‘They trampled on all of our parental rights’
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John was out shopping for his youngest son’s birthday in July 2021 when he received a panicked call from his wife. A state child welfare worker and police officers were at their home, trying to take away their autistic son. The social worker claimed the Christian family’s refusal to affirm his apparently newfound sexual orientation was child abuse.
John raced home in time to record a video of the harrowing encounter.
“I’m going to take the child with me,” Edwina Nimley, a casework specialist for the Maryland Department of Human Services, can be heard saying in a video of the incident reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Though the boy refused to go with her, Nimley tried again. “You’re afraid of me? You have nothing to be afraid of. The police is here but you have to go. This is the law,” Nimley said in the recording. “I need to talk to you separately from your parents. I need to take him to a safe place, separate from your parents.”
John’s son, who was 16 at the time, remained with his parents that July day, but John’s battle for custody of his son was far from over.
