The Protective Mother
In the late spring of 2019, a phone call was received from an individual who was the head of a deeply religious Christian organization of entrepreneurs who raised money that funded projects for victims of domestic violence and child trafficking. They were calling the Foundation to seek assistance for a mother of four children.
The oldest of her children was about 15. The mother had become fully aware that her children were being trafficked to a fundamentalist so-called religious group. The pastors of the religious group were extremely famous wellknown authorities in the Christian world and were the heads of religious communities throughout the south, funding so called orphanages in the Caribbean. This mother was raised in a Christian cult and was homeschooled. Her life experience was entirely confined to the immediate religious community within which she was born and raised.
Her life course was to marry very young and have many children raised within the cult. She came to understand that it was a cult during her marriage and over the years of the births of her four children. She experienced dawning awareness of severely disturbed aberrant behavior on the part of each of the children that was totally inexplicable to her. The weight of years of living in an extremely misogynistic, dominant, suffocating, and intellectually limiting environment became increasingly difficult over the years. Her intelligent inquisitive mind caused her to seek out independent underground sources of learning that awakened her and alerted her to the fact that all was not well or as it should be in her very narrowly defined life.
This young mother was a multi-faceted, talented, highly intelligent young woman whose intellect and curiosity were not about to confine her to cooking, cleaning, and servicing her husband. And the dawning awareness of behaviors of concern regarding each of her children that became unmistakable as signs of child sexual abuse were extremely alarming to her.
Her book, “Diary of a Determined Mom,” details the harrowing awareness that was uncovered over months of stealthy undercover investigation at all hours of the day and night. It involved the disciplined management of the persona of a docile dutiful wife and was countered by the development of the spying and undercover techniques that caused her to become inescapably and irrevocably aware of the heinous atrocities being visited upon her children.
The atrocities included the drugging, threats, intimidation, and manipulation of the children to participate in ritual sexual abuse ceremonies conducted by the elder men of the church, which included her husband and her husband’s father. This mother planned her escape via the booking of a family vacation in which she and the children would go ahead and go to the vacation location where the husband was to subsequently join them. Instead, they escaped, planned with the assistance of an underground network facilitated by a confidentially funded Christian organization that supported the efforts of domestic violence and child trafficking victims to find safety and refuge. The family that began in Virginia traversed the country.
The next location that they fled to was Texas. From Texas, they moved to Alabama where they hoped to find a safe haven. The safe haven resources failed in each location. In desperation, the family of four was referred to the FCVFC where legal, forensic, and psychiatric services were developed with the financial assistance of the Christian organization that first referred them to us. Immediate steps were taken to claim alternate jurisdiction and to get in contact with the police and the FBI. Hard evidence of child trafficking through the US Christian groups, connecting with orphanages in the Caribbean, was in our custody. First contact, the residential engagement, and treatment with this family began in late spring and early summer as they arrived at a safehouse with their Pyrenees dog and their rag doll cat.
Work with debriefing and seeking legal protection
Among the resources that were provided was an attorney, Samuel McClure of Alabama, who was enamored with the excitement of the danger and challenges of the case and the prospect of the fame and fortune that he projected for himself in arranging the freedom of mother and children. The excitement and thrill of the challenge imagined for himself and his firm caused this attorney to pursue a relationship with our client independent of the Foundation who not only retained and paid for this attorney but also who oversaw the entire support and protection for this family.
This included psychiatric treatment of the children who were severely traumatized by their father and grandfather and in enormous distress from living underground while evading arrest by the police. Behind the backs of the Foundation staff, sub-rosa engagement was arranged between the attorney and the client whom we were caring for on all levels of care and management. The attorney was making a parallel engagement that included interviewing other victims known to our client and developing relationships and information with them unbeknownst to us. Sam McClure engaged the client in plans that included publishing her story and developing podcasts dealing with her and the children’s experiences.
The FCVFC experts believed the lives of the children and the mother were in grave danger if they were in fact captured by their abusers who had national and international wealth and authority as well-known religious leaders. The parallel tracks that were moving forward after months of emotional progress because of treatment and life stability that included homeschooling and a stable living atmosphere was set on edge because of an uncertainty as to how long the circumstances could be sustained given the need for FBI engagement. While that engagement was in progress, it was going to take an unknown period of time.
Unknown to the FCVFC, Sam McClure and the children’s mother had an alternate set of plans which they then found an opportunity to pursue when they left the security of the safehouse where they had lived over a period of months. The mother was promptly arrested, resulting in the children being returned to the father from whom they were on the run. Their mother was placed in jail. Before they could be returned to the father, the children were psychiatrically hospitalized because of being acutely suicidal. When we learned of the circumstances that the family encountered and questioned Sam McClure about why he had entered into this engagement behind our backs to the detriment of the client and children, he asserted that the mother was his client which gave him every right to advise and direct her as per her wishes, even though the experts of the Foundation had been managing and caring for the family and were mapping out the course of legal and psychiatric intervention.
Mr. McClure was fully aware of that protection and care and yet our work was completely ignored by this attorney who had no experience or training in criminal law, or the law associated with adjudication of crimes associated with child trafficking.
The attorney in his dealings with the client and her children
The attorney went so far as to attempt to interfere with the work of the forensic psychiatrist. Interview With Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman – The Foundation for Child Victims (fcvfc.org) The forensic psychiatrist, Carole Lieberman, an extremely famous and skilled court expert who was retained by the Foundation and was deeply engaged in the police negotiations as well as the legal psychiatric reports. Without our knowledge, the attorney attempted to instruct Dr. Lieberman not to work with the Foundation.
He asked her to work only with him because he wished to include her on his podcast, which was being conducted behind our backs. We were informed of the duplicitous actions of this attorney Sam McClure, and we learned that he was disclosing confidential information about the family and children on his podcast and the identities of other victims, jeopardizing their safety and wellbeing and forever foreclosing their ability to come forward and seek safety and protection. Sam McClure attempted to keep the experts of the Foundation from speaking out independently and working with Carole Lieberman, as per her request, in his attempt to alienate her, gain her loyalty, and seek to publicize his role and work with the children’s mother.
The mother was arrested shortly after leaving the safety of the safehouse that she had been living in for some extended period of time. She and the children were violently accosted a short time after they secretly left the safehouse quarters. The children were hospitalized. The mother was jailed for more than six months and had to plead guilty to child endangerment to gain her freedom. The children were returned to their father. Sam McClure withdrew from engagement with victims of trafficking and domestic violence and returned to his practice in foster care and adoption at McClure Law in Alabama
There was never an apology or any form of contrition, but his self-aggrandizing and self-promoting bluster leaves a trail of tears as it is doubtful that Melody will ever see her children again. Her children will be facing extreme challenges with their father. He was met with the vigor and authority of the religious group that funded the children’s escape and protection when working through legal channels proved too challenging, but it is doubtful that will be enough to help the children now.
