’s life and in the child’s relationships to parents and family, as if time has no importance.
Both systems also provide few tools or options for victims, who are usually put in the position of helpless spectators to processes that are failing to produce a missing child.
Aaron’s Law provides new tools to resolve and deter child abduction cases.
Aaron Cruz died in Payson, Utah from long term medical neglect, abandonment and heartbreak in the course of his Mormon abduction and the shunning imposed on his father by officials in the Mormon Church.
Aaron’s Law also recognizes that many child abductions involve multiple perpetrators, and is triggered by the Oregon Custodial Interference I statute that reaches to any person who takes, entices or keeps a child wrongfully, who provides planning, logistical or financial support to the abduction.
Aaron’s Law followed on the work of the Senate President's 2004 Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions, and was informed by Sean Aaron Cruz’s personal experiences as the father of four children who disappeared from Oregon in a Mormon abduction that began in 1996.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Understanding Aaron's Law, pt 1: The Trigger
by Sean Aaron Cruz
July 29, 2012
Portland, Oregon--
The recent civil court motions in Multnomah
County in the Kyron Horman
kidnapping case are the first filings under Aaron’s Law since the statute was
enacted in 2005, when Oregon
became the first and only state in the nation to create a civil cause of action
for the crime of Custodial Interference in the First Degree.
The number one reason that it has taken so long for a case
to be brought forward under Aaron’s Law is because so few people know it
exists. That is about to change, is
already changing now.
There are a lot of people close to the Kyron Horman case
looking at a completely new application of law right now, intruding at a time
when both the criminal and family law systems are failing and time is marching
on, and yet a child is still missing, and note the use of the word “intruding.”
Fewer still understand how Aaron’s Law works. The Kyron
Horman case is the first of its kind in the nation, and there will be a great
many legal precedents set here as the process outlined under Aaron's Law unfolds.
Attention is about to go nationwide. Believe it!
There is a presidential election at stake, with a Mormon candidate. This
is gonna be good! God does move in mysterious ways, and in this presidential election, He is gonna punish the wicked!
You bet Aaron’s Law is an intrusion!
Aaron’s Law was written for times like these!
Aaron’s Law gives a parent the power to intrude, the power
to assert some control into a system that is failing to produce a missing child
and that forces a parent to sit on the sidelines and wait, to wait perhaps forever.
Nothing works in a kidnapper’s favor more than delaying
proceedings, two years so far in the Kyron Horman case.
This is a good time to explain the law:
Oregon’s
landmark anti-kidnapping statute, Senate Bill 1041 “Aaron’s Law”, is triggered when “a person” commits the crime of Custodial
Interference in the First Degree.
1. Who: Note that the statute applies to “a person,” making
no exceptions.
“A person”…”any person”…”each person”…”every person”…all the
same. This reaches to all of those religious zealots and hypocrites out there...a church shunning can very well be a kidnapping.
2. What: DO NOT take, entice, keep (or conceal) a child in
violation of these criminal statutes.
“A person commits the crime of custodial interference…if,
knowing or having reason to know that the person has no legal right to do so,
the person takes, entices or keeps another person from the other person’s
lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order with intent to
hold the other person permanently or for a protracted period.”
3. Where: DO NOT remove the child(ren) from the state of Oregon.
4. Why not: DO NOT expose the child(ren) “to a substantial risk
of illness or physical injury.”
Abduction by any person—including a parent—is known to be as
abusive to the child as any other form of abuse, and is often the gateway to
other forms of child abuse.
If Aaron’s Law had been on the books in 1995, then my son
would still be alive today, and my family unbroken.
Here are the key elements of Oregon’s
Custodial Interference laws:
ORS 163.257 Custodial
interference in the first degree.
(1) A person commits the crime of custodial interference in
the first degree if the person violates ORS 163.245 (Custodial Interference in
the second degree) and:
(a) Causes the person taken, enticed or kept from the lawful
custodian or inviolation of a valid joint custody order to be removed from
the state; or
(b) Exposes that person to a substantial risk of illness or
physical injury.
(3) Custodial interference in the first degree is a Class B
felony.
ORS 163.245 Custodial
interference in the second degree.
(1) A person commits the crime of custodial interference in
the second degree if, knowing or having reason to know that the person has no
legal right to do so, the person takes, entices or keeps another person from
the other person’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody
order with intent to hold the other person permanently or for a protracted
period.
(3) Custodial interference in the second degree is a Class C
felony.
~~~~~
Sean Cruz is the father of four children who disappeared
from their Oregon homes into Utah
in a Mormon abduction in 1996.
He led the legislative work group on Senate Bill 1041 in
2005, which provides the statutory basis for the civil action filed by Kyron
Horman's family.
The bill followed on the work of the Senate President's 2004
Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions, and was informed by his
personal experiences as the father of four children who disappeared from Oregon
in a Mormon abduction that began in 1996.
SB 1041 became known as "Aaron's Law" in memory of
his late son Aaron Cruz (who died in the course of his abduction) at the same
time that it passed the House on a unanimous vote, and Governor Kulongoski signed
the bill into law with Aaron's photograph on his desk.
Having fought through four jurisdictions in three states
against a phalanx of Mormon lawyers who used every trick in the book to delay
proceedings in the case of the Cruz kidnappings, Aaron's Law anticipated where
the Kyron Horman case would be today.
They are going to remember you now, son....
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
For Kyron Horman
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
An age-progressed image is heartbreaking in so many ways
You see so much of your child's life is gone, and for what
You feel your child's pain in ways that most will never know
Along with your own
It is painful to remember the good times
Years ago, you could take a deep breath
But now your chest is too tight all the time
A certain leaden numbness
Encases your heart full of tears
And today feels just like yesterday
An artist’s idea consummately skillful
Took your breath away the first time you saw it
And now you dread the need for another
May your baby boy come home
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Breakthrough! Landmark Oregon child abduction suit filed under Aaron's Law!
by Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon--Desiree Young, the mother of Kyron Horman, filed a civil suit against her son's stepmother under Senate Bill 1041 (2005), Oregon's landmark child abduction statute, known as "Aaron's Law" after my son Aaron Cruz, who died as a consequence of his abduction by members of the Mormon church enforcing a shunning.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/06/desiree_young_seeks_10_million.html
Aaron's Law provides new tools for kidnapping victims to resolve and deter abductions, and to hold kidnappers accountable, particularly when law enforcement and the courts are unwilling or unable to act.
The US Department of Justice reports that more than 200,000 US children suffer the trauma of kidnapping by a parent, family member or religious organization every year, with growing numbers of children taken to foreign countries.
The filing of the Horman suit, regardless of the length of time it takes or its outcome is likely to serve a greater good in deterring others from committing similar crimes.
Under Aaron's Law, persons who provide assistance to an abduction, whether logistical, planning or financial, are liable for damages, including punitive damages for their participation in the crime.
The Hormon case and the Marenco case both illustrate how difficult non-stranger child abduction cases are to resolve, and in all cases the experience of abduction and loss is so traumatic to the child that focus needs to be on deterrence.
Consider these facts:
In the past five years, the only child to be recognized as missing by the Oregon State Police Missing Children Clearinghouse is Kyron Hormon.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children currently identifies 17 Oregon missing children, none of whom are listed on the Oregon State Police Missing Children site. Are those children missing or not? Ask the parents who are looking for them.
An international child abduction case that originated in Oregon was resolved just last week with the assistance of more than a dozen police agencies, with the Oregon State Police conspicuously absent from the credits. The Marenco child was listed by the National Center, but not by the Oregon State Police over the year and a half that the child was known to be abducted.
What does an abducted child have to do to get some OSP attention?
More on this later.
In 2005, Governor Ted Kulongoski signed Senate Bill 1041 with my son Aaron's picture on his desk
Portland, Oregon--Desiree Young, the mother of Kyron Horman, filed a civil suit against her son's stepmother under Senate Bill 1041 (2005), Oregon's landmark child abduction statute, known as "Aaron's Law" after my son Aaron Cruz, who died as a consequence of his abduction by members of the Mormon church enforcing a shunning.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/06/desiree_young_seeks_10_million.html
Aaron's Law provides new tools for kidnapping victims to resolve and deter abductions, and to hold kidnappers accountable, particularly when law enforcement and the courts are unwilling or unable to act.
The US Department of Justice reports that more than 200,000 US children suffer the trauma of kidnapping by a parent, family member or religious organization every year, with growing numbers of children taken to foreign countries.
The filing of the Horman suit, regardless of the length of time it takes or its outcome is likely to serve a greater good in deterring others from committing similar crimes.
Under Aaron's Law, persons who provide assistance to an abduction, whether logistical, planning or financial, are liable for damages, including punitive damages for their participation in the crime.
The Hormon case and the Marenco case both illustrate how difficult non-stranger child abduction cases are to resolve, and in all cases the experience of abduction and loss is so traumatic to the child that focus needs to be on deterrence.
Consider these facts:
In the past five years, the only child to be recognized as missing by the Oregon State Police Missing Children Clearinghouse is Kyron Hormon.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children currently identifies 17 Oregon missing children, none of whom are listed on the Oregon State Police Missing Children site. Are those children missing or not? Ask the parents who are looking for them.
An international child abduction case that originated in Oregon was resolved just last week with the assistance of more than a dozen police agencies, with the Oregon State Police conspicuously absent from the credits. The Marenco child was listed by the National Center, but not by the Oregon State Police over the year and a half that the child was known to be abducted.
What does an abducted child have to do to get some OSP attention?
In 2005, Governor Ted Kulongoski signed Senate Bill 1041 with my son Aaron's picture on his desk
Friday, May 25, 2012
Marking May 25, National Missing Childrens Day, in Oregon
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon— National Missing Children’s Day is May 25. It is not a holiday, but the one day in the entire year that the families of thousands of missing children hope to have your attention. With very few exceptions, each grief-stricken family is entirely on its own in its search, and with few exceptions, the children were abducted by a parent or family member.
Each year, according to the US Department of Justice, more than 200,000 US children suffer the trauma of abduction by a parent or family member, some repeatedly. It is difficult to track the number of Oregon cases, because no Oregon policing agency keeps a record, not even the Oregon State Police.
An international child abduction case that originated in Oregon made the local news briefly recently and then vanished (just as the child had a year and a half before) a victim of the news cycle, before the Marenco case could illuminate the several public policy issues related to parental, family and church-sponsored kidnappings that are the real story here.
The National Center for Missing and Children currently identifies 17 Oregon children who are not listed as missing on the Oregon State Police Missing Children’s Clearinghouse website. Although more than a dozen international police agencies were involved in recovering the Marenco child, he never appeared on the OSP list.
The recovery of the Marenco child required the cooperation of courts in Washington County and in New Zealand, and “The following agencies/organizations have assisted the Beaverton Police Department with the Marenco case: Interpol, US Department of State, US Customs and Border Protection, US Marshals Service, US Federal Air Marshals Service, US DHS-ICE Homeland Security Investigations , National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Washington County District Attorney's Office, Washington County Sheriff's Office, Forest Grove Police Department, Government Agencies in New Zealand, Australia and Canada , San Francisco Police Department , San Mateo County Sheriff's Office.”
International abductions are on the rise due to corresponding increases in international marriages and child-producing relationships, and subsequent divorces and breakups. The convenience of international travel also plays a role, as do religious and cultural differences between the couples.
The media is rarely interested in reporting parental and family abductions, largely because law enforcement rarely acts, and there is so much else going on to fill the newscast or the page. After a day or two, a parental abduction story is old news if it was ever news at all. The family is on its own.
In fact, the only child to make the OSP list in the past five years is Kyron Horman. The Horman case also illustrates how difficult and painful child kidnappings are to resolve. The focus needs to be on prevention and deterrence.
The discrepancies in the lists of missing kids indicates that the Oregon State Police is not involved in looking for any of them, and also illustrates how easily a parentally-abducted child can slip through the cracks.
The fact that so many agencies were involved in recovering the child from New Zealand demonstrates how difficult it is to recover a child abducted to a foreign nation, even if both nations speak English and have similar court systems.
These facts, and the finding by the 2004 Oregon Senate President’s Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions that child abduction by any person is child abuse, point to the need to enact policies that discourage people from abducting their own children, or a family member’s children, or through a church-sponsored shunning/abduction, in the first place.
For the purposes of marking National Missing Children’s Day in Oregon, why don’t we take a look at those 17 Oregon kids who are missing enough to be listed on the National Center’s website, but not missing enough to be listed by our own Oregon State Police.
What does a missing kid have to do to get some attention from the Oregon State Police?
Portland, Oregon— National Missing Children’s Day is May 25. It is not a holiday, but the one day in the entire year that the families of thousands of missing children hope to have your attention. With very few exceptions, each grief-stricken family is entirely on its own in its search, and with few exceptions, the children were abducted by a parent or family member.
Each year, according to the US Department of Justice, more than 200,000 US children suffer the trauma of abduction by a parent or family member, some repeatedly. It is difficult to track the number of Oregon cases, because no Oregon policing agency keeps a record, not even the Oregon State Police.
An international child abduction case that originated in Oregon made the local news briefly recently and then vanished (just as the child had a year and a half before) a victim of the news cycle, before the Marenco case could illuminate the several public policy issues related to parental, family and church-sponsored kidnappings that are the real story here.
The National Center for Missing and Children currently identifies 17 Oregon children who are not listed as missing on the Oregon State Police Missing Children’s Clearinghouse website. Although more than a dozen international police agencies were involved in recovering the Marenco child, he never appeared on the OSP list.
The recovery of the Marenco child required the cooperation of courts in Washington County and in New Zealand, and “The following agencies/organizations have assisted the Beaverton Police Department with the Marenco case: Interpol, US Department of State, US Customs and Border Protection, US Marshals Service, US Federal Air Marshals Service, US DHS-ICE Homeland Security Investigations , National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Washington County District Attorney's Office, Washington County Sheriff's Office, Forest Grove Police Department, Government Agencies in New Zealand, Australia and Canada , San Francisco Police Department , San Mateo County Sheriff's Office.”
International abductions are on the rise due to corresponding increases in international marriages and child-producing relationships, and subsequent divorces and breakups. The convenience of international travel also plays a role, as do religious and cultural differences between the couples.
The media is rarely interested in reporting parental and family abductions, largely because law enforcement rarely acts, and there is so much else going on to fill the newscast or the page. After a day or two, a parental abduction story is old news if it was ever news at all. The family is on its own.
In fact, the only child to make the OSP list in the past five years is Kyron Horman. The Horman case also illustrates how difficult and painful child kidnappings are to resolve. The focus needs to be on prevention and deterrence.
The discrepancies in the lists of missing kids indicates that the Oregon State Police is not involved in looking for any of them, and also illustrates how easily a parentally-abducted child can slip through the cracks.
The fact that so many agencies were involved in recovering the child from New Zealand demonstrates how difficult it is to recover a child abducted to a foreign nation, even if both nations speak English and have similar court systems.
These facts, and the finding by the 2004 Oregon Senate President’s Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions that child abduction by any person is child abuse, point to the need to enact policies that discourage people from abducting their own children, or a family member’s children, or through a church-sponsored shunning/abduction, in the first place.
For the purposes of marking National Missing Children’s Day in Oregon, why don’t we take a look at those 17 Oregon kids who are missing enough to be listed on the National Center’s website, but not missing enough to be listed by our own Oregon State Police.
What does a missing kid have to do to get some attention from the Oregon State Police?
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Wisdom and the Moral Authority
By Sean Aaron Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
“Please tell Sean that I also wish him the best. I have also followed his career and believe his personal experience has given him the wisdom and the moral authority necessary to make a real difference in making Oregon safer for our children.” –Judge Jim Fun, Washington County Circuit Court, January 24, 2007
I received this message from Judge Fun’s judicial assistant. He was writing in regard to the work I had done on the issue of child abduction since my four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon kidnapping in 1996. Each year, more than 200,000 U.S. children are abducted by their own parents, family members or persons known to the family, as in church-sponsored abductions.
Judge Fun knew the issue and my family’s case very well. In 1997, he had been the Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted the 1st degree Custodial Interference case against my former wife, which came to trial nearly a year and a half after my kids had disappeared, and who were still being held incommunicado in Utah. He had noticed during jury selection that the defense referred to a Washington County LDS church roster, and that there were a number of Mormons on the jury. You know how that turned out. The Mormons stick together like the Borg. That includes both inside and outside the courtroom, if you know what I mean.
But Judge Fun was writing about what I had done since then, with that experience and with that moral authority:
I’m a writer and a blogger, so I wrote and I blogged, posting a couple of hundred pieces over the years. I had alerted and informed Senator Avel Gordly about the issue long before she hired me to serve as her legislative staff in 2003. That year, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Joint Ways and Means Public Safety Subcommittee, and Senate President Peter Courtney appointed the Senate President’s Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abduction to examine the issue and report its findings to the 2005 legislature.
I testified before the Task Force in 2004, describing how both the family law and criminal law systems and an order for joint custody had failed to protect my children and my family. The fact is these systems fail in non-stranger abduction cases far more often than they succeed, which explains the high numbers.
The Task Force found that the experience of abduction by any person is harmful to the child, and as abusive as any other form of child abuse.
In 2005, Senator Gordly assigned me to lead the workgroup on her landmark Senate Bill 1041. In that legislative session, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Rules Committee and before the House State and Federal Affairs Committee as we moved SB 1041 through the building.
The bill went through ten major rewrites on its way to passage on a dramatic, unanimous House vote on the last day of the 2005 legislative session. It immediately became known as Aaron’s Law, in memory of my late son Aaron Cruz, who had died in Payson, Utah, earlier that year, a direct consequence of his abduction.
With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first state in the nation where child abduction creates a civil cause of action, providing kidnapping victims with new tools to see justice served, and real deterrents to abducting a child in the first place.
I’ve written extensively about the particulars of Aaron’s Law at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com and www.AaronsLaw.blogspot.com
So, all this to say that many of my readers who know me through my work on issues other than child abduction and who are unfamiliar with the story of the abduction of my children may think that I might be unfair or exaggerating where I refer to Mormons and Mormonism, but I want you all to know that I am speaking from experience and with moral authority.
Portland, Oregon—
“Please tell Sean that I also wish him the best. I have also followed his career and believe his personal experience has given him the wisdom and the moral authority necessary to make a real difference in making Oregon safer for our children.” –Judge Jim Fun, Washington County Circuit Court, January 24, 2007
I received this message from Judge Fun’s judicial assistant. He was writing in regard to the work I had done on the issue of child abduction since my four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon kidnapping in 1996. Each year, more than 200,000 U.S. children are abducted by their own parents, family members or persons known to the family, as in church-sponsored abductions.
Judge Fun knew the issue and my family’s case very well. In 1997, he had been the Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted the 1st degree Custodial Interference case against my former wife, which came to trial nearly a year and a half after my kids had disappeared, and who were still being held incommunicado in Utah. He had noticed during jury selection that the defense referred to a Washington County LDS church roster, and that there were a number of Mormons on the jury. You know how that turned out. The Mormons stick together like the Borg. That includes both inside and outside the courtroom, if you know what I mean.
But Judge Fun was writing about what I had done since then, with that experience and with that moral authority:
The first and most important thing I accomplished was to stay alive, to survive.
I’m a writer and a blogger, so I wrote and I blogged, posting a couple of hundred pieces over the years. I had alerted and informed Senator Avel Gordly about the issue long before she hired me to serve as her legislative staff in 2003. That year, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Joint Ways and Means Public Safety Subcommittee, and Senate President Peter Courtney appointed the Senate President’s Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abduction to examine the issue and report its findings to the 2005 legislature.
I testified before the Task Force in 2004, describing how both the family law and criminal law systems and an order for joint custody had failed to protect my children and my family. The fact is these systems fail in non-stranger abduction cases far more often than they succeed, which explains the high numbers.
The Task Force found that the experience of abduction by any person is harmful to the child, and as abusive as any other form of child abuse.
In 2005, Senator Gordly assigned me to lead the workgroup on her landmark Senate Bill 1041. In that legislative session, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Rules Committee and before the House State and Federal Affairs Committee as we moved SB 1041 through the building.
The bill went through ten major rewrites on its way to passage on a dramatic, unanimous House vote on the last day of the 2005 legislative session. It immediately became known as Aaron’s Law, in memory of my late son Aaron Cruz, who had died in Payson, Utah, earlier that year, a direct consequence of his abduction.
With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first state in the nation where child abduction creates a civil cause of action, providing kidnapping victims with new tools to see justice served, and real deterrents to abducting a child in the first place.
I’ve written extensively about the particulars of Aaron’s Law at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com and www.AaronsLaw.blogspot.com
So, all this to say that many of my readers who know me through my work on issues other than child abduction and who are unfamiliar with the story of the abduction of my children may think that I might be unfair or exaggerating where I refer to Mormons and Mormonism, but I want you all to know that I am speaking from experience and with moral authority.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
On swearing in Mitt Romney
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—Now that the GOP Presidential buffoon-o-rama is coming down to just one left standing, and while it’s all good that Mitt Romney is full of ideas about what he thinks he’s going to do on Day One of a Romney presidency, there is one small issue that will certainly stir up a humongous discussion well before that crisp day in January comes around:
Which Bible would a Mormon prefer to be sworn in with? The New, Improved Mormon bible, or the Bible that the Mormons have built their entire mock-Christian religion around denying is truthful in all its translations, King James et al? They are deep into insulting every non-Mormon form of the Bible.
That’s a good question, worth talking about. Romney could resort to the stack-of-bibles approach, including all of the current versions used by various Christian churches, but those would be the same churches that the Book of Mormon refers to throughout as “whores” or “the Great Whore of a church.” Wowie! That issue should spark a discussion too!
Another good question is where would a Romney Western White House be located? Salt Lake City? Close to the Utah Throne? Near the only guy in the world that God speaks to, according to the Mormons?
And here’s another one, related to the preceding question: How similar to theocratic Utah would a Mormon Presidency be? That’s worth exploring in great depth. Utah is the one state in the nation where state and local government is controlled by a religious sect, the system that Romney says is the center of his life.
There will be more good questions like these down the road….
==============
Sean Cruz writes about child abduction and the loss of his four children in a Mormon kidnapping/shunning at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
He is the father of four children who disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction in 1996, organized by a group of Mormon extremists that his former wife had fallen in with, in retaliation for his criticism of LDS church policy.
In 2005, he led the Oregon Senate workgroup that crafted Oregon’s landmark child abduction statute, Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law”, after his late son Aaron, who died in Payson, Utah as a result of this church-sponsored abduction.
With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the only state in the nation where child abduction creates a civil cause of action. Without a civil cause of action, a parent of a kidnapped child has no basis in law to hold a kidnapper accountable for the damages the criminal causes.
Under Aaron’s Law, victims can reach those who provided planning, logistical or financial support to their abduction. This is especially significant in cases with multiple perpetrators, as a church-sponsored shunning.
Without a civil cause of action, the parent of a kidnapped child has only two courses of action: the family law system or the criminal system, both of which routinely fail the child and the family in abduction cases.
The U.S. Department of Justice documents more than 200,000 cases each year of parental and family abductions, year after year, and many of those children are never recovered.
Aaron’s Law passed the Oregon House on a unanimous vote, the last stop on its way to the Governor for signature into law, but is still in need of amending and refining in order to be truly effective in both preventing and resolving abductions.
Aaron’s Law should be modeled in other states, eventually becoming the law of the land.
With Aaron’s Law, my son’s death is not for nothing, and his life not without honor.
Portland, Oregon—Now that the GOP Presidential buffoon-o-rama is coming down to just one left standing, and while it’s all good that Mitt Romney is full of ideas about what he thinks he’s going to do on Day One of a Romney presidency, there is one small issue that will certainly stir up a humongous discussion well before that crisp day in January comes around:
Which Bible would a Mormon prefer to be sworn in with? The New, Improved Mormon bible, or the Bible that the Mormons have built their entire mock-Christian religion around denying is truthful in all its translations, King James et al? They are deep into insulting every non-Mormon form of the Bible.
That’s a good question, worth talking about. Romney could resort to the stack-of-bibles approach, including all of the current versions used by various Christian churches, but those would be the same churches that the Book of Mormon refers to throughout as “whores” or “the Great Whore of a church.” Wowie! That issue should spark a discussion too!
Another good question is where would a Romney Western White House be located? Salt Lake City? Close to the Utah Throne? Near the only guy in the world that God speaks to, according to the Mormons?
And here’s another one, related to the preceding question: How similar to theocratic Utah would a Mormon Presidency be? That’s worth exploring in great depth. Utah is the one state in the nation where state and local government is controlled by a religious sect, the system that Romney says is the center of his life.
There will be more good questions like these down the road….
==============
Sean Cruz writes about child abduction and the loss of his four children in a Mormon kidnapping/shunning at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
He is the father of four children who disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction in 1996, organized by a group of Mormon extremists that his former wife had fallen in with, in retaliation for his criticism of LDS church policy.
In 2005, he led the Oregon Senate workgroup that crafted Oregon’s landmark child abduction statute, Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law”, after his late son Aaron, who died in Payson, Utah as a result of this church-sponsored abduction.
With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the only state in the nation where child abduction creates a civil cause of action. Without a civil cause of action, a parent of a kidnapped child has no basis in law to hold a kidnapper accountable for the damages the criminal causes.
Under Aaron’s Law, victims can reach those who provided planning, logistical or financial support to their abduction. This is especially significant in cases with multiple perpetrators, as a church-sponsored shunning.
Without a civil cause of action, the parent of a kidnapped child has only two courses of action: the family law system or the criminal system, both of which routinely fail the child and the family in abduction cases.
The U.S. Department of Justice documents more than 200,000 cases each year of parental and family abductions, year after year, and many of those children are never recovered.
Aaron’s Law passed the Oregon House on a unanimous vote, the last stop on its way to the Governor for signature into law, but is still in need of amending and refining in order to be truly effective in both preventing and resolving abductions.
Aaron’s Law should be modeled in other states, eventually becoming the law of the land.
With Aaron’s Law, my son’s death is not for nothing, and his life not without honor.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
I couldn't be happier...been a long time comin'...You know who you are
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—I couldn’t be happier than to see Mitt Romney, Mormon bishop Mitt Romney, become the GOP nominee for President!
See why in my comments posted on The Oregonian Editorial Board’s “Oregon GOP should pick Mitt” endorsement, April 7, 2012, right here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/04/oregon_gop_should_pick_mitt.html
And to the Mormons who kidnapped my children, hid them in Utah, ruined my son Aaron’s life and let him die, I want you to know that payback is gonna be a bitch! It’s been a long time coming. You know who you are….
=======
Sean Cruz writes and posts about the issue of child abduction and the story of the Mormon kidnapping of his children at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/
He is the father of four children who disappeared into Utah on February 12, 1996 in a Mormon abduction/shunning. He had spoken out in opposition to certain practices and doctrines of the LDS church, including its racist attitudes toward people of color, its coercion of women into roles subservient to men, and for forcing young people to choose between the church and their own families when marrying into the Mormon religion.
In retribution for his remarks, Mormon officials in three states connived to cause his children to vanish from their Oregon homes during the Great Storm that struck the Pacific Northwest in February, 1996, just ten days after his baby girl’s eighth birthday. His mother would die four years later without contact with her grandchildren, as the Mormons enforced their “no contact” rules against those they regarded as apostates.
He pursued the recovery of his children through four jurisdictions in three states while both the criminal and family law systems failed to either protect his family or uphold the joint custody order that had kept his children’s lives safe and secure for five years preceding the abduction.
The Cruz children were initially concealed in the mountains east of Ogden at the home of Mormon official Kory Wright and his wife, who were the principle organizers of the kidnapping. In 2009, he confronted his children’s abductor in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Vancouver, Washington:
Counting coup on an Oregon kidnapper
http://blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-counting-coup-on-kidnapper.html
His son Aaron Cruz died in the course of the abduction, alone and without medical care, in Payson, Utah.
As Senator Avel Gordly’s chief of staff, Sean led the workgroup on parental and family abduction that resulted in Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law” in memory of his late son, which passed the Oregon House on a unanimous vote in 2005.
With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the only state in the nation where the abduction of a child creates a civil cause of action, which provides kidnapping victims new avenues of recourse to hold their abductors accountable.
Sean Cruz hopes to see the principles of Aaron’s Law enacted nationwide.
Governor Kulongoski signed Senate Bill 1041 into law with my son Aaron’s photo on his desk.
For all of those parental and family abductions that will not take place in the future for his sacrifice, my son did not die in vain or without honor….
Portland, Oregon—I couldn’t be happier than to see Mitt Romney, Mormon bishop Mitt Romney, become the GOP nominee for President!
See why in my comments posted on The Oregonian Editorial Board’s “Oregon GOP should pick Mitt” endorsement, April 7, 2012, right here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/04/oregon_gop_should_pick_mitt.html
And to the Mormons who kidnapped my children, hid them in Utah, ruined my son Aaron’s life and let him die, I want you to know that payback is gonna be a bitch! It’s been a long time coming. You know who you are….
=======
Sean Cruz writes and posts about the issue of child abduction and the story of the Mormon kidnapping of his children at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/
He is the father of four children who disappeared into Utah on February 12, 1996 in a Mormon abduction/shunning. He had spoken out in opposition to certain practices and doctrines of the LDS church, including its racist attitudes toward people of color, its coercion of women into roles subservient to men, and for forcing young people to choose between the church and their own families when marrying into the Mormon religion.
In retribution for his remarks, Mormon officials in three states connived to cause his children to vanish from their Oregon homes during the Great Storm that struck the Pacific Northwest in February, 1996, just ten days after his baby girl’s eighth birthday. His mother would die four years later without contact with her grandchildren, as the Mormons enforced their “no contact” rules against those they regarded as apostates.
He pursued the recovery of his children through four jurisdictions in three states while both the criminal and family law systems failed to either protect his family or uphold the joint custody order that had kept his children’s lives safe and secure for five years preceding the abduction.
The Cruz children were initially concealed in the mountains east of Ogden at the home of Mormon official Kory Wright and his wife, who were the principle organizers of the kidnapping. In 2009, he confronted his children’s abductor in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Vancouver, Washington:
Counting coup on an Oregon kidnapper
http://blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-counting-coup-on-kidnapper.html
His son Aaron Cruz died in the course of the abduction, alone and without medical care, in Payson, Utah.
As Senator Avel Gordly’s chief of staff, Sean led the workgroup on parental and family abduction that resulted in Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law” in memory of his late son, which passed the Oregon House on a unanimous vote in 2005.
With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the only state in the nation where the abduction of a child creates a civil cause of action, which provides kidnapping victims new avenues of recourse to hold their abductors accountable.
Sean Cruz hopes to see the principles of Aaron’s Law enacted nationwide.
For all of those parental and family abductions that will not take place in the future for his sacrifice, my son did not die in vain or without honor….
Sunday, April 1, 2012
On Presidential candidate Mitt Romney: Pink Slips and Slit Throats
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—Mitt Romney’s zeal for issuing pink slips to middle class workers whose jobs he’s destroying is well established by his own admissions, but his participation in Mormon throat-slitting rituals has been kept under wraps (so far) by the LDS church’s (so far) successful campaign to keep specific aspects of the highly secretive religion out of public view.
A new BBC documentary titled “The Mormon Candidate” examines the issues that are somehow off-limits in U.S. political discourse in 2012, among them the LDS practice of destroying families by requiring its members to shun those who leave the church or who speak out in opposition, and the symbolism of throat-slitting and disemboweling gestures made in secret Mormon temple practices.
Mormon temple ordinances required devotees to symbolize a knife slicing across their own throats with a finger, and the same gesture across the belly as an act of promised hari kiri if they were to reveal any temple secret to an outsider. The mumbo-jumbo litany that Mormons would chant as they made the gestures made it clear that if they got crosswise with the LDS hierarchy, they would be cutting their own throats and disemboweling themselves, and all Mormon church members would have “no contact” with them, at all, ever. In other words, a shunning would take place.
All of that inside information is available on the Web now, posted by former Mormon insiders, who aren’t making up any of it.
These two segments describe how Mormon shunnings work. The interviews include a high Mormon official denying the throat- and belly-slitting, denying that shunning takes place, and otherwise illustrating his superb prevaricational skills.
A look-alike relative of Mitt Romney discloses how his views drew a shunning that is still active, like mine. Mormon shunnings are forever, and all family members (including the children) are forced into compliance or face the same fate, with real consequences in that closed-off Mormon society.
I have written and spoken about these practices for many years subsequent to the Mormon abduction of my four children, and all along it has been difficult to convince people that the shunnings are real or that they are effective.
Mormon officials in three states were directly involved in the planning, execution and ongoing support for the abduction of my children and their forced immersion into extreme Mormonism. I have named them repeatedly, the ones whose identities have been revealed in court documents and those who participated by their own admissions:
Chris and Kory Wright, Bishop Donald Taylor, Bishop David Holiday, Steve and Gina Nielson (now Ben and Gina Foulk), Relief Society President Evelyn Taylor, Cynthia Anderson, Anthony Micheletti all had criminal involvement in the kidnapping. Then there were the tier of Mormon court officials, including three Mormon judges who had the distinction of also being my former wife’s former divorce lawyers in three of her four divorces, so far. Their roles were to see that all the Mormons in the criminal conspiracy and the image of the LDS church were protected, and they did this using all the judicial powers available to them.
As in the current Presidential campaigns, people are reluctant to criticize other religions, even a belief system as notoriously wicked and contrived as Mormonism. The British do not seem to have that odd American hangup.
See for yourself in these two segments, now available on Youtube.
The Mormon Candidate, pt 4 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLRzdeKEEII
The Mormon Candidate, pt 5 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TvQij0OoM&feature=relmfu
Three cheers for the BBC!!!
Portland, Oregon—Mitt Romney’s zeal for issuing pink slips to middle class workers whose jobs he’s destroying is well established by his own admissions, but his participation in Mormon throat-slitting rituals has been kept under wraps (so far) by the LDS church’s (so far) successful campaign to keep specific aspects of the highly secretive religion out of public view.
A new BBC documentary titled “The Mormon Candidate” examines the issues that are somehow off-limits in U.S. political discourse in 2012, among them the LDS practice of destroying families by requiring its members to shun those who leave the church or who speak out in opposition, and the symbolism of throat-slitting and disemboweling gestures made in secret Mormon temple practices.
Mormon temple ordinances required devotees to symbolize a knife slicing across their own throats with a finger, and the same gesture across the belly as an act of promised hari kiri if they were to reveal any temple secret to an outsider. The mumbo-jumbo litany that Mormons would chant as they made the gestures made it clear that if they got crosswise with the LDS hierarchy, they would be cutting their own throats and disemboweling themselves, and all Mormon church members would have “no contact” with them, at all, ever. In other words, a shunning would take place.
All of that inside information is available on the Web now, posted by former Mormon insiders, who aren’t making up any of it.
These two segments describe how Mormon shunnings work. The interviews include a high Mormon official denying the throat- and belly-slitting, denying that shunning takes place, and otherwise illustrating his superb prevaricational skills.
A look-alike relative of Mitt Romney discloses how his views drew a shunning that is still active, like mine. Mormon shunnings are forever, and all family members (including the children) are forced into compliance or face the same fate, with real consequences in that closed-off Mormon society.
I have written and spoken about these practices for many years subsequent to the Mormon abduction of my four children, and all along it has been difficult to convince people that the shunnings are real or that they are effective.
Mormon officials in three states were directly involved in the planning, execution and ongoing support for the abduction of my children and their forced immersion into extreme Mormonism. I have named them repeatedly, the ones whose identities have been revealed in court documents and those who participated by their own admissions:
Chris and Kory Wright, Bishop Donald Taylor, Bishop David Holiday, Steve and Gina Nielson (now Ben and Gina Foulk), Relief Society President Evelyn Taylor, Cynthia Anderson, Anthony Micheletti all had criminal involvement in the kidnapping. Then there were the tier of Mormon court officials, including three Mormon judges who had the distinction of also being my former wife’s former divorce lawyers in three of her four divorces, so far. Their roles were to see that all the Mormons in the criminal conspiracy and the image of the LDS church were protected, and they did this using all the judicial powers available to them.
As in the current Presidential campaigns, people are reluctant to criticize other religions, even a belief system as notoriously wicked and contrived as Mormonism. The British do not seem to have that odd American hangup.
See for yourself in these two segments, now available on Youtube.
The Mormon Candidate, pt 4 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLRzdeKEEII
The Mormon Candidate, pt 5 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TvQij0OoM&feature=relmfu
Three cheers for the BBC!!!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
On Passing a Mormon-Abducted Child's Birthday, and the Rites of Spring
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
In nature, Spring is a time of renewal. The awful weather Winter brings is fading, the days grow longer and sunnier and a new generation emerges. It is a time for optimism, for looking forward, and for many a season of fruition beckons, fulfilling family milestones, school graduations, marriages and new adventures.
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is a story about the sacrifice of a young girl’s life in order to suit some pagan agenda, to satisfy their belief that a horrible criminal act would please a Deity with whom they imagined they had a special relationship.
Which reminds me of the Mormons who kidnapped my children, and of that awful first Spring.
My late, kidnapped son Aaron’s birthday is March 21, and his was the first of my four children’s birthdays to pass by after they disappeared on February 12, 1996, on their way to concealment in a series of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah.
There would be no more birthday celebrations for the Cruz family once they entered Utah. We would never have contact on a birthday or any other family day ever again, once the Mormons had gained control over their lives.
I would fight to locate and regain contact with my children through four jurisdictions in three states, all while counting the days, each day, living one day at a time, day after joyless day, hopeless days on end….
So I missed my son’s birthday, that first birthday some six weeks after the beginning of the kidnapping (abductions are continuing crimes, meaning the crime continues until the abduction ends with the recovery of the victim), and I know it broke his heart.
This was a clear sign of the cruelty of his Mormon kidnappers. They knew they were breaking my children’s hearts, and they did this time and again.
The Mormons feel a need to separate the world into its “Members” and everyone else, and they run a very sophisticated operation to keep people from leaving their church.
The most common reason the Mormons lose converts is to family influence, so they have developed techniques to carve families apart. Some are subtle, but others are fundamental, such as forbidding non-Mormon parents from attending their Mormon-convert adult children’s weddings.
Once they were taken to Utah, my children did what they had to do to survive. Some succumbed to the coercion and inducements. Aaron did not, and my other children had to watch him suffer for years, all while growing up with their own tormented, confused feelings. And they would suffer together through their mother’s 3-Mormon-stepdads-in-3-states wedding spree.
It is not only this time of the year that I think about Aaron’s birthday, or those of my surviving, still-abducted children. The feelings are very long-lasting, and seem to last the whole year, year after year.
I’m working on those renewal feelings, and making good progress, with the help of my friends….
And while I’m thinking about Aaron right now, Natalia, Tyler and Allie are also in my heart. Your birthdays may be far away on the calendar, but I can feel them from here.
Portland, Oregon—
In nature, Spring is a time of renewal. The awful weather Winter brings is fading, the days grow longer and sunnier and a new generation emerges. It is a time for optimism, for looking forward, and for many a season of fruition beckons, fulfilling family milestones, school graduations, marriages and new adventures.
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is a story about the sacrifice of a young girl’s life in order to suit some pagan agenda, to satisfy their belief that a horrible criminal act would please a Deity with whom they imagined they had a special relationship.
Which reminds me of the Mormons who kidnapped my children, and of that awful first Spring.
My late, kidnapped son Aaron’s birthday is March 21, and his was the first of my four children’s birthdays to pass by after they disappeared on February 12, 1996, on their way to concealment in a series of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah.
There would be no more birthday celebrations for the Cruz family once they entered Utah. We would never have contact on a birthday or any other family day ever again, once the Mormons had gained control over their lives.
I would fight to locate and regain contact with my children through four jurisdictions in three states, all while counting the days, each day, living one day at a time, day after joyless day, hopeless days on end….
So I missed my son’s birthday, that first birthday some six weeks after the beginning of the kidnapping (abductions are continuing crimes, meaning the crime continues until the abduction ends with the recovery of the victim), and I know it broke his heart.
This was a clear sign of the cruelty of his Mormon kidnappers. They knew they were breaking my children’s hearts, and they did this time and again.
The Mormons feel a need to separate the world into its “Members” and everyone else, and they run a very sophisticated operation to keep people from leaving their church.
The most common reason the Mormons lose converts is to family influence, so they have developed techniques to carve families apart. Some are subtle, but others are fundamental, such as forbidding non-Mormon parents from attending their Mormon-convert adult children’s weddings.
Once they were taken to Utah, my children did what they had to do to survive. Some succumbed to the coercion and inducements. Aaron did not, and my other children had to watch him suffer for years, all while growing up with their own tormented, confused feelings. And they would suffer together through their mother’s 3-Mormon-stepdads-in-3-states wedding spree.
It is not only this time of the year that I think about Aaron’s birthday, or those of my surviving, still-abducted children. The feelings are very long-lasting, and seem to last the whole year, year after year.
I’m working on those renewal feelings, and making good progress, with the help of my friends….
And while I’m thinking about Aaron right now, Natalia, Tyler and Allie are also in my heart. Your birthdays may be far away on the calendar, but I can feel them from here.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Day One of a Mormon abduction, 16 years later....
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
The 16th anniversary of the day that my four children disappeared, kidnapped into Mormon Country, has arrived and it is just as their Mormon abductors intended it to be, both then and now.
A Mormon shunning, with the weight of the church to keep it in place, intended to punish me for speaking my mind so long ago, intended to last forever….
Mormon officials in three states put the scheme together, had decided to hide my children in the mountains east of Ogden, and to hide themselves behind a phalanx of Mormon lawyers and the theocratic courts that pass for a justice system in Utah. An actual Mormon cabal, think about it….
On this day 16 years ago, a Monday morning, a school day during the Great Storm of 1996, my children had vanished, were in fact being driven by a roundabout, secret route from Battle Ground to Salem to a motel near the Oregon coast where they were hidden for a few days, waiting for flooded Interstate 84 eastbound to clear.
Then they were driven out through the Columbia Gorge, through the Blue Mountains, east across Idaho and then down into theocratic Utah, where a group of Mormon zealots awaited their arrival, covert as you would expect a gang of human traffickers to be, months of planning invested in this, not to mention the overtly criminal conduct.
They were going to take my children to Utah and force them to choose a parent—the Mormon parent—and cut all ties with their non-Mormon family members. This amounts to torture, emotional torture, Mormonboarding….
All of this was in clear violation of an Order for Joint Custody that had been in effect for five years. Decisions about the children’s education were to be made jointly.
From this point on, however, every decision regarding my children was made by others, as I fought through four jurisdictions in three states.
Utah officials ignored or refused to comply with orders from Oregon or Washington courts, even a felony arrest warrant for Custodial Interference I. At the same time, all of the courts involved treated the Joint Custody order as if it were printed in invisible ink.
They have their own ways of doing things in Mormon Country, and if you have been labeled as anti-Mormon, they will shut you out. In this respect, they are like the Borg….
And like the Borg, they ganged up on my children, force-fed them the dogma, forced them to reject the non-Mormon parent in favor of Mormon stepdad #1, then Mormon stepdad #2 (the heavy-set thug who slapped my kids around Payson Utah), and now Mormon stepdad #3.
Mormon stepdad #3 has a heavy investment in maintaining the status quo, simple jealousy a good portion of that. I am the one, after all, who his wife sustained a 15-year prior marriage with, a relationship that produced four beautiful children, and these facts are always going to stick in his craw.
But it’s really about the Mormonism, this whole story.
Apart from the shock of losing their father, their grandmother and all of their father’s family, their Oregon homes, their schools and all of their friends, my children suffered an onslaught of indoctrination, far beyond what is normal even in Mormon circles.
This particular group of Mormons was well aware that they were acting criminally in terms of state and federal statutes, but they were group-thinking their way through the series of crimes, convinced that they were working on behalf of A Higher Authority. And they certainly wanted to be sure that their asses were protected from discovery, which could lead to criminal prosecution.
They forced my children to write letters to the court, begging the court not to make them return to Oregon. My children wrote that they never wanted to leave Utah, not ever, not for any reason, and the Courts did nothing to look any deeper than the surface.
This is how my children were forced into a religious war, where they remain today, still in Mormon Country, where many Mormons are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo. Long past the time when the statutes of limitations bar prosecutions, there is still the fear of discovery, embarrassment and loss of status in that closed-off secretive Mormon society, a very real threat.
How differently our lives would have turned out if only the court had required that the children be returned to their Oregon homes and the terms of the Joint Custody Order enforced. For years, that was all that I asked the Courts to do.
Aaron would still be alive today.
Our family would be whole. Maybe some Mormon, some non-Mormon, but not at war within the family over religious bullshit.
Our family would be whole.
And Aaron would be alive today.
------------------
Sean Cruz writes at
http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/
Portland, Oregon—
The 16th anniversary of the day that my four children disappeared, kidnapped into Mormon Country, has arrived and it is just as their Mormon abductors intended it to be, both then and now.
A Mormon shunning, with the weight of the church to keep it in place, intended to punish me for speaking my mind so long ago, intended to last forever….
Mormon officials in three states put the scheme together, had decided to hide my children in the mountains east of Ogden, and to hide themselves behind a phalanx of Mormon lawyers and the theocratic courts that pass for a justice system in Utah. An actual Mormon cabal, think about it….
On this day 16 years ago, a Monday morning, a school day during the Great Storm of 1996, my children had vanished, were in fact being driven by a roundabout, secret route from Battle Ground to Salem to a motel near the Oregon coast where they were hidden for a few days, waiting for flooded Interstate 84 eastbound to clear.
Then they were driven out through the Columbia Gorge, through the Blue Mountains, east across Idaho and then down into theocratic Utah, where a group of Mormon zealots awaited their arrival, covert as you would expect a gang of human traffickers to be, months of planning invested in this, not to mention the overtly criminal conduct.
They were going to take my children to Utah and force them to choose a parent—the Mormon parent—and cut all ties with their non-Mormon family members. This amounts to torture, emotional torture, Mormonboarding….
All of this was in clear violation of an Order for Joint Custody that had been in effect for five years. Decisions about the children’s education were to be made jointly.
From this point on, however, every decision regarding my children was made by others, as I fought through four jurisdictions in three states.
Utah officials ignored or refused to comply with orders from Oregon or Washington courts, even a felony arrest warrant for Custodial Interference I. At the same time, all of the courts involved treated the Joint Custody order as if it were printed in invisible ink.
They have their own ways of doing things in Mormon Country, and if you have been labeled as anti-Mormon, they will shut you out. In this respect, they are like the Borg….
And like the Borg, they ganged up on my children, force-fed them the dogma, forced them to reject the non-Mormon parent in favor of Mormon stepdad #1, then Mormon stepdad #2 (the heavy-set thug who slapped my kids around Payson Utah), and now Mormon stepdad #3.
Mormon stepdad #3 has a heavy investment in maintaining the status quo, simple jealousy a good portion of that. I am the one, after all, who his wife sustained a 15-year prior marriage with, a relationship that produced four beautiful children, and these facts are always going to stick in his craw.
But it’s really about the Mormonism, this whole story.
Apart from the shock of losing their father, their grandmother and all of their father’s family, their Oregon homes, their schools and all of their friends, my children suffered an onslaught of indoctrination, far beyond what is normal even in Mormon circles.
This particular group of Mormons was well aware that they were acting criminally in terms of state and federal statutes, but they were group-thinking their way through the series of crimes, convinced that they were working on behalf of A Higher Authority. And they certainly wanted to be sure that their asses were protected from discovery, which could lead to criminal prosecution.
They forced my children to write letters to the court, begging the court not to make them return to Oregon. My children wrote that they never wanted to leave Utah, not ever, not for any reason, and the Courts did nothing to look any deeper than the surface.
This is how my children were forced into a religious war, where they remain today, still in Mormon Country, where many Mormons are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo. Long past the time when the statutes of limitations bar prosecutions, there is still the fear of discovery, embarrassment and loss of status in that closed-off secretive Mormon society, a very real threat.
How differently our lives would have turned out if only the court had required that the children be returned to their Oregon homes and the terms of the Joint Custody Order enforced. For years, that was all that I asked the Courts to do.
Aaron would still be alive today.
Our family would be whole. Maybe some Mormon, some non-Mormon, but not at war within the family over religious bullshit.
Our family would be whole.
And Aaron would be alive today.
------------------
Sean Cruz writes at
http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Rivers flooding, highways closing, a Mormon kidnapping underway
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
Rivers are flooding, highways closing.... These are the same weather conditions as when the Mormons took my four kids out of their schools and vanished, during the Great Storm of 1996.
They shuttled my kids among themselves from place to place in Oregon, Washington and finally to theocratic Utah, all in violation of the joint custody order that had protected my children for five years, keeping their lives orderly and secure.
You would never do this to children you actually loved.
Today’s Oregonian headline reads:
Oregon winter storm: Mother and child die; 17 rivers at or near flood stage; more rain on the way
http://www.oregonlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2012/01/oregon_winter_storm_mother_and.html
Takes me all the way back to the Great Storm of 1996, and a lonely, desperate search for four missing children, children I love with all of my heart….
Law enforcement, the courts and the media take little interest in missing children when family members are involved.
The U.S. Department of Justice tallies more than 200,000 cases of parental and family abductions taking place across the country each year, every year, year after year….
I’ll have more to say about this later, just talkin’ about the weather….
The first places the Mormons hid my children in Utah were organized by Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, in the mountains east of Ogden.
Years later, kidnapping bastard Kory Wright moved his family back to the Portland Metro Area, working for a Mormon-owned company, Columbia Ultimate, where he's on its management team:
https://www.columbiaultimate.com/about-us/management-team.aspx
More about this later, and later still....
Portland, Oregon—
Rivers are flooding, highways closing.... These are the same weather conditions as when the Mormons took my four kids out of their schools and vanished, during the Great Storm of 1996.
They shuttled my kids among themselves from place to place in Oregon, Washington and finally to theocratic Utah, all in violation of the joint custody order that had protected my children for five years, keeping their lives orderly and secure.
You would never do this to children you actually loved.
Today’s Oregonian headline reads:
Oregon winter storm: Mother and child die; 17 rivers at or near flood stage; more rain on the way
http://www.oregonlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2012/01/oregon_winter_storm_mother_and.html
Takes me all the way back to the Great Storm of 1996, and a lonely, desperate search for four missing children, children I love with all of my heart….
Law enforcement, the courts and the media take little interest in missing children when family members are involved.
The U.S. Department of Justice tallies more than 200,000 cases of parental and family abductions taking place across the country each year, every year, year after year….
I’ll have more to say about this later, just talkin’ about the weather….
The first places the Mormons hid my children in Utah were organized by Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, in the mountains east of Ogden.
Years later, kidnapping bastard Kory Wright moved his family back to the Portland Metro Area, working for a Mormon-owned company, Columbia Ultimate, where he's on its management team:
https://www.columbiaultimate.com/about-us/management-team.aspx
More about this later, and later still....
Sunday, January 1, 2012
I've seen fire
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end….”
James Taylor’s timeless1970 masterpiece “Fire and Rain” speaks to the universal soul of human experience, connects us in the most intimate ways to the grief we share individually and collectively at different times in our lives, recalls for me the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who wrote in Anna Karenina that “Every happy family is exactly alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
None of us are exempt from the pain and loss that life brings: the death of loved ones, betrayals of trust, forces of nature, random acts of violence and deliberate criminality, catastrophic indifference and just plain stupidity. Whether tsunami or house fire, public and wholesale or private and intensely personal, we all cross paths with one or more of his lines, sooner or later. We are human.
“Lord knows the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around….”
There are few songs that say so much in a line, and Fire and Rain has become for me a song that captures my uniquely unhappy family’s experience in the wake of the abduction of my four children, a Mormon kidnapping now entering its sixteenth year.
“The plans they made put an end to you….”
At this time, in January 1996, Mormon officials in three states were putting the finishing logistical touches on their plans to cause my four children to disappear into a series of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah, deliberately causing them to suffer the loss of their father and all of their Cruz family, in order to impose a full-on Mormon indoctrination despite the order for joint custody that had kept their lives orderly and secure, their personalities whole and beautiful, for five years.
These Mormons, you see, wanted to exact a price from me for speaking in opposition to Mormon dogma. They wanted to enforce a shunning, and force my own children to participate, first by isolating them and then by creating both physical and emotional distance. No mail would get through, no phone calls, no contact, and a squad of Mormon lawyers in three states fully engaged to enforce the shunning.
In fact, mail sent to their mother’s last known address in Hillsboro, Oregon, was not forwarded to wherever my children had been taken, a step the Mormons had taken to make it more difficult for me to find them. I later learned that the desperate letters I wrote to my children were forwarded instead to the Hillsboro home of Evelyn Taylor, then the president of the Mormon Relief Society, the highest office a woman can aspire to in the Mormon universe.
My son Aaron did not survive his forced immersion into concentrated Mormonism, isolated and surrounded, under constant pressure to reject his non-Mormon father.
Indeed, the Mormons wanted to kill off anything in my children that would remind them of me, and Aaron was just about exactly like me. They even noted that his skin was “slightly dark”, and Mormon dogma preaches that a dark skin is “the mark of Cain”, a sign of an evil nature.
(Explain that fact to the voters, about the dark skin, Mitt Romney, Mormon Bishop Mitt Romney)….
For my other three children, the key to survival was to adapt themselves into the new regime, and they did. This is where they remain today, still caught up in a religious war between Mormonism (“Good”) and everyone else (“Evil”).
“Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone….”
No one had to let me know that the children were gone. I could feel it! They had been removed from their schools in violation of the joint custody order and their mother’s house had been emptied. They were gone, just like that, no information at all about where they had been taken!
Kidnappings are always ambushes. Stealth and surprise, whisperings in Mormon congregations....
I wake up every morning knowing that you are gone….
“I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
just can't remember who to send it to….”
I’ll write about these lines sometime soon, but not now, about the walking, about the writing, about the remembering and the sending….
“Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come….”
And I’ll write about the hours, about the time, about the end of time on the telephone, about the end of talking, of planning, of dreaming with my children, about the things to come….
“Won't you look down on me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way….”
By the time the first kidnapped year came to an end, now aware of the Mormon forces at work, even to the names of some of the criminals, I had slipped into a crushing clinical depression. I had lost all hope of seeing my children again, and these were “lonely times when I could not find a friend….”
Just as I was preparing to end my life, in January 1997, a pastor from Victory Outreach, an inner-city church in Northeast Portland, invited me to move into their Men’s Re-entry Home, a sort of halfway house located upstairs over the building the church met in, a former neighborhood movie theater.
In order to live, I had to find reasons to live every day, day after day, and from there I became involved in community and public service, receiving an appointment by the US Attorney to a crime-fighting steering committee, and later a founding board member of a national program for the US Department of Justice, representing the Pacific Northwest.
The battle to find and recover my children became more intense once I became involved in a church, because the Mormons believe that all other religions are false, even “whore(s) of a church” in Mormon dogma. They are an American Taliban....
I would live there at Victory Outreach for the next five years…where I asked Jesus to look down on my children and protect them every day, every single day, counting each day, day after day….
“But I always thought that I'd see you again….”
I will never give up, thinking that I will see you each and all again, even knowing that the entire Mormon church is organized to protect itself and its members from any negative disclosure.
But Mitt Romney is in the news now, and will be throughout 2012, and we are going to take on the subject of Mormonism and its rampant evils, all…year…long.
My son Aaron waits for me in the afterlife, my son who rejected Mormonism just like his father, and there is not a thing the Mormons can do about it. I will see you again, Aaron…and you too, Natalia, Tyler and Allie, I will see you again, when you are free once more, free to be who you really are….
And here is James Taylor himself, to send our spirits soaring….
Fire and Rain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOIo4lEpsPY
------
Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can't remember who to send it to
I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
Won't you look down on me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way
oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
I’ve been walking my mind to an easy time
My back turned towards the sun
Lord knows the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you, baby, one more time again, now
Thought I'd see you one more time again
There's just a few things coming my way this time around,
Thought I'd see you, thought I'd see you fire and rain, now
Thought i'd see you just one more time again.
Portland, Oregon—
“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end….”
James Taylor’s timeless1970 masterpiece “Fire and Rain” speaks to the universal soul of human experience, connects us in the most intimate ways to the grief we share individually and collectively at different times in our lives, recalls for me the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who wrote in Anna Karenina that “Every happy family is exactly alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
None of us are exempt from the pain and loss that life brings: the death of loved ones, betrayals of trust, forces of nature, random acts of violence and deliberate criminality, catastrophic indifference and just plain stupidity. Whether tsunami or house fire, public and wholesale or private and intensely personal, we all cross paths with one or more of his lines, sooner or later. We are human.
“Lord knows the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around….”
There are few songs that say so much in a line, and Fire and Rain has become for me a song that captures my uniquely unhappy family’s experience in the wake of the abduction of my four children, a Mormon kidnapping now entering its sixteenth year.
“The plans they made put an end to you….”
At this time, in January 1996, Mormon officials in three states were putting the finishing logistical touches on their plans to cause my four children to disappear into a series of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah, deliberately causing them to suffer the loss of their father and all of their Cruz family, in order to impose a full-on Mormon indoctrination despite the order for joint custody that had kept their lives orderly and secure, their personalities whole and beautiful, for five years.
These Mormons, you see, wanted to exact a price from me for speaking in opposition to Mormon dogma. They wanted to enforce a shunning, and force my own children to participate, first by isolating them and then by creating both physical and emotional distance. No mail would get through, no phone calls, no contact, and a squad of Mormon lawyers in three states fully engaged to enforce the shunning.
In fact, mail sent to their mother’s last known address in Hillsboro, Oregon, was not forwarded to wherever my children had been taken, a step the Mormons had taken to make it more difficult for me to find them. I later learned that the desperate letters I wrote to my children were forwarded instead to the Hillsboro home of Evelyn Taylor, then the president of the Mormon Relief Society, the highest office a woman can aspire to in the Mormon universe.
My son Aaron did not survive his forced immersion into concentrated Mormonism, isolated and surrounded, under constant pressure to reject his non-Mormon father.
Indeed, the Mormons wanted to kill off anything in my children that would remind them of me, and Aaron was just about exactly like me. They even noted that his skin was “slightly dark”, and Mormon dogma preaches that a dark skin is “the mark of Cain”, a sign of an evil nature.
(Explain that fact to the voters, about the dark skin, Mitt Romney, Mormon Bishop Mitt Romney)….
For my other three children, the key to survival was to adapt themselves into the new regime, and they did. This is where they remain today, still caught up in a religious war between Mormonism (“Good”) and everyone else (“Evil”).
“Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone….”
No one had to let me know that the children were gone. I could feel it! They had been removed from their schools in violation of the joint custody order and their mother’s house had been emptied. They were gone, just like that, no information at all about where they had been taken!
Kidnappings are always ambushes. Stealth and surprise, whisperings in Mormon congregations....
I wake up every morning knowing that you are gone….
“I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
just can't remember who to send it to….”
I’ll write about these lines sometime soon, but not now, about the walking, about the writing, about the remembering and the sending….
“Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come….”
And I’ll write about the hours, about the time, about the end of time on the telephone, about the end of talking, of planning, of dreaming with my children, about the things to come….
“Won't you look down on me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way….”
By the time the first kidnapped year came to an end, now aware of the Mormon forces at work, even to the names of some of the criminals, I had slipped into a crushing clinical depression. I had lost all hope of seeing my children again, and these were “lonely times when I could not find a friend….”
Just as I was preparing to end my life, in January 1997, a pastor from Victory Outreach, an inner-city church in Northeast Portland, invited me to move into their Men’s Re-entry Home, a sort of halfway house located upstairs over the building the church met in, a former neighborhood movie theater.
In order to live, I had to find reasons to live every day, day after day, and from there I became involved in community and public service, receiving an appointment by the US Attorney to a crime-fighting steering committee, and later a founding board member of a national program for the US Department of Justice, representing the Pacific Northwest.
The battle to find and recover my children became more intense once I became involved in a church, because the Mormons believe that all other religions are false, even “whore(s) of a church” in Mormon dogma. They are an American Taliban....
I would live there at Victory Outreach for the next five years…where I asked Jesus to look down on my children and protect them every day, every single day, counting each day, day after day….
“But I always thought that I'd see you again….”
I will never give up, thinking that I will see you each and all again, even knowing that the entire Mormon church is organized to protect itself and its members from any negative disclosure.
But Mitt Romney is in the news now, and will be throughout 2012, and we are going to take on the subject of Mormonism and its rampant evils, all…year…long.
My son Aaron waits for me in the afterlife, my son who rejected Mormonism just like his father, and there is not a thing the Mormons can do about it. I will see you again, Aaron…and you too, Natalia, Tyler and Allie, I will see you again, when you are free once more, free to be who you really are….
And here is James Taylor himself, to send our spirits soaring….
Fire and Rain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOIo4lEpsPY
------
Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can't remember who to send it to
I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
Won't you look down on me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way
oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
I’ve been walking my mind to an easy time
My back turned towards the sun
Lord knows the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you, baby, one more time again, now
Thought I'd see you one more time again
There's just a few things coming my way this time around,
Thought I'd see you, thought I'd see you fire and rain, now
Thought i'd see you just one more time again.
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