Ok, this story is so messed up that it is likely going to cause you to rage, and have a terrible day. It’s probably one of the most egregious abuse of legal power I’ve seen in a while, and it’s all courtesy of the corruption that is religion.

It begins with a mother trying to save her family from their abusive father. Rachel Hawkins is a mother of four, and she is desperate to protect her two youngest, aged 10 and 13. So much so that when the family courts ordered her to participate (and pay) in “reunification therapy”, she refused, and was sent to jail for it. For those of you unfamiliar with this highly controversial form of therapy, it is an attempt to help reunite families after there have been instances of abuse. This is usually done not for the benefit of the children, but for the parents, who can often suffer from depression due to “parental alienation”. On paper, it’s meant to try and mend broken relationships. In practice, it simply exposes children to their abusers, often with deadly consequences.

Many of the organizations that offer this form of therapy are merely religious organizations in disguise. Since these groups are uninterested in the scientific method, or evidence, they have made all kinds of claims of the benefits of such programs. So much so that family courts are now using these programs to force families broken by abuse to mend themselves forcefully together.

In the case of the Hawkins, the father, a retired police officer by the name of Michael, was credibly accused of sexual abuse by his adopted 17 year old daughter starting at 6 years of age. When one of his sons confronted Michael about the abuse, he attempted to drown him. Michael is under house arrest, with an ankle monitor while he awaits trial. Meanwhile, a Colorado court has determined that poor Mikey is suffering from parental alienation as the result of his actions, and his two remaining children have been ordered to attend the Reunification therapy in order to fix this relationship, and are forcing the mother to pay for it.

The mother said she lost legal representation in the custody dispute after accruing $85,000 in legal bills, which she couldn’t afford. She was sentenced to jail without any representation from a lawyer.

Now, it needs to be stated plainly that the person offering this junk counseling, Christine Bassett, operates out of Lighthouse Christian Counseling”, which advertises itself as “integrating faith into the counseling process”. This means that the court has essentially forced the mother to comply with ineffective and dangerous therapy courtesy of religious nutbags.

Rachel has started a GoFundMe in order to hire a lawyer. Given the facts of the case, she has a good chance of winning, if she is able to raise the 100k she needs. She is already halfway there. If anyone wants to help her fight the good fight, I invite you to help her.