An Open Letter to the Winnipeg Nazi Mom

We here at the ARC Collective like to have a little fun with the subjects of our article. Sure, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but we have to go with what we're good at.

However there are also times when we need to act like adults. We think this is one of those times.

Not long after the ruling came down awarding the children in the Winnipeg Nazi Mom and Nazi Dad case to the province of Manitoba, we were sent a message by the Nazi Mom. This isn't the first time she left a message, though this will be the first time we publish one (we'll go into the reasons why the last one wasn't published soon enough):

I don't even know where to start... you have the bias of the media on your side of the spectrum, what the press fails to print are my reasonings behind moving to Quebec in the first place, the #1 reason being the DPJ does not interfere on the lives of families based solely on an assumed political belief whether you agree with it or not, The entire time I spent in QC I spent talking to the DPJ, and to the Investigative unit of the Child Protection Branch. My ex, was a loser, yes. And I worked too much because of it, I have accepted that, so I have therefore accepted the blame for my children not always being properly cared for, but I had an amazing neighbor, and a fantastic baby sitter who would on a regular basis check in on things while I was at work. That neighbor would come over and read to my son, he would play with him he did more for him then his father did, yes. But I knew he was there, so I had no reason to worry.

What you don't understand is that every job I had (after the fact) was terminated due to an anonymous call informing my employer of exactly who and what I was portrayed to be. That is immediate interference, how would you feel if someone randomly called up your employer and accused you of being a left wing extremist? How do you think your employer would react? How would you feel if your own mother was helping them? How would you feel if your own mother was telling lies about you? If you had no other option but to steal rather than go hungry and homeless what would you do? I have admitted some guilt to the credit card fraud, but I handed the card over to my ex so I wouldn't touch the card while in NYC, during that 3 week period (in which I wasn't allowed to see my children) he rang up approx $18 000 I had no idea of how far it had gone until I was arrested for it.

The issue of my daughter's attendance in school was addressed and dismissed, they had continued to count absences AFTER she was apprehended.

If you're interested in the reason for CFS denying my access to my own children, it's because I gave them each a t-shirt from THRASHER magazine... CFS claims THRASHER to be a WP mag, we all have knowledge enough to know that, that is complete and utter bullshit!!!

I think your opinions are interesting, and as I believe in freedom of speech I won't ask you to STFU, as I very well could seeing as though you clearly do not have your facts right... maybe you should have read through all the court documents instead of referring everything you heard to what the media is reporting...

What I did was stupid, immature and wrong. But I made a mistake. I challenge every single one of you to honestly say you have never done something stupid, immature or have never made a mistake.

(In our response, we'll refer to the Nazi Mom as Marie.)

Well Marie, this was, at least for you, a fairly reasoned message in which you appear to be starting to take some responsibility for your past behavior. But we both know this wasn't the first time you contacted us. Let us remind you about the content of your last message. In it you were angry that we commented on your attitude towards the tragedy in Haiti, told us that we had no life and that we should get out from behind our computers and physically fight the people on your side. All grist for the mill to us and nothing unusual compared to the other messages we often receive from the folks on your side. You also commented that you hope we have "fun" when you win your case. Also, we would expect that, though to write, "win" seems to denote your children were some sort of the prize.

The problem emerged soon after you wrote that your mother was now supporting you. Had you left it at that, there would be no problem. However you didn't leave it at that, did you Marie? Instead you sent us a copy of an email your mother sent to the case worker at Child and Family Services which she cc'd to you. You sent complete strangers a copy of a private email containing your mother's email, your email, the case worker's email and details about your situation that no one had any business knowing other than the three individuals who originally had access to that email message.

We want you to think about that for a moment. You sent a private email containing potentially sensitive information to people you don't know. And why did you do that? To try and, "score points" like this is some sort of a game?

Do you realize the danger you could have been putting your mother in? Your self in? Your children in? The case worker in? If we were a tenth as dangerous as certain people claim us to be, your thoughtless actions could have resulted in something terrible happening. And you sent this because of a selfish desire to be smug? To try to claim sort of personal victory and rub it in our faces? Help us out here because we still don't get it.

If you're now regretting, as you should be, sending us that email, you needn't worry. We sent it to the trash bin; no one saw it on our end other than us and we had absolutely no intention of publishing it. Still, we can't help wondering if you sent that email to anyone else. We hope to God you had more sense than that.

That brings us to the crux of the issue. Believe it or not, we don't think you, or anyone else, should lose custody of your children based on your political beliefs. We find your views repugnant and potentially dangerous, but as repulsed as we are by them, those views alone should not result in the break up of a family.

Our problem with you and why we believe the province of Manitoba took the correct course of actions in removing your children from your, "care" is your self-centeredness. You don't seem to view your children as a responsibility. You view them as a means to an end.

Think about how this all started. Your husband (0r you and you once claimed) sent your daughter to school with ink drawings on her arm of swastikas and other neo-Nazi symbols. You both knew there would be a reaction, which is why you did it. We imagine you and your then husband got a kick out of thinking how scandalized the teachers would be when they saw what you did to your daughter. The teachers, responsibly, washed off the ink from your daughter's arms and sent her home. You, in defiance, put those hateful symbols back on. And you did it because that's what YOU wanted. YOU wanted to make a point, and you were willing to use your child's skin to make that point. And what was that point?

"I will do what I want and you're not the boss of me!"

As the case went on, we learned more about the situation your two children found themselves in. We learned of an unkept, often filthy apartment. We learned that your daughter often wouldn't attend school because mommy and daddy wanted to sleep in and didn't want to be bothered getting her ready for class. We learned that, some time before, you and your ex up and left your children in the care of relatives while you both moved to Brandon to start try and start a racist group (we've been aware of you and your husband for years, even before the Infantry 14 efforts). We learned about alcohol and drug abuse. We heard about neglect. We heard about a little girl who learned from her mother and step father that people of color should be killed. We learned about credit card fraud and we learned about a DUI during the custody case. We learned that the mother, for whatever reason, decided to move to Quebec and attend custody hearing infrequently.

Shall we go on?

The common denominator here, Marie, is your and your ex husband's desire for personal gratification. Your children appeared to have been incidental to that desire and often their needs suffered as a result.

Even during the custody dispute, you and your husband appeared to care less for the welfare of your children than you were with crying about how YOUR rights were violated. Your ex, for example, tried to argue that denying him the ability to send his step-daughter to school with what amounts to graffiti all over her body was a violation of HIS right to free expression. In interviews you talk about how YOUR rights have been violated by the province. Not once have we heard you express much more than passing concern for the welfare of the people whom you should be most concerned about.

Even now, has anything really changed? You said that you'll no longer associate with people who would generously be referred to as "racist scum." That is a lie and you know it. You claim that you take responsibility for your failings, but in your most recent message is filled with excuses, buck passing and justifications for poor decisions.

Here's something else that might surprise you. We would love it if you did make the changes necessary for you to regain custody of your children. We would be genuinely thrilled if you could reform and straighten yourself out. We hope that day happens, but so far you really haven't given us any indication that day is imminent.

You are approaching 30 years old Marie. And you still act like a spoiled teenager. But a spoiled teenager with young children needs to grow up and think more about those children's needs than his or her own wants. Can you honestly look within yourself and say that you've done that?

UPDATE: We're surprised we missed this:

Unrepentant 'Nazi mom' aims to get her kids back

White supremacist returns to Winnipeg, finds work and an apartment in bid to eventually reclaim son, daughter

PATRICK WHITE

WINNIPEG — From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010 12:00AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010 3:19AM EST

"Nazi mom" wants to set a few things straight.

She thinks Mein Kampf is garbage. She didn't teach her daughter to kill minorities. And she's certainly not a Nazi.

"I'm not one of these idiots going down the street saying, 'Kill all the Jews,' " she says, sipping a Starbucks coffee in The Globe and Mail's Winnipeg office, a day after a judge awarded Child and Family Services permanent custody of her two children. "I'm preaching pride, white pride, not hate."

For nearly two years, she has been the target of bloggers and editorialists, lawyers and social workers, all picking apart the lifestyle and worldview of a woman who sent her seven-year-old daughter to school festooned with a swastika and white supremacist slogans. She's lost everything since then: her two kids, jobs, friends, family - everything except a stubborn adherence to her belief in the supremacy of the white race.

"I'm reforming my life - moving back home, working hard, getting an apartment - but I won't deny what I stand for, even if it made all this go away."

Dressed in a conservative black V-neck top and blue jeans, she pushes her auburn hair away from her green eyes as she explains how she arrived at her race-dominated outlook on life and how she plans to get her kids back.

In her early teens, she joined the army cadets and fell in with a large skinhead contingent.

"I learned from them what kind of immigration policies we have," says the mother in her late 20s who cannot be named to protect the identities of her children. "I mean we're bringing in people from Haiti now. They still practise cannibalism there. Do we want that here?"

Her stance on race stems from her understanding of evolution. The way she sees it, all races began in Africa, and while Asians and Caucasians adapted and thrived, other races floundered. 

"Africans, they really haven't evolved much," she says. "The blacks that we have here - and I'm going to use the wrong words here - we domesticated them. We made them who they are. Otherwise they would still be eating each other and killing each other. ... It's not racism, it's racialism. 
There's a difference."

She had her first child at 18 with a much older man she worked for. Her parents beseeched her to have an abortion but she refused, prompting them to kick her out of the family home. She moved in with the girl's father but soon moved on, eventually marrying a man closer to her own age who was prominent in Winnipeg's skinhead scene.

Family and friends questioned the marriage, but she ignored them. The couple moved to a number of homes in southern Manitoba, but, contrary to testimony from family and social workers, they never lived in squalor, she says.

"When they say we lived like pigs, it was all hearsay," she says. "The testimony was wild. They said we would shoot birds and feed live animals to feed our dog - that never happened. They say we showed our kids violent racist videos - it was the History Channel. They said we had neo-Nazi flags all over our house - we just had a couple of White Pride posters on the fridge.... All this shit destroyed my life and none of it was true. They just wanted 'Nazi mom' starving in the streets."

But there's one truth she can't deny. When the case began last year, she fled to another province, leaving her husband - the two are now separated - to argue for custody alone. In the custody decision released last Thursday, Justice Marianne Rivoalen wrote that the mother "essentially abandoned her children" and chastised her for what she called a "narcissistic quest for media attention" that "demonstrated a puerile disregard for whether her actions conflicted with her children's best interests."

With eyeliner streaming down her cheeks, the mother insists that she would never abandon her children, that she simply moved to a province where she felt child services would not judge her lifestyle. "I wanted to have the case transferred away from Manitoba so I could get my kids back," she says.

She now admits it was a misguided move. During her time away, she allegedly stole and maxed out her mother's credit card and now faces fraud charges.

In the week since she's returned to Winnipeg, she's secured two jobs and a decent apartment. A year from now she can apply for custody of her daughter and son, whom she hasn't seen in a year.

"Child and Family Services is finally helping me," she says. "I'm doing everything they want me to do. We will need a lot of family counselling. A lot."