Edgar J. Steele
Attorney at Law
O.S.B. #93135
102 So. Fourth Ave., Suite C
Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 Facsimile: (208) 265-5329 Telephone: (208) 265-4153

Attorney for Respondents Brian & Ruth Christine

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON FOR THE COUNTY OF DOUGLAS

Case No. 01CR2994FA The State of Oregon, )

01CR2994FB Plaintiff ) 01CR2994FC ) vs. ) DEFENDANTS’ MEMORANDUM FOR USE AT
Brian Edward Christine, Ruth E. ) BAIL REDUCTION HEARING
Christine And Mathew Barry Gerawan, ) Date: March 6, 2002 Defendants. ) Time: 9:00 a.m.
_____________________________________) Dept: Judge Lasswell

Come now defendants Brian and Ruth Christine, by and through their attorney of record herein, and offer their memorandum for use at the bail reduction hearing set for March 6, 2002. Facts

There are two sides to every story. The saga of the Christine family is no different. Here is a point of view that diverges remarkably from that presented thus far to this Court and through extensive media statements by sundry representatives of the state of Oregon: Brian and Ruth are late-twenties Vegetarian, Christian, home schooling nomads. They sold their home and bought a motor home, a converted bus, to live on the road for a while with their three young daughters. Brian had something of an Internet business that he ran from public-access computers, generally in public libraries. While in Grants Pass, Oregon, over a year ago, an anonymous caller told the police, who called in Oregon’s Services to Children and Families, that one of the Christine girls looked abused. She was thin and she looked dehydrated. It was a hot day, and the little girl was just getting over an illness.

The police, together with SCF, surrounded the Christine motor home,conducted an illegal search and interrogation of the Christine children,accused Brian and Ruth of child abuse and seized all three of their beautiful little girls. Brian was arrested for abuse because he acknowledged having physically disciplined one of his children as a part of her toilet training. Brian and Ruth were somewhat put out at this intrusion into their personal affairs and, distrustful of both the system and lawyers, represented themselves and their children during the ensuing year, growing increasingly demanding and resentful. SCF does not like having its nose tweaked, so it refused to give in and eventually moved to take the children permanently from the Christines.

At the time of the beginning of this saga, Ruth was 8 months pregnant. SCF demanded that child, too, so she disappeared for a time, had her child and left it in the custody of Brian’s mother, Teri Christine, back home in Indiana. Teri Christine has long since been designated the permanent guardian of baby Olivia. Teri Christine tried repeatedly to have Oregon’s SCF give the three older girls to her, too, under guardianship, but was continually rebuffed and ignored while those children were placed with strangers.

Finally, Brian and Ruth realized that they had gotten bad advice from others and began to cooperate, submitting to extensive psychological evaluations, which recommended counseling, visitation and eventual reunification. Despite that, SCF redoubled its efforts to terminate parental rights and adopt out the children.

This case is most assuredly a modern American tragedy and reflective of government bureaucracy run amuck. Admittedly, the Christines’ refusal to cooperate with officials or trust court-appointed lawyers has been a major cause of the plight in which they find themselves today. However, the fact remains that they have not had good advice or counsel and have at all times done what they felt was right according to their religious principles and moral code. At all times, they have considered themselves loving parents doing what was necessary to reunite their family.

The Christines have made a commitment to do whatever is necessary in order to wend their way out of the legal thicket into which they have been thrust. A review of the file documents provided the Christines’ attorney reveals inconsistencies between representations made by Oregon’s SCF and the medical charts. For example, SCF says the girls were all badly malnourished when first taken into custody, yet in only two weeks they were perfectly normal. Simple logic undercuts SCF’s position.

It should be remembered that the medical and psychological professionals who rendered opinions shortly after the girls were taken into custody make their living by providing these opinions to the state, opinions that often appear quite similar from case to case. Furthermore, the Christines were denied access to their children or any opportunity to have them independently evaluated, such that now the only record that exists is the one that the State has produced.

It took several diagnostic studies to reveal an alleged skull “fracture,” what came to be the linchpin of SCF’s case against Brian and Ruth. Multiple direct exams did not reveal it. Computerized Tomograhic studies (CT scan) did not reveal it. No films have been produced which do reveal it, yet the state finally found a doctor willing to conclude that such did exist. Even if such a fracture did exist, there is no evidence that it resulted from the disciplinary episode recounted supra. And, even if such a fracture did exist and did result from the disciplinary episode, there is no evidence that such was a natural consequence rather than the result of a freakish accident.

There are serious issues about how the children came into custody, how they were evaluated, and what their condition was, none of which have been properly explored and/or litigated. The children appear to have been handled and examined by the State in a sexually improper manner from the beginning, which the normal citizen could well perceive to be abuse well beyond anything with which the Christines have thus far been charged. It should also be remembered that Oregon’s SCF is an agency that has been rife with controversy and suffered a very large number of highly-publicized and negative outcomes in similar cases.

The Christines are parents with a strong sense of right and wrong. When they perceived the State to be acting wrong, their moral and religious precepts mandated the responses they provided. Unfortunately that was not calculated to bring about a happy result. Indeed, Oregon’s SCF grew more and more disenchanted with the Christines as time went on and they refused to knuckle under, and set upon a path of terminating their parental rights at a very early stage. That drove the Christines even further into the reactive mode they adopted from the beginning. SCF denied the Christines visitation with their children on supposition and speculation, then tried to tell a court that it was because of “threats.” SCF denied them visitation, save only two occurrences, but then told a court that their failure to visit more with their children was somehow because they were uncaring and unfit, in a twist of logic seen repeatedly in cases litigated with SCF in Oregon in recent years.

Though the paternal grandmother, Teri Christine, repeatedly requested that SCF give her custody of the girls during 2000 and into 2001, who knew her well from having lived in her home for over a year previously, and in whose home their baby sister, Olivia then lived, SCF chose instead to shuttle the girls from one foster home to another, putting the lie to the statutorily-espoused policy of favoring family members. Before things took a decidedly bad turn for the worse, with the alleged kidnapping, Brian and Ruth Christine had begun to cooperate with the State and had undergone extensive psychological evaluation and testing, again by a doctor who makes a significant portion of his income from such evaluations for the State. His conclusions: “Ruth is angry and hostile. Brian is untrusting.” Scarcely a surprise after what they had been through. He diagnosed them both with what has come to be the boilerplate diagnosis in these cases: Adjustment Disorder and Personality Disorder.

He recommended treatment, which he undoubtedly would be pleased to provide (paid for through the extensive federal funding created in recent years, which has prompted a dramatic upsurge in these termination cases in every state), and eventual reunification of the family. Nevertheless, SCF told the Christines the girls were to be taken from them permanently and adopted out. Their reaction should have been predictable. In a very real sense, the State drove them, due to the love they had for their girls and the feeling of isolation and desperation that they had been reduced to, to rescue their children at any cost. What parent could really fault them their motives or objectives? It was the means that leaves a good bit to be desired, of course. Right down the line, Oregon’s SCF was hostile, uncooperative and interested only in terminating the Christines’ parental rights.

The Oregon Attorney General’s office was steadfast in pursuit of termination and not at all receptive to discussions of anything that might eventually reunify this family, even spurning an offer by the Christines to stipulate to a Permanent Guardianship with the maternal grandparents, so as to hold the door open to a possible future reunion. The Christines already had been tried in the media and found guilty by every party to the proceedings but the court itself and been accorded the treatment deserved only by those convicted of true child abuse.

With nowhere to turn and about to lose everything in life that mattered to them, Brian took their children, allegedly at gunpoint, during a state-supervised visitation session and fled the state. The authorities caught up with them in Montana. Ruth sat in jail in Missoula and Brian was held in a cell in Billings. Brian and Ruth were extradited to Oregon and arraigned on a truly nasty set of criminal charges.

Before leaving Montana, however, Ruth Christine gave birth to Abbey Rose. Oregon’s SCF made clear its intent to move to seize the baby the moment it was born and had its proxy counterpart in Montana’s Child Protection Services visit Ruth in jail to terrorize her with the representation that nobody would be allowed in the delivery room but them and the doctor and the baby would be taken upon delivery and handed over to Oregon authorities for transport back to Oregon. No breast feeding, no bonding, no kidding. Via pro bono legal assistance, the Christines persuaded a Montana court to deny SCF baby Abbey Rose, giving guardianship over to Brian’s mother, Teri Christine. Mrs. Christine returned to Indiana with the baby, there to be united with Abbey’s older sister, Olivia, and initiated permanent guardianship proceedings.

In retaliation, Oregon’s SCF vowed a scorched-earth campaign to terminate the parental rights of Brian and Ruth in the three girls held in Oregon foster care. Meanwhile, Ruth’s parents moved temporarily from their home in Great Britain to Oregon, in an attempt to adopt the three older girls. Extracting a written promise from the Oregon Attorney General’s office that the three older girls would be placed with Ruth’s parents, both Brian and Ruth in a Solomon-like decision reluctantly stipulated to the termination of their parental rights, so as to spare their children any further trauma from the ongoing struggle. That adoption is now in process.

No small part in the Christines’ decision to give up their children was played by the Douglas County District Attorney’s office, which had steadfastly refused to offer any sort of plea bargain deal until after they had signed a stipulation to terminate parental rights. In fact, the Christines even waived their right to a speedy trial, so as to see to the handling of their children before standing trial on the criminal charges.

The DA’s offer was made last week, revealing the DA’s extreme bad faith in “negotiating,” when it stipulated that both Brian and Ruth would plead to a class I felony and accept 7-1/2 years each in prison...for rescuing their own children from what they perceived to be mistreatment at the hands of a rogue state agency. The DA’s offer was rejected out of hand and the Christines replaced all their appointed public defenders with the same pro bono attorney who had helped them with baby Abbey Rose in Montana and prepared to go to trial.

The state immediately cut off all payment for investigative and other trial preparation efforts, placing the Christines in a decidedly handicapped position for their effrontery in discharging their public defenders. Now the Court has delayed the trial for another month and one half, owing to its trial schedule. The Christines have already been imprisoned for six months, under bond so excessive as to be arguably unconstitutional. A third defendant, Matthew Gerawan, was easily bailed out by his wealthy family. No such resource is available to the Christines. Argument Clearly, the Christines qualify for reasonable bail. “Offences, except murder and treason, shall be bailable by sufficient sureties.” Or Const, art I, §14.

The Christines have been held under bail in excess of one-half-million dollars each. They have nothing. Their relatives are all of modest means. This is bail set so ludicrously high as to boggle the mind and to violate the Constitutional prohibition against excessive bail. “Excessive bail shall not be required.” Or Const, art I, §16. See also, US Const, 8th Am. The Christines are not flight risks. This is their first brush with the law, albeit a series of significant encounters which have grown like Topsy. There has never been a hint that they are not the honorable, God-fearing citizens that they appear to be. They will be present for trial, no matter what. ORS 135.230(7) sets forth the primary release criteria to be considered.

Of those, only the one concerning the nature of the charge is in play today, as the others clearly are not applicable. And, as noted below, merely because one is charged with multiple crimes for the same act does not translate into conviction. The state’s conduct in this case gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “piling on.” Of the various charges, the only one with any serious chance of success is custodial interference, misdemeanor flavor. Thus, the provisions concerning minimum bail deriving from charges with minimum required sentences should not apply. The state must not be allowed to subvert the constitutional prohibition against excessive bail through its own excessive charging of crimes.

The Christines are no danger to society. The only “danger” they previously presented was realized when they “rescued” their daughters. A repetition of that is rendered impossible, in view of the deal that has been reached whereby the girls are to be adopted by Ruth’s parents, the only people who will be able to come up with even a modest amount of bail money.

The Christines have now been denied investigative resources because they have chosen not to further suffer representation by public defenders and have been fortunate enough to secure private representation pro bono. While in jail, they cannot track down witnesses and retrieve evidence themselves. For this reason alone, they should be released immediately, pending trial. The first delay in trial on the criminal charges was due to the state linking the issue of their children to a plea bargain.

They acceded and suffered several months’ imprisonment while resolving that issue, only to be slapped in the face with a patently unacceptable plea bargain offer by the state when the time came. The second trial delay has come due to the court’s own trial schedule. The Christines have acceded to that delay in an accommodation to the Court, though it appears they could have proceeded to trial as scheduled.

The two trial delays, suffered by the Christines to accommodate the state in both instances, strongly support their request for a significant reduction in the bond now set for their release pending trial. It is one thing to charge a defendant with crimes. It is quite another to secure a conviction following trial by jury. Defendants respectfully suggest to the Court that, upon hearing all the evidence, a jury is likely to exonerate Ruth altogether and convict Brian of only misdemeanor custodial interference, if anything at all.

The lengthy recitation of facts in this memorandum is designed to support that suggestion by defendants today. The current bail is so ridiculous in view of the likely outcome as to be outlandish. Oregon Statutory authority creates a strong presumption in favor of release on personal recognizance. Collins v. Foster, 299 Or 90, 95, 698 P2d 953 (1985). Conclusion Brian and Ruth Christine have gotten themselves into a very deep hole with regard to the criminal charges now pending against them. They deserve better. However, the initial abuse charges are far from a foregone conclusion and based upon highly suspect procedures and examinations.

The balance of the criminal charges are related to what they did out of love for their children, and, in a very real sense, in pursuit of the children’s best interests. The defenses of necessity, defense of another and diminished capacity are very properly used in the case at bar today. What matters today is that the State seeks to complete the destruction of a family that it undertook that hot day a year ago last August, with suspect procedures and examinations. We have a young couple who desperately love their children and who really did nothing particularly wrong, who have been driven by the State to such a mental state that the State now has had them jailed for over six months and seeks to punish them for manifesting their love by, in their minds, “rescuing” their daughters from a situation that provided them no alternative.

Wherefore, defendants respectfully request that Ruth Christine be released, pending trial, on her own recognizance and that Brian Christine be released, pending trial, upon the posting of bail of no more than $10,000. March 5, 2002 Respectfully submitted,
__________________________________________
Edgar J. Steele, OSB #93135 Attorney for Defendants Brian & Ruth Christine