This Girl Has No Way Of Proving She’s A U.S. Citizen Thanks To Her Fundamentalist Parents (VIDEO)

[MohRokTah]

This, to me, is documentation of 19 years of child abuse. Anybody with ideas on how to hep her, she gives an email address:

This Girl Has No Way Of Proving She’s A U.S. Citizen Thanks To Her Fundamentalist Parents (VIDEO)

19-year-old Alecia Faith Pennington has spent her life so sheltered by her Christian fundamentalist parents that now, as a young adult, she is finding it almost impossible to prove to the government that she actually exists.

In a video uploaded to YouTube and quickly going viral, Pennington documents the various ways her parents have managed to prevent leaving even a single speck of evidence to help her gain an official identity or to prove that she is a United States citizen. For starters, they gave birth to her at home, and declined to get a birth certificate or social security number. She was then homeschooled, and the family never took her to a hospital or doctor’s office.

As a result, this profound lack of documentation has meant that Pennington is a de facto non-entity. She is boxed out of nearly every aspect of social or professional life:

...

She is essentially stuck in a dizzying catch-22: You need documentation to get other documentation in order to get the first documentation.

...

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/02/11/this-girl-has-no-way-of-proving-shes-a-u-s-citizen-thanks-to-her-fundamentalist-parents-video/

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/02/11/this-girl-has-no-way-of-proving-shes-a-u-s-citizen-thanks-to-her-fundamentalist-parents-video/

[shenmue]

1. Good grief

[octoberlib]

2. What the hell?

[drm604]

3. She needs a good lawyer.

It strikes me that, if her parents are citizens and can prove it, then genetic testing should be sufficient to prove her citizenship.

[MohRokTah]

4. Her parents consider her a betrayer and have denied any help whatsoever.

She left her fundie home with help from her grandparents after she came of age and now her parents refuse to help her prove her existence.

[drm604]

5. She's genetically linked to the grandparents.

According to the article, it was her mother's parents who helped her leave home, so it should be possible to link her genetically to her grandmother through mitochondrial DNA. That would show that she's matrilineally descended from her grandmother with a very high degree of probability. Since her grandmother is helping her she should be more than willing to give a DNA sample.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Yes she does.

There used to be ways to file a delayed record of birth which would establish that she was born in the U.S. Her grandparents would probably file affidavits attesting to their knowledge of her time and place of birth and also attest to the fact that at least one of her parents is a U.S. citizen.

eta: Texas does have a procedure for this:
http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/vs/delayed/default.shtm

but she would still be short at least two forms of proof. I'd love to see a judge order the parents into court to testify.

[struggle4progress]

6. (1) She needs to build the best circumstantial case she can. She should document, so far as possible

and perhaps with the help of a lawyer, that one or both of her parents are citizens and that she is their child. She also needs to track down as many people as possible that have known her at some time or other in her life (other relatives, friends, neighbors, people who knew her family) and get affidavits from them.

(2) She needs to file lawsuits to compel the appropriate officials to issue birth certificate, voter registration card, &c &c . Under that circumstance, she may be able to force her parents and other parties into court. Their refusal to cooperate may actually help her make her cases.

(3) In filing the lawsuit(s), she needs to launch a media blitz (newspapers, TV, radio) to get her story out.

(4) As she get her story out, she needs to ask local and state politicians for help getting a state ID. Pressure can also be applied to Federal politicians to provide help obtaining an SS and a US passport.

The important thing here is to continue to work all possible avenues without getting discouraged. This will be an unpleasant uphill fight, and she should eventually win it, but it may take a while, but she needs to keep a positive attitude and must constantly try to focus on what she can learn about the world from the process and how many different interesting people she can meet!

[drm604]

8. She's already done #3.

This video is going viral. Soon enough some foundation or legal aid group will come to the rescue and help her through the legal maze.

As I said in an earlier post, it may be as simple as showing that she is genetically descended from her helpful grandmother (since her parents presumably won't cooperate).

[davidpdx]

9. I agree that sounds like a good plan

Someone else mentioned getting a DNA test from her grandparents to prove family lineage. I wonder if that would be enough to get a judge to subpoena the parents into court.

I hope she finds a lawyer who will take on her case pro bono and help her figure all this out. It is a real mess.


And I agree with the OP this is child abuse.

[herding cats]

10. If this is true, it's hearbreaking.

I'd say it should be a lesson to parents such as hers in the future, but keeping their children isolated is a part of the reason people do such things, so that's not going to happen.

I hope someone with the resources to help her, gets in touch with her and she's able to have a more normal life after this.

[Kablooie]

11. Isn't it illegal for the parents to ignore all these things?

Couldn't a lawyer have them arrested or forced to explain?

--

Religious fundamentalists, of all religions, are the worst, most useless human beings on the planet.

[ErikJ]

12. Its lucky she didnt get sick and die.

These fundy nuts usually reject modern medicine for faith healing and snakes etc. Sickos.

[PADemD]

13. Baptism Record?

If her parents were affiliated with a church and had her baptized, there should be a church record.

Was her birth entered in a family bible by her grandparents?

Did the parents not claim her on their income tax? Starting in the 80's, children needed to have a social security number to be claimed on income tax.

[Kalidurga]

14. Well I was going to leave a message for her at YouTube to come on over here

for the good advice I have seen. Jebus that place is a cesspool. Thousands of comments and many are rude and crude. I will not repeat what I have seen.

[Scuba]

15. There's no crazy like god crazy.