VIDEO: Maine Court Rules Against Mom Fighting to Take Child to Church

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled on Tuesday against a mother who has been fighting an order preventing her from taking her child to a church in Westbrook.

The child’s mother, identified as Emily Bickford, and father, Matthew Bradeen, have been involved in a legal battle over their 12-year-old daughter’s attendance at a local church, WTMW reported.

A district judge sided with Bradeen, “ruling that some of the church’s teachings could be psychologically harmful to the girl,” the outlet said. “The order allows Bradeen to solely decide on his daughter’s involvement with Calvary Chapel Church. When it comes to any other religious organization, the order states that the parents share rights and must discuss decisions.”

In November, legal advocates said the case’s outcome could have ramifications for Americans across the nation, per the Standing for Freedom Center.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in November regarding the mother appealing the custody ruling that prohibited her child from going to their church.

On November 12, one of Bickford’s attorneys, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, Mat Staver, said he was at the state Supreme Court to present oral arguments in the case:

A Maine trial judge has issued a shocking order: Emily Bickford cannot take her own 12-year-old daughter to church. Even worse, the judge gave the hostile father sole authority to prevent this young girl from reading the Bible, saying the Lord’s Prayer, or associating with any “religious philosophy” or Christian teaching — stripping Emily of her God-given and constitutional right to raise her child in her faith.

However, in its ruling, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, discussing the lower court’s decision, said:

[T]he court allocated sole parental rights and responsibilities to Bradeen
regarding the child’s involvement with Calvary Chapel Greater Portland.
Regarding the child’s participation in any other religious activity, the court
ordered that the parties “shall continue to share parental rights and
responsibilities and are required to jointly research the church, organization, or teachings and discuss whether [the child’s] participation and exposure [are] in her best interests,” and allocated final authority to Bradeen if they are unable to agree. [Emphasis added.]

Staver said the child and her mother found “hope and healing” at the Bible-teaching church, and the girl later told her father she wanted to be baptized. However, he allegedly went to court in order to stop it from happening.

“The father even hired a former Marxist professor to testify that Calvary Chapel is a ‘cult.’ The judge accepted this outrageous claim, mocked Emily’s faith by writing ‘god’ in lowercase throughout the ruling,” Staver explained, “and condemned the church for praying over mother and child.”

According to the Standing for Freedom Center, during the November hearing a district court judge who is a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concluded the child experienced “psychological harm” through her attendance at the church.

(The ACLU has recently been in the news for joining forces with the Satanic Temple to sue state officials over the rejection of a “family-friendly” holiday event at the Iowa capitol, according to Breitbart News.)

In its opinion Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court said it found “the child was harmed by Bickford’s decisions to expose the child to messages that characterized Bradeen as an ‘enemy’ who seeks to ‘persecute’ the child and her faith, and by Bickford’s unwillingness to prevent the child from receiving those messages or to take any other steps to reduce the risk of alienating her from Bradeen.”

“Thus, far from ‘declar[ing] that the Christian religion is psychologically harmful,’ the court’s finding reflected simply that it is harmful for a child to hear negative and frightening messages about one parent from the other parent or the other parent’s authority figures,” the court continued.

Liberty Counsel is planning to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case involving the parents and the child, according to the WMTW article.