Posted on 05/01/2002 3:33:06 PM PDT by RGSpincich
Kids told police dad hit daughter in head
By JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press 5/1/02 5:21 PM
ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) -- Brian and Ruth Christine's daughters told police that their father hit one of them in the head, causing her to fall down steps in the converted city bus they called home and cut her forehead, spreading "blood all over," a detective testified Wednesday.
Asked why he hadn't taken his daughter Lydia, then 3, to the hospital, Brian Christine "told me he was an Eagle Scout and he knew how to treat an injury," testified Grants Pass police detective Dan Evans.
"He told me his children were God's children, and if God chose to strike them down with lightning, that was his choice," Evans said.
The testimony came during a hearing on a defense motion to suppress evidence gathered when police first contacted the Christines in their bus on July 31, 2000, while it was parked at the library in Grants Pass in the course of their travels around the country.
The Christines, both 29, are on trial in Douglas County Circuit Court on charges of kidnapping, robbery, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and custodial interference.
The state alleges that a year after social workers took the three girls into foster care to protect them from their parents, Brian Christine took the girls at gunpoint from a state social worker, met up with his wife and a friend, and escaped to Montana, where they were found within days.
In the course of pretrial motions, defense attorney Edgar Steele told Judge Robert Lasswell that he intended to present a "choice of evils defense," arguing that the Christines were rescuing their children from a state agency that was out of control.
Steele described the couple as fundamentalist Christians, who home-schooled their children and believed the state should not interfere with family life unless children were being harmed.
"They have seen their children taken to a hospital, stripped and examined in a sexual way," Steele said in describing his case. "The damage done to their children far exceeds anything they have done."
The Christines were allowed to see their children only once under supervision in the 12 months from the time they were taken into foster care and Aug. 1, when they took them from state social workers, Steele said.
"We've got a pair of parents that saw a local agency of government totally out of control -- acting illegally, acting immorally," Steele said. "They got (the children) out of harm's way."
According to Evans, police initially contacted the Christines after receiving an anonymous phone call reporting children who appeared malnourished. The family had been traveling the country in a city bus converted into a motor home, and had spent the past 45 days living at parks in the Grants Pass area.
Brian Christine sold computer software on an internet auction site, and routinely stopped at libraries to use the computers to check on his sales, Evans said.
Evans said four police officers were outside the Christines' bus in the parking lot behind the Josephine County Library when he was called in because he investigates allegations of child abuse.
Brian Christine sat in the driver's seat, his arms on the steering wheel, while Evans talked to the girls in the back. Miriam lay on her back, one arm over her head. Bethany and Miriam sat against a bed. Bethany was reading a book.
All the girls were very skinny, quiet and subdued, particularly Miriam, the youngest, Evans said. Lydia had a bandage on her forehead that had bled through and discoloration around one eye, he testified.
"I asked Lydia how she got the ow-ee," Evans said. "She told me she fell. Bethany was glancing at Brian. She said, `No you didn't.' Lydia glanced at Brian sitting up front and said, `Babba did it.' She told me blood was all over and it hurt very bad and she cried. I asked who Babba was and she pointed to Brian," Evans said.
"She said she was at the front of the bus and she peed. She said Babba was real mad," he testified.
Evans said when he asked Brian Christine if he had hit his daughter, he nodded, adding that he lost his temper and "tapped" her on the back of the head with his open hand and she fell.
Evans said he arrested Brian Christine on an assault charge and social workers took the three girls to a hospital.
Sounds like Brian gets a little out of control himself.
Govt(nazi) is sacred--infallible!
State harm can be a lot worse than parental harm!
What's next?
Please note the logical construction you used--state harm can be worse than parental harm. The converse is also true--parental harm can be worse than state harm.
What's next?
Please try to put your statements in some sort of context--it makes it easier for those of us who can't read minds to figure out what you're saying.
Good News For The Day
‘But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.‘ (John 12:32)
"When Peter saw that his master was about to be arrested, he drew his sword, but Jesus stopped him. This was the second time in the course of Jesus' career, that Peter had acted rashly against the spirit and intention of Jesus. Earlier he had remonstrated with Jesus who had announced that he would go to Jerusalem, and there be rejected and killed. Jesus had turned to Peter and rebuked him saying, "Get behind me, Satan." Jesus was intent on a mission in which he would be 'lifted up from the earth." Peter did not accept nor understand this."
"It would be well for us to remember that all the good that we have embraced in our lives, came to us via the sacrificial spirit. Our higher qualities were not pressed or flogged into us by force. We were drawn to them by the appeal of gentler things. The love of mother and father; the fellowship of fine people; the attraction of things good and right."
"The futility of force is seen in its capacity to scatter and sow evil, even in its effort to eliminate it. Those who go to war, often find themselves committing the same barbarities they are seeking to root out. Armies and navies can win battles, but they cannot win the peace. We problems of the human race will never be solved by violence. To expect otherwise is like expecting a cure for aids to arise from fornication."
"One day when Abraham Lincoln was with company in the White House, he made a hopeful and conciliatory remark about the South. A woman heard him, and was angry. "How can you speak like that about your enemies, when you should be seeking their destruction?" Lincoln replied: "What madam? And do I not destroy them when I make them my friends?"
"May the love that was willing to be... 'lifted up from the earth'---find its way into my life."
Make America a cattle car country---concentration camps---SOVIET-Nazi-America...PC-police state??
What is this? Sanitarium-speak?
Good point. Steele always sounds so convincing when he preaches to the choir. It's the courtroom that gives him problems. He seems to always draw a "tainted" jury or a biased judge.
For these thoughts--words Lincoln was killed...are you always a hatemonger?
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