“Our children were taken. Our home was invaded. Our voices were silenced. And when we dared to speak up, we were jailed.”
~ Ruth Encarnacion & Isael “Izzy” Rivera
Editor’s Note: CASE DISMISSED against the Rivera family in juvenile court, to the day that Boston Broadside began coverage of this shocking and concerning story a year ago.
Faced with five felony charges for “kidnapping” her own five biological children, Ruth Encarnacion was found “not guilty” in criminal court, while Isael “Izzy” Rivera’s similar felony charges are still pending.
Additionally, the case brought against the family in juvenile court by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) has now also been dismissed recently, after more than a year, for most of which the family was separated.
And yet, as recently as a month ago, the agency attempted one last time to remove the Rivera children. The parents laud all the lawyers on the case as the “heroes” for quickly intervening to prevent the family from suffering another traumatic separation.
Once the second attempt at removing the children failed, the agency pivoted and offered a variety of services—which would ostensibly keep DCF embedded in their lives, but Ruth Encarnacion was not buying what they were selling.
“Anything you agree to attaches them to you, so refuse all of it.”
Once the last ditch effort was rejected, the agency asked what COULD they do for the family, to which she replied, “You can get out of our lives!”
What follows is Ruth and Izzy’s own account of their unbelievable ordeal that included:
• An interstate manhunt for the family of seven
• Imprisonment of both parents in Texas for a month before extradition to Massachusetts, while having no idea what happened to their children
• An astonishing bond of five million dollars for parents in Texas, followed by exorbitant bails in Massachusetts, causing father, Izzy Rivera to languish in jail for another six weeks until his $20,000 bail was raised.
• Mother and Father separated and pitted against one another
• Children vaccinated while in custody of the State of Massachusetts despite the objection of the parents
Ruth Encarnacion and Izzy Rivera are deeply grateful to all who have supported them and contributed time, money, and resources to help sustain their family and fight injustice during this extremely difficult year.
Here’s their message and their story:
What happened to our family was not a mistake. It was not an oversight. It was a systematic abuse of power — carried out under the color of law, shielded by bureaucracy, and weaponized against innocent people who had no idea that the very agencies sworn to protect families could be used to destroy them.
Our children were taken. Our home was invaded. Our voices were silenced. And when we dared to speak up, we were jailed — held behind bars on bail so unreachable it made a mockery of justice — not because we were dangerous, but because we were inconvenient to a system that does not like to be questioned.
What was done to us violates the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment. It violates every principle of parental rights that courts have recognized for over a century. It violates basic human decency.
We are not criminals. We are parents. We are a family. And we refuse to be silent any longer.
This is our story — and if it happened to us, it can happen to you. Be warned!
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