Parents' Kidnapping Trial Postponed
04/30/2002
The prosecutor in the trial of Ruth and Brian Christine on Tuesday withdrew charges they kidnapped their own children from state social workers.
Prosecutor Rick Wesenberg said he made a tactical decision to instead file charges alleging the two social workers driving the three Christine girls back to a foster home were the kidnapping victims.
Defense attorney Edgar Steele has maintained that the Christines were rescuing their children from an out-of-control state agency when Brian Christine took them at gunpoint from social workers last August.
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Pretrial motions postponed the start of jury selection in the case until Wednesday afternoon.
Steele filed a motion to suppress evidence seized in a search of the converted bus where the Christines were living when their children were taken into state custody in July 2000 in Grants Pass. Steele argued the evidence was taken in an illegal search.
Judge William Lasswell will hear the motion Wednesday morning.
Wesenberg said one of the girls might be called to testify, but Steele objected, saying it would be too traumatic.
"There is no better source of what transpired than the kids who were there," Wesenberg said.
"They shouldn't be dragged through this," Steele countered.
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The Christines, both 29, face charges of kidnapping, robbery, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and custodial interference.
Brian Christine allegedly took their three eldest daughters at gunpoint from state social workers Aug. 1 at an Interstate 5 rest stop near Myrtle Point, then met up with his wife and a friend and drove to Montana, where they were all arrested within days.
Originally from Noblesville, Ind., the Christines had been wandering the country for a year in a converted city bus, when they rolled into Grants Pass, a city of 23,000 in the forested mountains of southwestern Oregon, in the summer of 2000.
An anonymous caller told police that the three girls, Bethany, then 5, Lydia, 3, and Miriam, 2, were skin and bones from being starved to discipline them.
Authorities took the girls to a hospital, where they were described as malnourished and dehydrated.
Investigators brought criminal mistreatment charges, alleging that besides starving the girls, Brian Christine hit Lydia in the head for wetting her bed, and that Ruth Christine failed to get her medical attention. Later, the state began steps to terminate the Christines' parental rights.
The Christines have two younger daughters now living with Brian Christine's mother in Indiana. The couple gave up their parental rights to the three eldest girls so they could be adopted by Ruth Christine's parents, who are dairy farmers in England.
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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