Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Aaron and I, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco




We were so proud of each other....

As time went by, his mother changed her personality 180 degrees, became a TBM (True Believer Mormon)....

This was the cause of great tension in our household, as I wasn't buying it....

After we moved from California to the Portland area in 1988, not long after this photograph was taken, she started representing to her new Mormon friends (she wouldn't befriend anyone else) that she had been a TBM her entire life....

Telling that story of lifelong devotion to Mormonism became an obsession with her, and the obvious contradiction that I represented was a major cause of our divorce.

She sold that story to her current husband, husband number five, who apparently went for that TBM bullshit hook, line and sinker. The happy couple, Ben and Gina Foulk, their marriage founded on a bed of lies, live near Sacramento, California.

Gina and I negotiated a divorce in 1991. The Court ordered joint custody, joint decisionmaking and joint responsibility for our children's education and medical needs.

The order specified the days and times that our children would reside with each parent, and I saw my kids an average of 180 days a year for the five years, with daily phone contact. I wasn't going to be an every-other-weekend kind of dad.

Sometime in 1995, however, Gina and her Mormon friends and family began to scheme to kidnap our children and conceal them in Utah, to permanently sever all contact with me and with my family, and to isolate my kids and immerse them in an environment of Mormon absolutism.

It’s easy to find TBM allies in Utah, theocratic Utah, when you have a good TBM story to sell.

After the kidnapping, Aaron never smiled like this again. His heart was too full of pain, too full of tears. Betrayal will do that to you.

Children abducted by parents, by people they love, lose their ability to trust.

More on this later.

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