This petition is specifically purposed to call on York County, ME, District Attorney Kathryn Slattery to drop fraudulent kidnapping charges that she has pursued against Sarah Marie, to the harm and detriment of Sarah Marie's two children and the community at large. When adult victims of family violence are pursued criminally for taking steps to protect their children’s safety and well-being, the law becomes the handmaid of predators and abusers, ensuring that no family will ever be safe from abuse.

Sarah Marie needs your help. She is a Protective Mother from Maine, USA--one of thousands of Protective Mothers in the United States and around the world--who is being prosecuted for the "crime" of leaving her and her children's abuser, and desperately fleeing with her children to Canada for safety when her own state's and country's laws and courts refused to protect them in any way from someone who violently terrorized and abused them regularly. In her pursuit of safety for her children, she has been routinely denied legal representation, the right to submit evidence or testimony, or even allowed witnesses on her behalf. She and her children have been led "like lambs to a slaughterhouse" by every system that should be protecting them. Horrifically, they are not alone.

How does this happen in "civilized" society, in the 21st Century?

After Sarah Marie fled the US, and lawfully sought asylum in Canada to protect herself and her young children, her abuser willfully and maliciously used them as pawns and "acceptable collateral damage" by conspiring, with the aid and collusion of anti-victim judicial and law enforcement systems, to have their mother ripped away by gunpoint in an early morning raid. Sarah Marie was encouraged to remain under the protection of asylum in Canada, but she sacrificed her best hope for her own safety to go back to the US to fight for her traumatized children. She was forced to endure inhumane conditions as she awaited extradition back to the US.

Once devoting her life not only to her own children, but to her community's autistic kids as a well-loved and respected daycare provider, she fought valiantly against incompetent and ignorant attorneys, evaluators, child protection workers and judges, only to watch everything she had built be obscenely purloined by the children's father, who had vowed to destroy her. This loving and protective mother has lost everything to callous and corrupted family court and criminal court processes: first her children, then her home, her business, her career, and finally, her freedom. Since December 2019, she has missed approximately 1,000 days of her children's hugs, laughs, tears; in further indignity, she has been forced to wear a GPS tracker that has given her permanent nerve damage, she has gone homeless, she cannot work in her field because of criminal charges wrongfully levied against her--but worst of all, her children have been taken from their safe parent and removed across the country without consent, without due process, and without competent counsel. Not only have these children experienced direct abuse, but they have witnessed their mother being strangled and assaulted, on top of watching her be handcuffed at gunpoint. Their trauma will likely last a lifetime.

Sarah Marie has little hope of seeing her precious children again, yet, she still finds the will to fight for them. She has little hope for justice, because she alone is pursuing remedy to his assaults—despite the fact that he was under bail conditions at the time he assaulted her. YOU are her best hope.

With everything stacked against her, what can really be done?

The roadmap is simple, but not easy. The abuser-aligned prosecutor must eliminate the criminal charges she has filed against Sarah Marie for fleeing with her children for their safety. Secondly, Sarah Marie must fight the nefarious family court to return her children to her safe and protective care. There is so much to be done, and so little time--every day her children are in their abuser's care is another day fraught with danger for them. Separation from their safe and caretaking parent has already harmed them; we can only hope they live to heal from their horrific experiences.

It is easy to get overwhelmed by the gross injustice of this. It is easy to feel swamped by this family’s needs, or wallow in the little that you can do. But here are some steps that you can take, quickly and easily, to help this family:

1. Sign this petition today, calling on York County District Attorney Kathryn Slattery to drop the two counts of "criminal restraint" (ie, kidnapping) cruelly charged against this protective mother.
2. When you're done signing this petition, contact DA Slattery directly, encouraging her to dismiss the charges she is currently pursuing against Sarah Marie. DA Slattery can be contacted at: kmslattery@yorkcountymaine.gov; or 207.324.8001 (leave a voicemail, if she doesn't answer); feel free to use the following script: "D.A. Slattery, my name is (X) and I am a concerned citizen and protective parent who is urging you to immediately dismiss the charges against Sarah Marie, a loving and safe mother. She should not be charged for kidnapping or criminally restraining her children, when she was fleeing for their and her protection. It is a gross injustice and a betrayal of your role in public service to protect, aid and abet abusers by prosecuting the victims of their violence. Thank you for your attention to this important matter."
3. If you are a Protective Parent who has experienced, together with your children, the maliciousness and willfulness, ignorance and incompetence, callousness and corruption of your abuser in collusion with your family court, child protection and law enforcement systems that are supposed to protect your family, and it is safe to identify yourself as such in the comments, please do so. Let’s demonstrate to our communities that this is not an isolated issue, but is, in fact, a crime of pandemic proportions.
4. Please commit to creating change for families like Sarah Marie's, and share this petition on social media.
5. If you would like to do more to help Sarah Marie fight for the safety of her children, please find out more at Stand with Sarah's GFM (link here).