In my recent series on HSLDA and child abuse<\/a>, I revealed that HSLDA has lobbied against bills banning excessive corporal punishment<\/a> and in favor of cutting down on the ways child abuse tips may be made<\/a>, but at the time I wrote that series I hadn\u2019t found hard evidence of HSLDA defending and praising known child abusers. I now have that information.<\/p>\n It may make you sick to your stomach. It may make you feel the urge to vomit. It did all of that to me and more. But it also made me angry. Angry, because I found that HSLDA\u2019s attorneys have looked in the face of child abusers and called them \u201cgood parents,\u201d \u201cloving parents,\u201d even \u201cheroes.\u201d In this post I\u2019m going to run through three cases, looking at at horrific acts of abuse and at HSLDA\u2019s response to these cases. I\u2019m going to try to run through this at a quick pace without getting too bogged down.<\/p>\n In 2005, homeschool parents Michael and Sharon Gravelle were accused of child abuse and their eleven adopted children were removed from their home. The Akron Beacon Journal reported HSLDA\u2019s response<\/a>:<\/p>\n Scott Somerville, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association in Virginia, said he talked with Michael Gravelle before the story broke in the media, and he believes this is a family trying to help special children.<\/p>\n When a social worker visited the house last week, there was no resistance to an inspection, said Somerville, whose organization represents home-schooling families on legal matters.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had nothing to hide,\u201d Somerville said. \u201cHe told me why they adopted these children and told me the problems they were trying to solve.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he is a hero.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, when faced with accusations of child abuse against Gary Gravelle, a homschooling father, HSLDA attorney Scott Somerville declared Gravelle \u201ca hero.\u201d Why? Presumably because of he had adopted special needs children. But what actually happened in the Gravelle home?\u00a0Let\u2019s take a look<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Gravelles\u2019 children told [Lt. Randy]\u00a0Sommers of punishments including \u201dspankings with a board, name calling and being held under water,\u201d Sommers said.<\/p>\n One boy said he had \u201dhis face shoved against a bathroom wall until his nose bled,\u201d Sommers testified.<\/p>\n The sleeping arrangements for some of the children were homemade enclosures made with wood and chicken wire that had\u00a0alarms\u00a0on the doors. County authorities call the enclosures \u201dcages,\u201d while the Gravelles say they were enclosed beds used to protect the children.<\/p>\n The children would soil their beds rather than open the door and go to the bathroom because they did not want to trigger the alarm, they also told the investigator. Another boy told the detective he was forced to write \u201din long hand\u201d a book out of the Bible before he was allowed out of his enclosed\u00a0bed, Sommers testified.<\/p>\n When asked whether he believed the children\u2019s accounts, Sommers said he did because many of the stories were repeated by more than one child.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cI think he is a hero,\u201d HSLDA attorney Scott Somerville said of a man who kept his adopted children in cages<\/em> and punished them by holding their heads under water in the toilet<\/em><\/a>. Oh, and guess what? It turns out that Michael Gravelle had previously sexually abused his biological daughter<\/a>. \u201cHero\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n Okay, next case. In 1992 six year old Hannah Carrol, an adopted child with Down syndrome, died of horrific burns caused by bleach<\/a>.<\/p>\n Six-year-old Hannah Carroll raised her left arm \u201cin a protective position\u201d to try to stop bleach from getting poured on her \u2013 and then suffered horribly after it was allowed to soak into her skin for at least an hour, an expert testified Thursday.<\/p>\n That testimony directly conflicts with her Cedarville family\u2019s account of the incident \u2013 which experts called \u201cincredulous\u201d and \u201cimpossible.\u201d Family members have said Hannah poured the bleach on herself, got immediate attention for the accident, and acted normally until her death\u00a0three\u00a0days later. Presented in the third day of a Greene County coroner\u2019s inquest into the deaths of Hannah and three fellow adopted siblings, the testimony by a nationally recognized authority on burns compelled two top county officials to consider further action.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n Dr. Glenn Donald Warden, chief of staff of Shriners Burns Institute in Cincinnati since 1985, said\u00a0photos, medical reports and his own experiments contradict the family\u2019s account. A man whose credentials fill 44 pages, Warden \u201cis probably the country\u2019s foremost burns expert,\u201d Schenck said.<\/p>\n He said the Carroll family had to know Hannah needed medical treatment. In his 23 years in working with burns, Warden said he\u2019d never seen a case as bad as Hannah\u2019s go untreated. She suffered second-degree burns over 27 percent of her body, and to the cornea of her left eye.<\/p>\n \u201cBurns are painful. They\u2019re probably the most painful injury we can sustain,\u201d he said. \u201cCompounded by the burned eye, the child\u2019s pain had to be \u201calmost incomprehensible,\u201d Warden said.<\/p>\n Her injuries were life-threatening but she could\u2019ve been saved if treated. Hannah died from burn shock \u2013 something that happens as a result of the body\u2019s own defense mechanisms.<\/p>\n Fluids rush to the burned areas, leaving little fluid in other parts of the body. As a result, the body shuts down the digestive system and next causes the kidneys to fail in order to allow continued nourishment of the brain and heart, Warden explained.<\/p>\n Autopsy reports show Hannah was extremely dehydrated and her kidneys were failing. Given these facts, he said, there\u2019s no way the child could\u2019ve been acting normally, as the family said.<\/p>\n The autopsy report notes her entire digestive and waste tracts were empty \u2013 which would take about 24 hours without food, other witnesses said.<\/p>\n The burn was so serious that it would\u2019ve required skin grafting \u201con the entire front of her chest\u201d and Warden said a burn that serious couldn\u2019t possibly have been caused by exposure to bleach for only about five minutes, as family members stated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once investigations were launched into Hannah\u2019s death, it came out that three more of Timothy and Kathleen Carroll\u2019s ten adopted special needs children had died under suspicious circumstances<\/a>, all within nine months of Hannah\u2019s death. Several months into the investigation, one of those additional deaths was definitively ruled a homicide<\/a>\u2014as was Hannah\u2019s death. The Carrolls never admitted to killing the children, but they ultimately\u00a0plead\u00a0guilty to child neglect for not seeking life-saving medical treatment for Hannah.<\/p>\n In 1995, Isaiah and Samuel, two of the Carrolls\u2019 special needs adopted children, who had been in foster care since Hannah\u2019s death two years before, were returned to the Carrolls on the condition that\u00a0they\u00a0be subject to increased monitoring. A battle immediately began over whether or not the Carrolls should be allowed to homeschool their children. As the local newspaper put it<\/a>: \u201cThe Carrolls have insisted on educating their own children, Mrs. Carroll said, because they can provide for the children\u2019s spiritual needs and a nurturing environment.\u201d When a judge ruled<\/a> that the Carrolls must send the children to public school, HSLDA took the case, defending the Carrolls\u2019 right to homeschool. Here is how HSLDA described the case to its members (Home School Court Report, Vol. 11 No. 4<\/a>):<\/p>\n Tim and Kathleen Carroll are a loving Christian couple who have adopted 10 special needs children over the course of their marriage. As a result of the unfortunate death of 4 of these severely handicapped children, the Carrolls have faced criminal prosecution and children\u2019s services intervention for the last three years. Though their oldest child, a 19-year-old, is not permitted to live at home, the custody of all of their minor children has been returned to them. The only issue remaining to be decided is whether Mr. and Mrs. Carroll may be permitted to home school a 12-year-old child with cerebral palsy and a 7-year-old child with Down\u2019s syndrome.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n In a surprising ruling, the court held that the best interest of the children include public schooling for Isaiah and Samuel. The court explained its decision by saying, \u201cIf these children were children without the special problems facing them, the Carrolls would have the constitutional and statutory right to home school them as they are doing with Hosea.\u201d This abuse of discretion and violation of the parent\u2019s fundamental rights to give their children a Christian education has been appealed to the Ohio Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Even if they did not intentionally burn their daughter Hannah to death with bleach, even if it actually was an\u00a0accident\u00a0(which seems highly doubtful<\/em> given the facts of the case),\u00a0the\u00a0Carrolls still refused to seek medical care for her as she lay in searing pain with horrific burns covering 27% of her body, including one of eyes. They waited and did nothing as she stopped eating and her organs began shutting down one by one. This all they admitted to. And yet, HSLDA termed them \u201ca loving Christian couple\u201d who had suffered the \u201cunfortunate death\u201d of four of their children. In the end, HSLDA\u00a0won the case<\/a>, and the Carrolls were allowed to homeschool Samuel and Isaiah.<\/p>\n Okay, deep breath. One more. In 2010 Child Protective Services removed five homeschooled children, several of whom were adopted, from their parents, John and Carolyn Jackson. We first look at a 2011 World Net Daily article on the case, titled \u201cFather: \u2018My Children Are Being Held Hostage.'\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s every parent\u2019s nightmare.<\/p>\n Army Major John Jackson and his wife Carolyn, devout Christian homeschoolers with a history of serving as adoptive and foster parents, had their five children taken away in April 2010 by the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services \u2013 and despite the collapse of the evidence against the Jacksons, DYFS hasn\u2019t returned the children to their parents.<\/p>\n During the course of a nine-month legal battle to regain custody of their children, the Jacksons say they have encountered prejudice against their religion and homeschooling as they fight a state agency determined to see the children adopted by strangers no matter what the evidence says.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve got all my children,\u201d John Jackson lamented. \u201cMy children are being held hostage. They\u2019ve been kidnapped.<\/p>\n