What Role Did Free Birth Society Leader Play In Infant Death?

Photo Credit Facebook

New Details Emerge of Free Birth Society Leader’s Role in Infant death

by Katie Paulson

Last week Free Birth Society announced that their Facebook groups were closing following the tragic death of an infant in California. As the community created by Free Birth Society mourns the loss of the group, former members joined other Facebook groups. Recently a conversation opened in one of the groups regarding the end of Free Birth Society and the loss of the infant. Through the discussion, mothers revealed their attempts to help Free Birth Momma. Several expressed Emilee Saldaya blocked them for voicing their concerns. Perhaps the most shocking detail provided was the lengths Emilee took to prevent members from helping Free Birth Momma seek help.

In the status to the Free Birth Society community, Emilee Saldaya distanced herself from the mother. She stated that her involvement with the mother was limited in scope. Emilee insisted she only spoke with the mother briefly via Facebook Messenger and a few text messages.

However, Free Birth Momma told the group in posts that she had spoken to Emilee. She told the group Emilee had been a great support to her during the labor. While the mother admitted to speaking to Emilee, there is no indication how the communication took place.

Emilee blamed trolls and haters for spreading vicious lies about her. She claimed she received death threats. Due to all of those issues, she decided the group needed to move off Facebook to a safer environment. She announced to the group a new paid membership group would be forming soon.

As the group disbanded, members sought other Facebook groups associated with unassisted birth. In one group, members started talking about their experience with Free Birth Society. The details provided about the group shed light on the lengths Emilee took to prevent Free Birth Momma from seeking medical help.

When a member told the group Emilee kicked her out of Free Birth Society, others within the group shared similar stories. Each of the women that Emilee removed said they tried to help Free Birth Momma seek medical assistance. Despite their concerns, they allege Emilee told them the mother and baby were fine.

Following the admission by the first woman, others responded with similar stories.

What the mothers shared is consistent with the information our sources provided us about the birth. Several of our sources attempted to provide help to the mother. Our sources told us Emilee deleted their comments, and the group removed one of our sources for trying to help the mother.

Other members expressed their outrage that Emilee turned the tragedy of the death into a way to make money. They expressed outrage that Emilee would be charging members to participate in a group off of Facebook. Many felt Emilee’s motives were disingenuous and profit driven.

In one comment, a member suggested that Emilee sought assistance for the birth of her child.

Another mother shared that she attempted to alert Emilee about the rumors circulating following the death of the infant. According to the mother, Emilee deleted her from the group and blocked her as a friend.

All of the statements made by the former members contradict the statement Emilee released publically last week. She told the community last week she had limited contact with the mother.

Emilee says she offered no medical advice to the mother and only spoke to her briefly.

Since the death of the infant, there has been considerable criticism of the group for not helping the mother. However, after reviewing the exchanges by former members, there is little doubt that Emilee holds some level of responsibility for the infant’s death.

To break down what members said about the event, they allege:

• Emilee deleted any comments by members that suggested the mother should seek assistance.
• Emilee admitted to mothers in private conversations with members she was in contact with the mother.
• Members allege Emilee told them the mother and baby were fine and did not need help.
• Former members suggest the radicalization of the group created a toxic environment for women. When members needed assistance, they felt shamed by the group to speak up or seek help.
• Several members believe Emilee is using the death of the infant as a way to seek financial gain.
• The group contained inexperienced mothers with no birth experience. Because of their inexperience, members did not know warning signs during a birth.

Many of the mothers expressed gratitude that the group was shutting down. The current group, the women, are in does not block members from discussing hospital intervention if it is needed.

What we learned in the investigation is that many of these members were victims of Emilee’s poor choices. Women attempted to help the mother, and Emilee took great lengths to stop them. Many of them described feeling depressed and guilty for the infant’s death.

Our reporting of the death has always been focused on the toxic community Free Birth Society created with their rules. Now it appears that members feel the same way.

The real question is if Emilee will ever take responsibility for her role in the death of the infant. Based on all of our research and reading hundreds of conversations, we are doubtful that Emilee will ever take the blame.

Emilee’s motives are more evident with each passing day that her power was most important. Her desire to make money and create a radical community is more important than the safety of its members.

We believe Emilee Saldaya is a dangerous cult leader.

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Why “Religious Freedom” Is A Public Health Menace

Religious Freedom A Major Health Hazard

The Trump administration – spurred on by the Alliance Defending Freedom – wants to hand religious medical professionals the right to refuse treatment in the name of ‘religious freedom’. Our newest Australian PM is promising to prioritise legislation to extend ‘religious freedom’ here.

This could be disastrous for all LGBTI people, especially trans people, giving ‘religious’ hospitals, clinics and medical professionals the right to refuse to treat people with whose ‘lifestyles’ they disagree.

Religion is already responsible for many abortions – by blocking full and guilt free access to contraception and sex education – while at the same time condemning the women who access abortion services.

It denies children essential information to help them grow up, and to protect themselves. Religious squeamishness is the principal barrier to proper sex and relationships in schools: our new Pentacostal PM described it as “skin curling”.

Real health hazards arise from the practice of “religious freedom”. Giving mumbo-jumbo – from whatever religion – precedence over scientific facts, causes death, sickness and injury, especially if you’re LGBTI, female, or a child.

CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS

Adherents of Christian Science believe that illness is the result of an imperfect connection with Jesus, which can be corrected through prayer. Medical treatment is frowned upon, but not outright banned. That hasn’t stopped dozens of Christian Scientists preferring to face legal prosecution, or even death, rather than consult a medical professional.

The much-loved and quintessentially English comedienne Joyce Grenfell, a staunch Christian Scientist, refused treatment when she developed cancer of the eye, until it was too late, and the disease had spread to her spine.

Christian Science nursing homes and hospices generally don’t permit the use of medical interventions of any kind, including pain relief. Consequently mortality rates are higher among Christian Scientists than those using conventional medicine.

Children are often sacrificed on the altar of their parent’s beliefs. Rita Swan of Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD) has documented  deaths of children in Christian Science families due to:

“… meningitis, diabetes, diphtheria, measles, kidney infection, septicemia, cancer, and appendicitis. She has found outbreaks of polio and measles at Christian Science camps and schools; she has interviewed adults who, because of diseases and injuries that went untreated during childhood, became profoundly deaf, or lame, or suffered permanent organ damage.”

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

The 6m strong worldwide Watchtower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) teach that blood transfusions, even if needed to save a person’s life, must not be accepted. An adult Jehovah’s Witness who willingly and knowingly accepts a blood transfusion is  committing a sin and might forfeit his or her eternal life.

This makes it especially hazardous to be a woman. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found that pregnant women who are Jehovah’s witnesses are six times more likely to die, three times more likely to have serious complications than average, and have a 130 fold increased risk of death from major obstetric haemorrhage.

Abused children are basically told the leave it up to God to take action. Proof that an offence has occurred requires either:

A confession on the part of the alleged perpetrator, or

The testimony of at least two witnesses to a single case of abuse, or

The testimony of one witness to abuse, followed by testimony of a second witness to another instance of abuse.

If proof cannot be obtained, elders are to explain to the accuser that nothing more can be done…the congregation will continue to view the one accused as an innocent person. The question of his guilt or innocence can be safely left in Jehovah’s hands.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM

I can’t think of child abuse without immediately thinking of Roman Catholicism. Not great shakes for child health here, either, with a devastating trail of clerical child abuse cases and subsequent misery and suicide. Many many more still being uncovered. Nor we can have any confidence that cases are not still occurring, due to the clergy’s refusal to report confessions of abuse to the secular authorities, and the absence of any clear action on the part of the hierarchy – beyond trying to blame it all on gay priests.

Adults don’t do too well under Roman Catholicism either, especially in the developing world, where the church campaigns against the provision of condoms and spreads the lie that they don’t protect against AIDS. Stephen Fry nails it.

The church – in common with the rest of the more fanatical Christian sects – is also vehemently against abortion – something that wouldn’t be necessary nearly so often if all of them could manage a grown-up attitude to sex-education and contraception.

Women in Roman Catholic hospitals are routinely denied proper healthcare if it might involve anything that might even look like an abortion, or curtail their fertility.

The Trump administration is poised to hand religious conservatives another victory: a slew of new federal rules that would give religious health care providers wide latitude to refuse to treat patients or perform procedures if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.

FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS

Evangelicals, or as I like to call them, Christaliban, like our new PM, claim depression and schizophrenia are demons that can be cast out. Perth-based Set Right notes that depression is a “common low ranking demon” while schizophrenia is “another demon we have met often and evicted”.

The Australian Medical Association dismisses that view as unscientific and potentially harmful. Dr Choong-Siew Yong, a practising psychiatrist who represents psychiatry on the AMA’s Federal Council said he was concerned about untrained practitioners making claims that contradict the science. He warned that claiming someone was possessed could reinforce their delusions and stop them getting proper care.

The Catholic Church has also warned of an increase in possessions and the need for exorcisms, with some priests blaming popular culture series such as Twilight and Harry Potter.

Mercy Ministries, an offshoot of Hillsong Church financed in part by Gloria Jeans Coffees was forced to close down after it was revealed it ‘treated’ mentally disturbed women in its care, including anorexics, with exorcisms rather than referring them for medical help.

SCIENTOLOGY

One hardly need bother listing Scientology, so I will refer to “this marriage bureau for gay Hollywood stars needing pretty young wives as cover” only briefly. One of the basic tenets of Scientology is that mental disease does not exist. “Followers are not allowed to seek treatment for mental or emotional issues,” said Scrape TV Religion analyst Bertram Gas.

John Travolta’s son Jett, who died following a seizure, suffered from Autism, for which Scientology will not allow treatment. Faced with criticism over this, the Church has reportedly now disallowed medical treatment of any kind for its followers, which at least will help them die out sooner.

Scientology operates a subsidiary whose sole aim is to discredit and dismantle the field of psychiatry, the “Citizens Commission on Human Rights”.

ISLAM

Women don’t do too well under Islam, largely because of the idiotic rules governing the segregation of the sexes. Male medical practitioners may not be alone with female patients, and often don’t examine them directly, use dolls or asking the woman to point at the site of the pain. I culled the following from several Islamic advice sites:

“Male doctors who are not close relatives are not permitted to look at women or to touch them, except in specific situations.

If it is possible to diagnose and treat the illness by merely listening to something, it is not permissible for him to look at or touch the female patient.

If it possible for him to diagnose and treat the illness by merely looking at the female patient, it is not permissible for him to touch her.

He may only look at or touch the areas whose observation or touch is needed to diagnose or treat the illness.

His looking and touching must be free of any desire whatsoever.

He must ensure that he avoids being in impermissible seclusion (khalwa) with the female patient: this is dangerous enough when the female doesn’t reveal the parts of her body that are impermissible for him to look at, so how should it be when she reveals such parts of her body for him to look at or even touch! He should therefore make sure that the room’s door is open or that another woman (such as the secretary) is present with them.

“All of the above rulings also apply to a Muslim female who visits a male doctor whenever it is permissible for her to do so (in other words, she may only allow the doctor to look at or to touch what is needed in order to diagnose and treat the illness).”

The net effect is to delay accurate diagnosis and proper treatments of women’s complaints: the plus side is, Islam encourages the training of female doctors to help ease this problem. But a woman doctor can’t treat a man except when there is no male doctor available, or if the matter cannot be delayed as in the case of accidents.

HINDUISM

Hinduism seems reasonably benign, though there are some odd ideas about conception. In vitro fertilisation is only allowed when the egg and sperm belong to the couple in question. Using a sperm bank or sperm from any living person other than the husband amounts to “bearing a child outside holy wedlock”, and is considered adultery. Abortion is a non-no, except to save the life of the mother, even if the foetus is potentially deformed or likely to be mentally impaired.

AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIAN LOBBY

The Australian Christian Lobby says homosexuality is bad for your health, so we should all come with a health warning. Jim Wallace, the former front man, claimed that gays and lesbians die 20 years sooner that upright godfearing folk like him – a lie taken straight from the propaganda put about by countless American “Christian” anti-LGBTI groups. Crikey concluded the idea was “mostly rubbish,” while Chrys Stevenson painstakingly traced the sources and found they were just plain wrong.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM = DEATH

In short, it is no exaggeration to say that prioritising the ‘religious freedom’ of a few cuts short lives, and forces others to live and die in pain and misery. Far from needing more of it, we need less.

About the author

Doug Pollard

Veteran gay writer and speaker, Doug was one of the founders of the UKs pioneering GLBTI newspaper Gay News (1972) , and of the second, Gay Week, and is a former Features Editor of Him International. He presented news and current affairs on JOY 94.9 FM Melbourne for more than ten years. “Doug is revered, feared and reviled in equal quantities, at times dividing people with his journalistic wrath. Yet there is no doubt this grandpa-esque bear keeps everyone abreast of anything and everything LGBT across the globe.” (Daniel Witthaus, “Beyond Priscilla”, Clouds of Magellan, Melbourne, 2014)

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Hillsong Church founder under police investigation

Hillsong Church founder under police investigation

via Garry McNab

© AAP Image/Paul Miller In 2014, Brian Houston gave evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.  

 

 

Brian Houston, the founder of the Hillsong Church, is under investigation by New South Wales police over his handling of the sex crimes committed by his father Frank Houston.

Frank Houston was a Pentecostal pioneer, a leading Assemblies of God pastor who preyed on young boys in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and 1970s.

The first allegations of Frank Houston’s pedophilia emerged in the late 1990s, when Brian Houston was the Australian National President of the Assemblies of God, part of the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world.

In 2014, Brian Houston gave evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, which later found he had failed to take the matter to the police and had a conflict of interest in dealing with the complaints against his father.

It has emerged that in the wake of the Royal Commission’s findings, NSW Police began looking into his handling of his father’s crimes, an investigation that was suspended because of lack of evidence.

A NSW police spokesman said the investigation has been reopened and is now “current and active”.

Last night on 60 Minutes, one of Frank Houston’s victims, Brett Sengstock, spoke for the first time of his abuse by Frank Houston as a seven-year-old boy and his ongoing quest for justice.

A key witness at the Royal Commission, where he was known only as ‘AHA’, Brett Sengstock gave up his anonymity to tell his story.

For more information on Brett Sengstock, click here.

To read a response to Royal Commission report – from Hillsong Church Board and Elders, please click here.

To watch ‘Crossing the Line’ in full, and for more on 60 Minutes, head to the official website.

 

 

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Brexit is God’s plan to crush secularism and boost ‘biblical standards’

Brexit is God’s plan to crush secularism and boost ‘biblical standards’

 

In the midst of the ongoing chaos surrounding Brexit, a Christian blowhard called David Hathaway – founder and President of Eurovision Mission to Europe – insists that Britain’s planned exit from the European Union will free the country from the EU’s ‘ungodly yoke’.

 

David Hathaway. Image via YouTube.

The evangelist is  reported here as saying:

I believe that prophetically this is God’s way forward for us as a nation to take a lead in returning to Biblical standards in Europe, free from the secularism of the French Revolution and Napoleonic law.

Now that the referendum is over we, as Christians, must now act decisively.

I believe that just as we prayed earnestly for God’s will to be done, we must now believe that the outcome is part of God’s plan both for us as Christians and the British nation as a whole.

We desperately need to continue to pray for unity in a nation divided, but also that God will bring a spirit of repentance and forgiveness on both sides. I believe that prophetically this is God’s way forward for us as a nation to take a lead in returning to Biblical standards in Europe, free from the secularism of the French Revolution and Napoleonic law.

I believe that the prayers of so many of God’s people has set us free from an ungodly yoke which has marginalised Christian faith.

Hathaway blames the EU for:

Making it almost impossible to teach our children the truth of the Word of God regarding marriage between one man and one woman and teach the acceptability of sex change to very young children. Under the guise of ‘human rights’ legislation, the EU has also sought to prevent us from openly testifying of our faith in Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation.

We must return to our Judeo/Christian heritage and resist the encroachment of secularism and false religion. One could ask whether the sudden resignation of our Prime Minister who supported ungodly laws, such as the legalisation of same sex marriage upon our nation, was indeed God’s judgement and a challenge to restore true biblical values not only in politics but also the Church.

Digital manipulated image via YouTube

I guess he was referring to the departure of David Cameron, a Bible-believing Christian and multi-millionaire who was replaced by a vicar’s daughter, the utterly incompetent Theresa May, above, who will most likely be looking for a new job shortly . . . possibly as an extra in a zombie movie.

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