Jump to content
IGNORED

Sparkling Adventures Pt 10 - David Pleads Guilty - Merge


happy atheist

Recommended Posts

Our long national nightmare is over. After going dark for more than 6 months, Sparkling Lauren has begun posting again. And she has short hair!

 

Nothing of substance has been posted yet, but dare we hope for a flurry of backdated posts?

 

Some history:

Lauren was raised by Australian missionaries, attended boarding school in French West Africa while her parents did missionary stuff there. She grew up and married David, who was very religious, too. Lauren and David had 5 Children: Aisha (sometimes called Aïcha), Brioni (originally Stephanie), Calista (or is it Callista?), Delaney (now Lana), and Elijah.

 

David started to get a little strange. He raised a big enough fuss in church that they were kicked out. He started to worry a lot about "peak oil" and societal collapse, so they used the proceeds from their flooring installation company to retrofit a panel truck as a "stealth camper" so they could park it in areas where camping wasn't allowed without drawing attention. They began traveling around Australia and New Zealand with their kids loose in the back of the truck. They quit their jobs and let other people live in their house rent-free. They practiced unchurching, unschooling and unparenting. The children forage for food, do not have to brush their teeth, or go to bed.

 

Lauren got pregnant with a son. She had no prenatal care at all. By this time they were heavily involved with the Rainbow Family, a hippie group. Their son Elijah was "free-birthed" at a Rainbow Gathering in Australia without even a midwife. The encampment was cut off from everything by flood waters. They had plenty of warning to evacuate, but chose not to.

 

So then things continued to fall apart. Lauren suffers pretty horrendous post-partum depression which she does not treat. The family went back to NZ. It seems that David had an affair. They eventually returned to Australia. Things got worse.

 

They were staying in their shed/garage. David took 7-month-old Elijah for a walk and jumped off a bridge with him. The baby died. David came back to the house and said, "Elijah's in the water." So, David was arrested and has been held in a psych facility ever since.

 

Lauren and the girls lived in the shed/warehouse behind the family home for a couple months, until Lauren managed to beg enough money from internet strangers to purchase a Coaster, which is a sort of mini-bus. Now she and the girls are back to traveling around Australia. Lauren neglects the girls to a great extent, and denies them and herself the opportunity to grieve. Even though Elijah was drowned in a river, she made a point of pushing the girls into swimming and other water activities, and often posts photos of them playing in unsafe waterways while she herself hangs back to take pictures.

 

She proudly talks of how she's worked hard to have the girls not view their father's infanticide as a negative, but rather as neutral.

 

Things were fucked up with this family long before Elijah's death. In Africa after their wedding, they smuggled a child (possibly an orphan) across the border for medical treatment. They did not speak his language, and there was no plan to take him home after his treatment. Their oldest daughter was lost in the bush on Christmas Eve with a man the family had just met, and Lauren did not alert the authorities. At a Chinese New Year parade, the adults lost track of several of the children, including the toddler, and were unconcerned. While staying in a city, they befriended the local herion dealer in order to use her shower. In NZ, Lauren took the baby and hitchhiked to a city to buy a car, leaving David and the girls stranded. She did not tell David she was leaving. The list goes on.

 

She unschools her daughters, which is code for neglecting them. She allowed one of them to wander around with a prickle in her eye for several days because the child did not want help removing it.

 

Less than a year after Elijah's murder Lauren decided that the way to make herself get over the loss of her son was to become a surrogate mother. She found a gay Icelandic couple in need of a surrogate and they spent some time flying back and forth between Iceland and Australia until she got pregnant. Eventually she took the girls to Iceland, by way of China and Europe, gave birth to baby Daniel Valor in Iceland, gave up her parental rights, and flew to Reunion, an island off the coast of Africa, for more vacation time. She's back in Australia now, but has been silent on the internet since January.

 

 

Part 1: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11137 An Australian (Former Fundie) Blogger's Son Dies

Part 2: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14804 Sparkling Adventures Blog

Part 3: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15960 The Return of Sparkling Adventures

Part 4: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18273 Sparkling Adventures in Child Neglect - Now with Rats!

Part 5: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19315 Sparkling Adventures in Child Neglect - Vive la France

Part 6: viewtopic.php?f=259&t=19860 Sparkling Adventures in Child Neglect - Whee! Polyamory

Part 7: viewtopic.php?f=259&t=22687 Sparkling Lauren, a super special sparkling surrogacy and a "gayby"

Part 8: viewtopic.php?f=259&t=22971 Sparkling Adventures in Child Neglect - "Gayby" on Board

Part 9: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24040 Sparkling Adventures in Child Neglect - "Gayby" is Born!

 

Archive: viewforum.php?f=259

 

Blog: sparklingadventures.com - be aware that there is a link on the homepage that will take you to photos of dead baby Elijah in the morgue

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 525
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Wow!

Thanks for the summary & blog link. I've never really read too much of the Sparkling Threads, just popping in and out when something catches my eye in the preview on tapa. I wonder which kid is going to write the book and get a mini-series.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I finally made it up out of this rabbit hole! Wow! I didn't seem to see anything discussed on David's trial or sentencing. Is he still waiting for trial?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I finally made it up out of this rabbit hole! Wow! I didn't seem to see anything discussed on David's trial or sentencing. Is he still waiting for trial?

There hasn't been any news about him lately.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How long ago did the baby die? Is the legal system there slow too?

well, if it's delayed for psych issues, it could take a long, long time. i remember it took years for the guy who kidnapped elizabeth smart to go to trial. she was kidnapped in 2002, i think it was 2009/2010 before he finally went to trial. since there's been no news (and i've used as much google fu as i could muster) then i'm assuming he's still in a psych unit.

ETA confirmed that elizabeth's kidnapper went to trial in 2010. and also, elijah drowned in 2012.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know it's a long time here, especially with psych issues. Charles Manson is still alive after all (I know that's different, but still). I just didn't know if Australia is the same.

I live in the southwest, that Elizabeth Smart thing was strange. It was around the same time of Laci Peterson and Danielle Van Dam. I was pregnant with the boy and had to stop watching the news. After 9/11 and then all those kidnappings and murders, I couldn't do it anymore. I was way too emotional and took it all really personally.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's crazy. I can't imagine it helps with Lauren's closure (or lack thereof) of the crime and loss of her baby.

Lauren has said that Elijah's death was a neutral event, so I don't expect she thinks she has anything to get closure for. :roll:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lauren's back with a blog post about the Gayby Baby movie. I am keen to hear how she and the kids are all doing. Oh, I think there's a recent instagram picture with two of the kids in too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know it's a long time here, especially with psych issues. Charles Manson is still alive after all (I know that's different, but still). I just didn't know if Australia is the same.

I live in the southwest, that Elizabeth Smart thing was strange. It was around the same time of Laci Peterson and Danielle Van Dam. I was pregnant with the boy and had to stop watching the news. After 9/11 and then all those kidnappings and murders, I couldn't do it anymore. I was way too emotional and took it all really personally.

i remember! that was a bit of an insane time around then. i was in high school at the time. growing up in the atlanta area for a chunk of my childhood had made me paranoid already, but that didn't exactly help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

New blog header, I see. And it looks like Sæpor dyed his hair red. They look very happy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lauren has said that Elijah's death was a neutral event, so I don't expect she thinks she has anything to get closure for. :roll:

I know she "says" that but does she really, truly feel that way? I can't imagine that she does. But, she is all sorts of crazy, so who really knows?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I should have posted this up above. Here she is, shorn of her magical authentic beauty salon dreads:

It's still super sparkly Princess Diana 80s hair--except it's red. No regular ole hair style for super sparkly Lauren!

websta.me/p/1067282820565832413_246363331

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Elijah died two weeks before my son, so it's been three years and two months now. He died end of June and my son died mid-July.

Oh Chaotic, I'm so sorry. I truly hope you've gotten some real closure. Not just neutral closure. No one should outlive a child.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No. There isn't closure when you lose a child. It's the club no parent should have to join. But you learn to stand and usually the waves of grief don't knock you down, just sometimes they overwhelm you.

I started reading about Lauren because of that connection, and of all the fundies she makes me truly angry. My son had a terminal disease. We always knew what the outcome would be, I just truly, truly thought we would have longer than we got.

Every member of my family has gone through some level of grief therapy in one form or another. Three years and counting later and a couple are still in weekly therapy and still battling their grief. And even then a cross country move 1.5 years ago ripped a nasty band-aid off for my poor kids and they all bled their grief everywhere and everyone landed back in therapy all over again because it was like it was brand new all over again. And my siblings got angry that I was putting so much into keeping my kids alive and felt I was ignoring them and threw temper tantrums that fractured my extended family that still ricochets through our lives.

That is the normal grief of a terminal disease that we knew from the day he entered our lives we would face one day. And some nights, I just want to scream from the emptiness and cruelty that he died so young.

There is no fucking way having her son murdered by her husband is neutral, not for her and not for those girls who have never been allowed to grieve, and taking another biological brother and giving him away (because Daniel is Lauren's biological son and half sibling to those girls) is the cruelest hurt I think she could have EVER concocted to destroy those girls.

I don't care what people who have encountered see. They see what she dictates reality is to be. She has denied her daughter's the right to grieve, and I have never, not once met a family who lost a child where the that death was not one of the most defining moments of the siblings lives, something that either crippled them in survivors guilt and an inability to grieve for fear of hurting their grieving parents more, or catapulting them to great depths of compassion and committment to how they approach life when given the chance to process and grieve as each individual child requires until each child is stable and strong again.

So, no we're not okay here. But we are integrating death into the fiber of who we are, and more times than I can count caring for these siblings was the only thing propelling me forward and when they stabilized last fall, my own grief open up like a chism in my soul but I addressed and we integrate it.

Lauren not only claims Elijah's death is neutral but she has declared it will not be allowed to be a defining moment of their lives. But she doesn't get to choose that for them. The sibling bond is the strongest tie that exists between humans. Just like unhealth in that tie can cause great harm the lose of a sibling IS life altering, whether you want it to be or not.

You can face death and grief and seek health and healing. Or you can run from it and deny it and it will eat your soul. If Lauren wanted to choose that for herself that would be her choice. It's not okay that she dictates it for her daughters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lauren's back with a blog post about the Gayby Baby movie.

Why do I have an urge to watch all of the Francesca skits from the old Tracey Ullman show? :lol:

Actually, the film sounds like it might be good. But, of course, Lauren has to grab on and make it all about her.

And:

The starring children quickly charm and endear themselves despite being, well, kids.

Despite? Doesn't sound like someone who likes kids much, does she?

Love the new thread title, HA!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chaotic life, yes, I understand that Lauren says the "event is neutral." But I don't buy it. Like you said, there is no getting over the loss of a child. But a trial or guilty plea or some answers might help her with some sort of closure, even though she claims it doesn't affect her, and certainly for the girls as they get older and try to process it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, I just spent a lot of time down this rabbit hole... this whole thing is just so, SAD! I mean wow, they all need some major psychological help! So sad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Snarkylark, I complete get what you are saying but I honestly think Lauren has ruined the ability for a sentence to bring closure.

I see she's updated the blog to claim Tasmania as home now, and I missed she asserted in Jan that she's aborigine by way of Tasmania now. I'm sure that is her sparking new authentic. Wonder if that's an authentic anyone else in her family believes to be true or just her usual rewriting history to meet her current attention seeking wants.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Elijah died two weeks before my son, so it's been three years and two months now. He died end of June and my son died mid-July.

I'm so sorry for your unconscionable loss. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • SpoonfulOSugar locked this topic

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.