February 11, 2016
Last May at the AutismOne conference in Chicago, TMR met David Stephan. We’re pretty good judges of character, and David immediately struck us as a wonderful human being and a loving and caring father — which made the story he told us all the more horrifying. David and his wife Collet had lost their beloved 18-month-old son Ezekiel to a mysterious illness several years before. As if that were not enough to make their lives beyond difficult, the Canadian government had decided to prosecute them for “Failing to Provide the Necessaries of Life.” This charge didn’t make any sense as it was obvious that, until his death, Ezekiel was a happy and healthy child, in no way neglected. Clearly, his “necessaries of life” were well provided. David told us that he and his wife did not have their children vaccinated (which was their absolute right in Canada as there is no vaccine requirement), and they were told that the purpose of this prosecution was to establish a precedent allowing non-vaccinating parents to be prosecuted and imprisoned for neglect. The idea being that the threat of such prosecution would scare other parents into vaccinating their children despite no legal requirement to do so — essentially establishing a vaccine mandate.
Having had a child who died under similar mysterious circumstances that only became somewhat clearer when the autopsy report came in twelve weeks later, and having chosen for the sake of the health of my two living children to forgo vaccines, I could completely understand what this family was going through and immediately offered them a chance to speak on our blog. Yesterday, there was a hearing on the case, which has dragged on for the past three years with no sign of an end. We believe that it’s time to end this sort of intimidation for good. Please read and share if you believe as we do that situation is just completely wrong. — Professor
I would like to express our appreciation for all of the prayers, love and support that has been extended to our family throughout all of this. Even though we are going through extremely tough times, we have been blessed tremendously by many of you and for that we say thank you so much!
As stated before, the charges of “Failing to provide the necessaries of life” that have been laid against my wife and I contain an underlying motive which, if achieved, will set a precedent that will negatively affect many Canadians and possibly permeate international borders. The agenda: create the legal precedent that when a child falls ill, parents who chose not to vaccinate have a greater onus to seek mainstream medical attention sooner than parents that do vaccinate, and if any harm befalls the non-vaccinated child from an illness that there was a vaccine for, the parents can be held criminally liable . . . bringing us one step closer to mandatory vaccinations. If you can’t force them to get vaccinated, compel them through fear of criminal prosecution.
David, Collet, Ezekiel (in Collet’s arms) and big brother Ezra
One must ask why the Crown would be proceeding with this agenda within the courts? Wouldn’t it be easier for the government to just legislate mandatory vaccinations? Well, it turns out that the Canadian Constitution, which recognizes the inalienable rights of individuals and prevents the government from falling into a tyrannical state, is also protecting Canadians from forced vaccinations. In 1996, Health Canada made this clear in their Canadian National Report on Immunizations when they state “. . . immunization is not mandatory in Canada; it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution.” Thank God! Whether you are for vaccinations, selectively vaccinate or are concerned about safety issues and don’t vaccinate altogether, the beautiful thing is is that you have the choice. You have the choice to educate yourself and make an informed decision as to what goes into your and your children’s bodies.
Now, what if there was an overriding agenda to institute mandatory vaccines, and it couldn’t become an act of parliament due to the Constitution? It would appear that the next best way to achieve this would be to create a standing in law through the courts, and that is where Collet and I find ourselves today.
The first clue we got to this underlying agenda was when, over eight months after the passing of Ezekiel, we finally received the autopsy report that we had ordered to get clarification on why he had passed. Unfortunately, upon reading it we were left with more questions than answers as his cause of death was still not fully clear. However, what was most alarming was the included vaccine information — that appeared to be irrelevant at best and yet went so far as to claim that Ezekiel’s passing (the cause of which was still unclear) was somehow vaccine preventable. What struck my mind is that the only reason this information would be included would be to fuel a vaccine battle within the courts. My fears of this dissipated as time passed, until we received a phone call from the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] three months later and were charged (almost a full year from the time Ezekiel had passed).
David and family a few months prior to Ezekiel’s death
Our suspicions further rose after we received the prosecution’s evidence disclosure, including the police files, in May of 2013 and realized that somehow Health Canada had become aware of the investigation and had made an inquiry into it. This leaves us with a number of questions: How did Health Canada, a federal agency, become aware of the passing of our son? What interest did they have in the police investigation to warrant allocating resources to inquire with the RCMP about it? Does Health Canada make inquiries into the passing of all children within Canada? Did this have something to do with the past history that my family had with Health Canada wherein my father beat them in the courts? Or did this have something to do with identifying a potential case wherein the vaccine agenda could be pushed? At this point, we still don’t have answers to our questions, but as time has gone on our suspicions have been further substantiated.
In June 2014, during our preliminary trial, things really started to make sense when, during the Crown’s cross examination of the doctors, vaccinations became a prominent topic. Prior to this, our concerns about vaccinations becoming an issue within court were largely dispelled due to the fact that there was no precedent within Canada on vaccines that the Crown could use to back their case. After our lawyer met with Crown counsel and the agenda of having the topic of vaccines included in the case was disclosed, we learned that we were going to be the precedent in Canada. It was at this point that everything began to make sense: why the charges weren’t laid until almost a year after Ezekiel’s passing and why the charges were not initiated by the local Crown or RCMP that were involved in the investigation, but from higher up by individuals that were not firsthand involved in the investigation process.
Even though this information somewhat puts our minds at rest that this case isn’t solely about Collet and I as parents, the thought is quite alarming that if this case somehow goes sour, not only will it tear our family apart as Collet and I would most likely end up in jail, but it will put a lot of Canadians who either choose not to vaccinate, or selectively vaccinate, at risk of criminal prosecution. For those who are reading this and see this agenda as a good thing, at what cost are you willing to support your ideologies? At the end of the day this is not about upholding your ideologies, but rather about people. About people’s right to educate and choose what is best for their families. About people’s right to make choices without fear of having their families torn apart by an industry that stands to profit tremendously off of them. Collet and I find ourselves dealing with an organization that is attempting to offer our family up on the sacrificial altar of the vaccine industry.
David, Collet, their three living sons, and a photograph of Ezekiel
I ask for your support in preventing this from taking place. I ask that you join with us in taking a stand to preserve the liberties and inalienable rights that are naturally endowed upon us as children of the Divine Creator. I earnestly pray to God above that we may be empowered to defend and preserve our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. God willing, our court case will come to a close before this agenda can be fully pursued. Today [yesterday, February 10] we were in the courts presenting a delay argument that will hopefully result in the case being thrown out. We ask for your support, not only financially, but also in your thoughts and prayers. And if the court case is thrown out, we need to be vigilant in watching for the next family that will be dragged through the same situation as us in an attempt to achieve this vaccine agenda.
*Please share this message.*
As we are now stretched well beyond our means in many ways, we thank you again for all of your love, prayers and support.
May God bless you all!
~ David, Collet and the Boys
If you wish to donate money to help defray legal costs for the Stephan family, click here.
Does anyone know why the Gofundme link is no longer working?
Yes, the gofundme site decided that the Stephans violated their terms of service, which is completely ridiculous. Someone got to them. You can keep up with the family here: https://www.facebook.com/PrayersForEzekiel/?fref=photo
IF immunization is against the BNE Act, our Canadian Constitution and/or the Canada Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada, there are only two ways to change this law:
*change the Constitution, at the Federal level OR child welfare and protection could try to
*create a legal precedent through the courts, rather than through legislation;
This latter way to change our constitutional and charter rights, raises the question of POWER — should it rest with those elected? or should civil servants be the driving force behind changes in our constitutional and charter rights? Personally, we’d prefer it be the elected lawmakers who have the POWER to change, because Albertan families have experienced too much ‘abuse of power’ by the salaried civil servants.
who has the power to change the constitution, and
who has the power to change the law?
POWER — should it rest with those elected? or should civil servants be the driving force behind changes in our constitutional and charter rights? Personally, we’d prefer it be the elected lawmakers who have the POWER to change, because Albertan families have experienced too much ‘abuse of power’ by the salaried civil servants.
My kids also got whooping cough, who are vaccinated. What does that prove regarding the efficacy of these vaccines?? I really don’t mind that they got whooping cough. Just means now they are immune for the next 30 years instead of 10 as they tell me.
I hope things go well for you.
I am a naturopathic physician who specializes in childhood developmental and behavioural disorders and I have learned through hundreds of cases in my clinical practice and that of colleagues that most of these conditions and many other serious health issues in children and adults are mostly vaccine injuries. Autism in particular is really a vaccine injury in about 70% of cases, the other 30% have been predominantly affected by medications such as antibiotics and other environmental factors.
Every day in Canada and around the world children are being irreparably harmed, their lives and families’ lives changed forever by the overzealous use of vaccines. They are also destined to become an enormous lifelong burden on society. It is estimated that the average individual diagnosed with autism will incur lifetime costs to society of between 3.5 – 8 million dollars.
With autism rates increasing by 17% a year and some researchers estimating that by 2025 50% of children born will be diagnosed as autistic I am boldly predicting the collapse of the Western economies within the next 50-75 years as result of autism, or shall we say, mostly vaccines.
Autism is already more expensive than heart attacks, strokes and cancer combined in the UK and this is just the beginning. It is urgent that we stand together, help this family, speak our truth and protect the future of all of our children and grandchildren.
This is absolute nonsense and what is worse is that it supports irrational beliefs about vaccines. Vaccination has helped eliminate countless deaths and injuries that were commonplace not that long ago. People who fall for this pseudoscience nonsense threaten these gains in human health by being potential breeders of viruses that have been virtually eliminated from the general population. The illusion that you can avoid autism by not having your child vaccinated against the common illnesses that once killed and maimed thousands of children is a sort of magical thinking that has very real and serious consequences for other people’s children.
Well, John Rager, we have now heard your opinion, which not surprisingly sounds just like the opinion of every other person who hasn’t actually done the work reading the vaccine science or the autism science, and more shockingly still your opinion comes complete with the vaccine PR machine buzzword “pseudoscience.” That word in particular is the biggest clue that you haven’t done any real research on the topic. If you had, you would know that the CDC is the biggest purveyor of “pseudoscience” right after pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves. It doesn’t GET more “pseudo” than to deliberately water down your results to statistical insignificance in order to make a strong signal go away, which is exactly what was done in the Verstraeten study on Thimerosal and the 2004 study on MMR timing. You are free to trust the conclusions of so-called scientists who use such methods, but the rest of us will be more discerning, thanks.
So why exactly do “very real and serious consequences for other people’s children” matter more than the “very real and serious consequences” for our OWN children? Why is it that the kid who MIGHT have gotten measles (but didn’t) last year got so much more sympathy than the thousands who became autistic due to a vaccine schedule on steroids (in combination with other factors certainly). The press was OUTRAGED at the POSSIBILITY that a child who hadn’t been vaccinated MIGHT have infected another child in a doctor’s waiting room, where last I looked sick people were SUPPOSED to go. Yet that same press DUMPS VITRIOL all over parents who tell the truth about their children who were in many cases walking and talking before a sudden loss of all skills, coincidentally enough right after a round of vaccines. The majority of those children will cost huge amounts of money to treat and educate, and a high percentage will never be able to live independently or support themselves. But for some reason, none of THOSE costs are even considered by those who think it’s “important” for every child to be vaccinated according to a recommended schedule that has NEVER been tested for safety or synergistic effects.
The double standard is utterly disgusting, inhumane, and unscientific. If vaccines were the uniformly wonderful addition to human health that you imply, then the nation that is the most highly vaccinated in the world should have the healthiest child population and the lowest healthcare costs. And yet… 1 in 2 children in this country is living with a chronic health condition that has an impact on their quality of life. Most of those are on one or more medications, and most of those are expected to be “for life.” If that is your picture of “gains in human health,” then you didn’t live in the 1960s when most of today’s childhood chronic illnesses were rare and few people had long-term complications from infectious disease, even though we vaccinated for far fewer diseases then.
When adopting a child in Ontario throught the Children’s Aid Society (a government agency), it states on the medical evaluation form for the prospective adoptive parents “mandotory vaccines” and goes on to list several vaccines that you must receive. When I emailed the Children’s Aid Society to question this, stating that there are no mandatory vaccination laws in Canada as they were unconstitutional, they wouldn’t email me back. They called me back and said “off the record” that they wouldn’t allow my husband and I to adopt through their agancy unless we got the vaccines – they would simply push our file to the side and not match us with anyone and there was nothing we could do to prove anything. Reluctantly, we got the vaccines, I had a bad reaction and then my doctor wouldn’t even record it in my medical file, saying “it’s probably just a coincidence, this isn’t a common side effect” – even though it lists my reaction as a common side effect on the vaccine insert label. The CAS also has a policy that states all of the adopted children must be fully vaccinated once they come into your care, otherwise they will be apprehended from you, as failing to fully vaccinate the child consitutes neglect.
My heart goes out to David and his family. I hope they win this battle.
This attempt at subverting the constitution sickens me. I hope for educated citizens everywhere that this case goes the right way. It’s not even about health here. Hopefully the legal team involved is capable of showing compelling evidence into the lack of vaccine efficacy in many cases. Not to mention showcasing this whole charade for what it is – an attempt to undermine Canadian rights.
So does this mean if you give a vaccination, and your child dies because of the vaccination, you can be still be prosecuted?
I am also Canadian and I am in total agreement with what you are saying. Have you been in contact with the Health Canada scientist who wrote Corrupt to the Core? You must find Drs who can help. Get the study done in ON that shows hospital visits, maybe deaths after vaccination. The VAERS REPORT, Vaccine Injury reports. Because they said it right on the autopsy report this is all relavent. This is really horrible. I hope it goes well.
My heart goes out to you and your family for the loss of your little one. What a difficult time to be caught up in the fray of political agendas, and witness the public defamation of your qualities as a parent. I’m so sorry for each of you.
At the end of the day, there is risk involved in virtually every decision we make surrounding our children. But who besides a parent has the unbiased love and accountability to make the best decision for them? The answer is no one.
Just remember, the cause of death must be proven, “beyond a reasonable doubt”!
I live in Canada and while vaccines are not supposed to be forced, they are. They are given without informed consent, there is overwhelming propaganda, a public that has been brain-washed into thinking unvaccinated kids are a threat to their own kids, and even schools will refuse or expel kids who are not vaccinated, even though that is clearly against the law. There is huge public support to make vaccines mandatory which is in large part due to never-ending public campaigns and misinformation on behalf of “health” professionals.
I was very lucky that in my location the school registration form asks nothing about vaccines. I imagine that will change very soon. We have a new program whose mandate is to focus on disease outbreaks and to further promote vaccination. There is already a very high compliance, especially with the populations they are going to focus most on (isolated communities, aboriginal people) and yet they feel the need to exert ever more pressure. Is it a coincidence that my unvaccinated child has been the healthiest of all the children in my remote community? Maybe. Some would argue “herd immunity” (a myth). But whatever; I’ll take it. However, when my sister said that “you deserve if your child dies” due to her anger of all her fully vaccinated kids getting whooping cough, and the doctors telling her that unvaccinated kids are the cause (though it’s very unlikely that her kids were even exposed to any unvaccinated kids) I became even more strongly rooted that the right to informed consent MUST be a strong focus.
I don’t care who supports vaccines or not, informed consent (meaning the right to say “NO”) is the LAW and that law is being broken time and time again. I fear a world where we do not have the right to choose for our own bodies and that of our children. A dangerous precedent indeed.