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:


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.


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….

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!!!