In June, Donna Provencher, a defector from a radical traditionalist Catholic right-wing cult nestled in the Shenandoah Valley, got a phone call at her home in the San Antonio area — where she lives with her partner, stepchild and her three small children — from a community organizer in her family’s town of Front Royal, Virginia: a throng of radical religious pitchforked book banners was flooding the local 100-year-old library with requests to remove more than 130 LGBTQ+ books. Could she help? 

A professional journalist and cult survivor with a passion for healing spiritual trauma due to her own C-PTSD recovery journey, she said yes, stepping into a position as a Facebook admin for Save Samuels, the group seeking to save the library, and helping full-time as a volunteer with communications and media relations. Now the fate of Samuels Public Library — poised to close Oct. 1 due to the far-right Board of Supervisors withholding its funds after the library refused to jettison books with LGBTQ+ content — is major international news, covered in the Associated Press, The Guardian and the Washington Post. 

Minutes after Donna, who is immunocompromised, arrived home from a three-day severe Covid hospitalization a few weeks ago, she received word that her autistic 4-year-old son — who likes to wear dresses and tutus because he has a hyperfixation on Disney Princesses and loves centrifugal stims like twirling — had been doxxed, cyberstalked and cyberharassed by the cult of right-wing radical traditionalist Catholics across state lines — targeted for his disability, autism, and his gendernonconforming status, his photos stolen from a locked, private Save Samuels group and intentionally and maliciously disseminated widely across Warren County on two separate major cult anti-LGBTQ+ hate lists. 

While he was solo wearing dresses in several photos, one photo in particular was of concern: her son in a dress with the superintendent of his school district and his entire joint special ed preschool class - totally unredacted with all children’s faces visible. 

A quick Google image reverse search would lead directly to her son’s school district and school. And her son is the only boy wearing a dress in the photo. In the text of several publicly distributed emails and newsletters and stalking, defamatory posts on Facebook, Donna was called “deranged”, a “child groomer” and a “sexualizer” of small children. Her son was roundly mocked for his clothing in a public forum and the posts, dripping with ableism, implied that her gifted child was somehow too stupid to choose his own clothes and therefore she must be forcing him to be a girl and pushing the “trans agenda” on him. 

Three separate doxxing and cyberstalking emails went out. At least seven individuals are under investigation but three are already known factually to have sent the emails by name. There is an open police investigation in two states. In Texas, the detective is trying to throw out the case due to lack of interest in investigating it, and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office is moving at a snail’s pace despite the identities of many of the cyberstalkers of the 4-year-old disabled child being widely known. 

Meanwhile, the full text of two of the three doxxing and stalking emails remains published online and one is visible to the public, endangering her child, and the Sheriff’s Office has made no move to force its removal or arrest the perpetrators. And Clean Up Samuels - the cult right-wing organization seeking to rid the library of LGBTQ+ books or close it down — also this week published an information packet naming her, first and last name, as a “defender of porn for kids” a serious and alarming “knowingly false report of a crime”under Virginia’s penal code (63.2 § 63.2-1513).

It isn’t looking like Sheriff Mark Butler and Major Robert Mumaw of WCSO are taking these cybercrimes seriously. Could this be because Butler is close friends with — and attends church with — some of the perpetrators?

Dear Sheriff Butler and Major Mumaw:

A young mother and her disabled preschooler are being harassed, exploited and cyberstalked by friends of Sheriff Butler’s in your jurisdiction. 

The general public demands that you investigate these claims immediately and see these people brought to justice. One of the victims’ names is Donna Provencher and she has already been in contact with your office repeatedly regarding these claims. 

Her story will be shared with journalists and influencers that have the ability to take this issue to a global scale. You are about to have millions of eyes on this from people around the world. If you don’t bring to justice the people responsible for cyberstalking this autistic preschooler and his mother, you will have a lot of people asking why.

Sheriff, if you are close to these perpetrators, now is the time to distance yourself and bring them to justice. Do this before the whole world bundles you in with this group of degenerate far-right radicals and spineless criminals whose lives are so miserable they feel the need to criminally harass a disabled 4-year-old. This needs to be investigated properly and thoroughly — and as a hate crime. This investigation also needs to be transparent to the public.

If it is not, you will have others who will investigate your investigation.

Who is going to get out in front of this and handle this properly? We hope all of you, but assure you somebody will. So don’t be the person hiding and culpable. Be the person who steps forward and up to the plate. If you don’t now, you will become the target of future investigations. There is no hiding from this. We the citizens demand this be investigated and the individuals responsible arrested immediately and prosecuted for this blatantly hate-motivated cybercrime to the fullest extent of the law.

Regards,

Concerned United States Citizens