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.

Fundamentalist Mormon Warren Jeffs and LDS Hell on Earth

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

Mainstream Mormons may not grow their own child brides like Warren Jeffs, but Mormon zealots can be just as dangerous, and a non-Mormon has little chance to find justice in Utah (read Mormon) courts.

My four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction more than 15 years ago, eventually suffering life under a series of three Mormon step dads in three states.

My late son Aaron Cruz died in his mother’s empty house in Payson, Utah, from “undetermined causes”, and a phalanx of Mormon lawyers hired by 5^th-husband Ben and Gina Foulk, who now live a country-club, Rotary life in El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park, California, are determined to keep it that way, with the circumstances of his death unknown and uninvestigated.

My son Aaron Cruz is memorialized in Oregon's landmark anti-parental-and-family-kidnapping Senate Bill 1041 "Aaron's Law", passed in 2005.

Oregon is still the only state in the nation that offers its children this level of protection from parental and family or other non-stranger kidnappings. Under Aaron's Law, taking any abducted child out of the state of Oregon creates a civil cause of action, and you should really think hard about how you want to protect your child from abduction by religious zealots, your ex or any other criminal.

Mormon mystery company slips a million mystery bucks to Mitt Romney

Mormon mystery company slips a million mystery bucks to Mitt Romney and then dissolves, recalling the pre-Watergate era of secret campaign finance.

From the Huffington Post:

“A mystery company that pumped $1 million into a political committee backing Mitt Romney has been dissolved just months after it was formed, leaving few clues as to who was behind one of the biggest contributions yet of the 2012 presidential campaign.

“The existence of the million-dollar donation — as gleaned from campaign and corporate records obtained by NBC News — provides a vivid example of how secret campaign cash is being funneled in ever more circuitous ways into the political system.

“The company, W Spann LLC, was formed in March by a Boston lawyer who specializes in estate tax planning for “high net worth individuals,” according to corporate records and the lawyer’s bio on her firm’s website.

“The corporate records provide no information about the owner of the firm, its address or its type of business.

“Six weeks later, W Spann LLC made its million-dollar donation to Restore Our Future — a new so-called “super PAC” started by a group of former Romney political aides to boost the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential bid. It listed its address as being in a midtown Manhattan office building that has no record of such a tenant.

“The Boston lawyer, Cameron Casey, dissolved the company on July 12 — two weeks before Restore Our Future made its first campaign filing of the year reporting the donation from the now-nonexistent company, the corporate records show.

“I don’t see how you can do this,” said Lawrence Noble, the former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, when asked about the contribution from the now defunct company.

“Last week, Restore Our Future filed its first report of 2012, disclosing that it had received $12.2 million during the first six months of the year. Among the contributors: four donors who contributed $1 million apiece, including John Paulson, the Wall Street hedge fund kingpin who made billions betting against the housing market, and two corporate partnerships listed at the Provo, Utah, address of Steven J. Lund, a former chief executive of Nu Skin Enterprises and a longtime Romney backer who has been a leader in the Mormon Church.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44011308/#.TjrBZ2Fn6Sp

A message in a bottle

Today is my baby girl’s birthday, and life beckons anew

A message in a bottle

Allie, my baby girl, was just a few days past her 8th birthday when the Mormons made her disappear, fifteen long years ago. She has lived in a succession of Mormon enclaves ever since, surrounded by Mormon ideologues, some with criminal culpability in the abduction of my children. They have focused their energies on severing every connection she might have to her birth family, on keeping her within the confines of the Mormon church, in part because that’s the way they do things in the Mormon world, but also to hide their crimes, especially from her.

The statutes of limitations have run on their crimes long ago, but not their consequences.

Any abduction of a child has lifelong consequences; no one is ever the same again. Some victims die as a result, like my son Aaron, who never had a chance at happiness again, after vanishing with his siblings into concealment in a succession of remote locations in Utah on February 12, 1996.

We live in a world where some parents can suffer the loss of a child and barely notice, a world where far too many children have been left behind by the very two people who gave them life, where far too many young people know this is what they can expect from their mom and/or their dad.

It is a world where some parents will sacrifice their children for a fix, for a snort, for two dollars, to chase after a man or a woman, or to satisfy some religious craving or mandate, or for reasons that defy understanding on any level at all.

Some religious organizations—like the Mormons—are very effective at carving families into pieces, dividing them into Mormon and non-Mormon factions, and the church has institutionalized a culture of separation, even to the point of forbidding a non-Mormon parent from attending his or her own child’s wedding, if the family is unfortunate enough to have that circumstance arise.

I had the terrible bad luck to have a wife that well into our marriage woke up one day and decided she was going to commit her life to Mormonism, though she didn’t say that at the time, and there was no way to see this coming at all. Not a hint before the fact.

But I digress….

It took me fifteen years, from the day of my children’s disappearance, to get beyond mere survival, to arrive at a point where I can celebrate life once again.

That is what I am going to do today, I am going to celebrate life. I am going to live and be happy to be alive today, February 2, 2011.

And every day thereafter….

So I am putting this message into a bottle and sending it out on its way, and maybe someday it will arrive where you can find it, baby girl, and know that your daddy never stopped loving you…never ever stopped loving you…never stopped loving you…never…ever…to infinity…love you forever, Dad….

Here she is early in life. Photographs of her or my other children after February 12, 1996 are very rare.

To you, baby girl, on your birthday.

Love, Dad

The last days of Aaron Cruz: Interlude 1: Quality Time

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

Anyone with a large family would know how difficult it is to have quality time alone with each of your children separately, times when it is just the two of you and the time and experience together is genuinely “quality” time for everyone.

As a divorced single parent with two boys and two girls and an order for joint custody, time with my children was always at a premium, and how to satisfy each of their differing interests, wants and needs simultaneously always a balancing act as the months and years went by.

Aaron created a way for him and me to share some regular quality time together, and he made it happen on his own initiative during the year before he and my other children disappeared into Utah.

During the school year, the joint custody order stated that the children would reside with me immediately after school on Fridays and through the weekends at varying lengths.

Every Friday, after picking up my children, we would stop at a grocery store on the way home, so each of the kids could have input into what foods we would have for meals and snacks during our time together. The kids and I would negotiate our preferences as we walked through the store so that everyone left happy about something.

This is how grocery shopping became part of our quality time together as a family, except for my mom, who was housebound from her chronic illnesses. I was my mother’s sole caregiver in those days.

Aaron hungered for something more than food, however. He hungered for more time with me, just the two of us, and he developed a plan to carve that time out every Friday. I was skeptical at first, but he worked his plan to perfection.

He found out what each of his sisters and his brother wanted from the store, and he asked them for backups if their first choices weren’t available. Aaron put a lot of effort into his interviews with his siblings, because he wanted to eliminate each of their desires to go shopping with us, this week and every week.

These could be very complex arrangements, fascinating to listen to their negotiations, how they planned their snacks, with much bartering and swapping and sharing after the grocery run.

Under his system, Aaron and I would drop the other kids at home with my mother, where Natalia and Tyler would generally make a beeline for the video games and Allie would play with my mom’s dachshund Sox, and all of the kids together would provide love and companionship for their grandmother, and he and I would make our grocery run for my family, for our family. Everyone was content at the very same time.

Our last grocery run together was Saturday, February 10, 1996. Aaron, Natalia, Tyler and Allie disappeared two days later, on their way to the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright in a remote area in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, I would later learn. This was the first place that my children were concealed.

I think about Aaron every time I set foot in a grocery store, ever since those days we were together as a family.

I miss his companionship and how he would explain to me in exquisite detail what item was for which child as he placed things into our shopping cart.

I could enjoy this time with Aaron free of anxiety for the other kids and for my mom, because they were home together and they were all safe. I would hold off shopping for myself until Fridays, so I could go with Aaron. I also hungered for that time.

Aaron would distribute the snacks and treats to the other kids when we got back to the house, and there was never a disappointed word.

All was good under the sun, dependably good, every Friday afternoon, without fail. I still have the grocery receipts.

When I recovered Aaron from the abduction in 2003, he was too ill to go shopping, and then he was ordered to return to Utah for deployment to Iraq, and then he became more ill there in Payson, and then came his Last Days.

To this day, I never enter a grocery store without thinking of Aaron, without feeling his absence, without remembering that last day that my family was safe, together and at home.

And then the Mormons entered the picture, and with them an abduction and a program….

The last days of Aaron Cruz, Pt 1: A mother's love and a sack of groceries

By Sean Cruz

My son’s mother Gina Foulk told the story herself, in words that shock and sadden me even more today than they did at the time of Aaron’s death, more than five years ago….

Speaking before a group of perhaps fifty people in Payson, Utah, gathered together in memory of my son a week after he had been found comatose and unresponsive in her empty house a short distance away, she described the last time that she had seen Aaron alive, and her incomprehensible actions….

He was sick and feverish, she said, and she had left him alone….

He was out of his meds, and she had left him alone, in an empty house cluttered with Aaron’s empty prescription bottles strewn all over, with a sack of groceries and a crazy story….

She had left him alone, sick and feverish, without health care, without a call to a doctor, without refilling his prescriptions, the ones that were keeping him from suffering the very coma in which he died, without driving him to the hospital, without picking up the phone to alert anyone else to look after her son, she had left him alone, and was telling us all about it, without shedding a single tear….


She had told Aaron that Heavenly Father loved him, she said, lying there beside her sick and feverish son, she said, and here are some groceries for you, honey…and then she left him alone….


Aaron was sick and feverish she said, and what she did not say was that her new Mormon husband Ben Foulk was waiting across town, impatient to get back to California, where he owns a string of high-end medical-care-dispensing retirement homes (“Would you like some more cranberry juice with your pills, Mrs Treatednicely?”), and she was in a hurry to get out on the road, no time for doctors….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

If she had driven him to the emergency room that night, the staff would have admitted him immediately, put him on IVs, and some medical people would have been working with real concern, realizing as they went along, working to save this young man’s life, that there is more to this story than meets the eye, this young man should have been hospitalized weeks ago, months ago….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

The fact is that Aaron had been sick and feverish for a good long time; this part of his mother’s story was not news; In fact, just about everyone in that room listening to Gina Foulk’s story had known Aaron was sick, my son was visibly ill and everyone knew it, and yet no one had stepped up to get him seen by a doctor, not even Mr. and Mrs. Ben and Gina Foulk.

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

There’s another way to tell the story of the last days of Aaron Cruz: I had gone broke keeping Aaron alive that year, and when I ran out of money to pay for his anti-seizure and other meds, after I had spent my very last dollar, he convulsed and died, sick and alone, in that empty house, out of his meds…with his mother’s last sack of groceries….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

Now I was standing here in this other house in Payson, Utah, listening to my son’s mother tell her story, having traveled here on money I had borrowed from friends, having had just gone broke trying to keep my son alive, having just spent five days and nights at his side at the hospital, to the end of life support, I am listening to a story about a sack of groceries and Heavenly Father….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

My son’s mother told the gathering matter-of-factly that Aaron was sick and feverish, and she described how she had lain beside him and comforted him with stories about how much Heavenly Father loves him…and here’s a sack of groceries for you, honey, she said…but Ben Foulk was waiting impatiently across town, pills to dispense in Northern California, gold in them thar El Dorado Hills….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

She said nothing at all about his meds, no mention at all in her meandering, incomprehensible story about the empty pill bottles that would have been scattered all over the house, Paxil in gigantic doses, the anti-seizure meds that were the key to keeping him out of a coma, no telling what else, since she grabbed and destroyed all of my son Aaron Cruz’s medical records, no telling at all, Ben and Gina Foulk’s lawyers have built an impenetrable wall behind which my son’s medical records are concealed….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

Gina Foulk told this crazy matter-of-fact tearless story about how she left Aaron alone that night and turned the page; “I told him all about Heavenly Father”, she reassured this Mormon gathering, and no one said a word….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

And her story would get crazier still when she told it a few days later on the day we laid my son Aaron Cruz into the earth in El Dorado Hills, California, where the Ben and Gina Foulks own a string of high-end retirement homes, providing high-end medical care to their well-heeled clients…and for you, Aaron, a sack of groceries and some Mormon stories to keep you company; now, here’s a nice piece of stone on a hillside, enjoy the birds….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/

To be continued….