In the Canadian experience many of the worst cases are family law matters, usually scenarios that involve custody or access. It’s sad because in many instances I suspect the parent who is pushing these actions could have at least some access or role in the child’s life, but the use of Freeman tactics almost guarantees that will not be the result.
Putting together the pieces, it usually looks like the parent(s) who adopt Freeman strategies have some kind of issues – drugs, homelessness, violence, criminal activities. My suspicion has long been that these people have limited success when they try to use lawyers or the ‘legal’ procedures to gain access/custody of their children. Their desperation leads them to use Freeman schemes which just make things worse. That then cycles up.
There aren’t a lot of reported cases of this kind in Canada but our little Canadian observer group has tracked a few via media sources and the parent’s own websites. But the most bizarre example of this scenario turns out to be founder and principle guru of the Freeman-on-the-Land community itself – Robert-Arthur: Menard.
Menard, back in the early 2000’s, was the one who collected a number of pre-existing OPCA ideas and combined those to create the characteristic Freeman-on-the-Land concept set: that everything is a contract, you are only controlled by the government through a ‘strawman’ legal entity attached to you, and that you can unilaterally ‘contract out’ of that strawman bond.
But that wasn’t his first obsession. It was his daughter. Menard claims to have a daughter he fathered with a underage street child he met in a bar. The newborn daughter, Elizabeth Anne Elaine, was then ‘abducted’ by child welfare services. Menard’s initial obsession was an idea that a parent signing a birth certificate turns a child into the government’s property. Here, the mother of his child did that, and that’s why Menard believes he could not keep his child.
Rather than provide more detail, I’d suggest those interested read Menard’s book on the subject “Your Child Or Her Life! DECEPTION AND EVIL IN THE Ministry of Children, Family and Community Development”, by Robert Arthur: - www.angelfire.com/planet/thinkfree/childorlife.pdf
It’s pretty extraordinary. Here’s how the narrative starts:
The following is the truth. One day back in April of 2000, I was chatting on line with a woman in Arizona. We had been chatting for a few weerks and most of our conversations had to do with the nature of God. She told me that she had just had the strangest feeling that I was going to be called to serve God and it would be the most difficult thing I had ever done. I said “Why does He have dietary restrictions?” Just then my neighbour came down the stairs and pounded on my door. Ben is a very large native man. He stands 6’4” and weighs 225lbs. He was very intoxicated and he told me that his spirit guide had told him to take me to the bar. The bar he was reffering to was a dive and not my type of place. I refused to go. He threw my jaket at me, shut down my computer and tyhreatened to knock me out and carry me if he had to. I decided to humour him and go for a quick beer.
Within two minutes of walking in, a beautiful young woman walked in the bar. I swear I thought I spoke the following words, Ben says he never heard me say them however. I heard them like they had come from my own mouth. “She’s pregnant and in very big trouble.” I noticed all the crack dealers and pimps eyeing her like she was the dinner special and I got a huge sadness settle upon my heart. I was like a big wet carpet and I thought my heart my stop. Suddenly, something grabbed the love in my heart and communicated with mne by vibrating it. “Take her child as your own and you will be foreever blessed.” In my minds eye, I had a picture of my father and mother and I realized he had never raised his voice to her let alone his hand. I was being asked to love her and her child like my father had loved his wife and children. I said “Okey Dokey” to the power that grabbed my love and I became a daddy at that moment.
I invited Megan over to our table and in the first fivew miniutes told her she was pregnant. She didn’t believe me. She was only a week or two pregnant and was showing absolutely no physiological signs. She had no place to stay that night so I invited her over to my place and she accepted. We became a couple a fewq days later. At this time she was into hard drugs and hjarder living. I told her God had told me she was pregnant and she dismissed it refusing to believe in a God. When she later found out she was pregnant, it blew her away that I had known and claimed God told me. It empowered her considerably. Apparently, knowing God loves us can do that. She totally cleaned up her act. She quit smoking, drinking and partying and started to look at getting her GED. We were together throughout her pregnancy and moved into a new place together. We had purchased baby things in anticipation of Elizabeth’s arrival and we were excited and hopeful. We were a family in both act and intent. We were happy.
Elizabeth was born healthy and very beautiful on Dec 3rd, 2000. This little miracle was a result of my love for her and her mother and her mother’s near heroic successful efforts to clean herself up. The next day was without doubt the happiest of my life. When I first held Elizabeth, my heart swelled till I thought it would burst. It was like I had never loved before. I was pumped and motivated and so incredibly hopeful for the future. I was a daddy and Elizabeth was born without any signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or cognitive dysfunction due to cocaine abuse.
On Dec 5th 2000, without first conducting any investigation or assessment, the state ‘legally’ removed her. They did so through agents Celia Huber and Charles Hodgson. They claimed that Elizabeth only had one care giver. We told them they were wrong, she had two, we were a family in act and intent and had they investigated they would have known that. We told them we would prove in court that they had not investigated and that we were a family. Celia Huber, in the presence of Charles Hodgson, told us that if we tried, she would see to it that Elizabeth spent the first five years of her life going from foster home to foster home to foster home. What loving parent would risk that?
They tore our family apart and made Megan care for Elizabeth all alone. They halved the level of care that Elizabeth was to receive and they doubled Megan’s work load. They endangered Elizabeth’s life through their criminal actions.
I sat down with their Act and I had Black’s Law dictionary on one side and Bouviers on the other. I looked up every single word. It took me three days. When I was done, I was stunned. I said one word “Sonofabitch”. Some of their words do not mean what you think they do. They expand definitions and they use a great deal of deception. It is much like those laser engraved pictures which you can only see if you focus past the image. To see their deception you have to dig past layers of twisty words, but its there.
They came into my life and destroyed our family and seriously harmed the two people I loved the most. I committed no crime, faced no charges nor called into court, yet I lost my family. They threatened an innocent two day old infant with permanent irreparable harm and endangered Elizabeth’s life. They are deceivers and rely on our ignorance for their authority. They exercise that authority without understanding, restraint or compassion. They should know better than to threaten an infant. Their evil and vile lies destroyed my family and almost destroyed me.
And that’s where Freemanism came from.
It turns out that much of Your Child Or Her Life is plagiarized from another source – though not the Menard and Child narrative - www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=9364&p=165027#p165027
Menard comments on this subject in some other websites that appear to have been forgotten or abandoned, for example:
The Elizabeth Anne Elaine Society: www.angelfire.com/rebellion/elizabeth/
Menard doesn’t talk about this much any long. I think it’s due to profound cognitive dissonance. At the time he was an unemployed street performer. He entered into a relationship with a much younger individual, probably a very troubled person. A child resulted. The mother appears to have voluntarily given up the child for adoption. So, Menard faces a challenge:
- the nature of his relationship with the mother;
- his inability to parent, his absence of any useful work or life skills, probable drug use and addictions, and lack of finances;
- the fact the mother of his child wants him no-where near the kid, and probably herself; and
- his genuine emotion and bond to his child and his wish to be a parent.
He has failed himself, his child, and the child's mother. If he were honest to himself the consequences would be, at a minimum, grim. So he reverses the blame, and puts the fault outside himself. If only he had been given a chance with Elizabeth Anne Elaine. He'd have shown them all what he could do. It wasn't his fault. He was denied that chance by sinister government authorities who enslave the Canadian population - and the vile mechanism by which they derived the authority to seize his child. Her mother had signed a birth certificate.
In Canada we have seen this particular drama revisited in various forms, with other troubled parents. These are, perhaps, the most difficult OPCA litigants to control and assist. I think it is because they know, on some level, their error. There’s a weird symmetry that these desperate, traumatized parents will be the last Freemen - the ones who just won't give up – and in that way they are precisely the same as the first.
SMS Möwe