UPDATE: Justin Harris Is A Good Christian

It’s been scarcely a week since I first posted about Arkansas politician, Republican, and :::ahem::: good Christian man, Justin Harris, but let’s replay the back story:

Harris and his wife Marsha [above] adopted two little girls — a 3-year old and a 6-year old — but just over a year later, they “re-homed” the girls, which is a polite way of saying they gave them away, to another family, something that is perfectly legal in Arkansas where children can be traded like baseball cards and magazines. The husband in that family, Eric Cameron Francis, subsequently raped the 6-year old girl and two other little girls. 

Since the story broke, Congressman Harris, who owns a Christian preschool, has been attacking Arkansas' Department of Human Services [DHS], which arranged the adoption. Harris says he had no choice but to “re-home” or “give away” the girls because DHS threatened to charge him with child abandonment if he tried to give them back. Harris also claims these two girls were a danger to his family, and that his three boys were forced to sleep in their parents' locked bedroom … because the girls are demons.

Linda Blair say what?

It seems the Harrises were desperate to “re-home” the girls because they believed them to be dangerous, although others who knew the family, and the girls, say the two just needed specialized care, having been victims of neglect and sexual abuse before being removed from their original home and placed with DHS.

Chelsey Goldsborough, a babysitter for the Harris family, said one of the girls, "Mary," was kept away from her sister "Annie" and from the rest of the family, often locked in her room which was outfitted with locks, alarms and video cameras; the Harrises believed the girls were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically.

"The first night I was over there, I just broke down and cried with this little girl because I just felt so bad for her." — Chelsey Goldsborough

Goldsborough also says the Harrises claim to have seen proof of demons in a photograph, saying they showed her a "picture of [Mary] where they're like, 'You can see the demon rising from her back,' and it just looked like a little 6-year-old to me."

Goldsborough says the Harrises hired specialists to perform an ‘exorcism’ on the girls while she waited outside the house with the boys; multiple other sources, who knew the family and the girls, confirm Goldsborough's account that the Harrises believed the girls were possessed. Naturally, Justin and Marsha Harris deny those claims and, through their attorney, say that “exorcisms and telepathy” are not part of their religious practice.

I hope DHS starts an investigation, and that someone can find those videos of a little girl locked in her room before she was given away like an old suit of clothes to the Salvation Army.

I can imagine it being hard to take in two children who came from such a horrendous, violent and unstable background, but then to simply give them away because it got too hard, is reprehensible. It does no good for those girls who probably were in need of specialized care ... not isolation and exorcism.

SIDENOTE: It appears this story will not go away soon; the Arkansas Times broke the story originally and are continuing their investigation into the Harrises and their home life.

photo and story sources: The Arkansas Times and NCRM