It has been more than three months since the dra­mat­ic arrest and cap­ture of Eri­ca May and Cleave Rengo’s 3 small chil­dren by CPS in Cal­i­for­nia, where Eri­ca shout­ed to reporters:

“Send a mes­sage to Amer­i­ca for me. Chil­dren don’t belong to the gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment belongs to the people.”

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

Erica Reaches Out to Media

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

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

The lat­est devel­op­ments are that Eri­ca May and Cleave have sep­a­rat­ed, and the chil­dren are alleged­ly being med­ical­ly abused while in state fos­ter care.

The babies have also been sep­a­rat­ed from each oth­er. Eri­ca reports that she has learned that not even the twins are togeth­er in the same fos­ter home, a devel­op­ment that is dev­as­tat­ing to her.

See the orig­i­nal sto­ry on Med­ical Kid­nap here.

CPS Demands That the Rengos Separate

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

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

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

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

“I’m cer­tain­ly not hap­pi­er being sep­a­rat­ed from him.”

Babies Have Numerous Medical Issues in State Care

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

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

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

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

Cleave sees his chil­dren even less. His vis­its have been lim­it­ed to once a month.

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

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

They Never Should Have Let Them in the Door

Eri­ca says that she wish­es that she and Cleave had under­stood their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. She told Robert Scott Bell that they did not real­ize that they did not have to let the para­medics in when they came to the door, and that they did not have to let the social work­er in with­out a warrant.

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

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

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

Erica: This Is Not What Ancestors Fought and Died for

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

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