On Thursday, the Gateway Pundit reported on a mother’s desperate plea for help from the public after her son was taken from her over a photo she had posted on Facebook without a mask.
Included in the report was a fundraiser on the Christian donation platform GiveSendGo, so that Melanie Joseph could raise the money needed to fight back.
Immediately after the Gateway Pundit report was published, donations from sympathetic readers started to come in. First $100, then $25 — within minutes. Then, the donations abruptly ended.
It turned out that Stripe was refusing to accept donations for this mother’s legal fees and therefore GiveSendGo could not complete them.
After receiving multiple emails from Gateway Pundit readers about not being able to donate for several hours, this reporter began tweeting about the issue. Moments later, GiveSendGo emailed Joseph saying that her account had not yet been activated with Stripe.
Around the same time, Stripe sent her a bizarre email saying that her “business presents a level of risk for customer disputes that we will be unable to support.”
“Due to the high level of risk on your account, we are ending service effective immediately,” the letter continued.
The company said that they were unwilling to share more information about how they do their “risk reviews” or why her fundraiser was flagged.
Additionally, Stripe said that they will be holding on to the $125 in donations she had received for the next 120 days.
Joseph is currently using GoFundMe to accept donations and is seeking a lawyer willing to represent her while she attempts to get access to her son back.
Speaking to the Gateway Pundit for our original report, Joseph explained that her case set a dangerous precedent, one in which the court system can coerce parents into relinquishing their medical freedom of choice and bodily autonomy — or risk never seeing their children again.
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Last year, Broward County, Florida Circuit Court Judge Dale Cohen indefinitely suspended parental timesharing of Joseph’s 14-year-old son Logan. The shocking move was because his father brought the court a photo of her not wearing a mask prior to an oral surgery appointment.
Her son was not with her during the appointment and masks were not yet mandatory in North Carolina, where she lives.
To make matters worse, Joseph says that her son was conceived when she was raped by his father, who is now using COVID and the corrupt system as a means of parental alienation.
“My son’s father raped me — and three months after my son was born, he pursued me in court. He ended up getting a deal where custody would be split 50/50 because there wasn’t anything on paper about the rape other than records from my therapy,” Joseph explained.
The father has a criminal record and Joseph says that he attacked her again when she was pregnant with her now eight-year-old son. When she tried to press charges, she says the state attorney wrote her a letter saying that they “knew she was a victim” and that they “believe her,” but that they did not have enough evidence to prosecute and win the case — so it was dropped.
None of that is as bad as not wearing a mask in a Facebook photo, it seems. The judge berated Joseph over the lack of a mask, audio of which Joseph has posted to her Instagram.
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The judge claimed he was upset that Joseph and her husband had moved for work after he was laid off from his job, but the hysteria about the mask photo shined through in his statements. Besides, Joseph already had a long distance custody agreement and the father had also moved out of the county.
In a shocking move of medical tyranny, the court ruled that Joseph may not see her son until she takes a coronavirus vaccine and has provided official documentation to prove she received it. Additionally, her son would be required to wear a mask during any contact with her.
“I was forced into a settlement, meaning my lawyer had stated to me that off-record, the judge hates me because I damaged his reputation by going public, on top of the fact that he already hated me because he considers me a COVID denier and an anti-masker,” Joseph explained. None of that, by the way, ever came out of my mouth.”
The father is also claiming that the son has asthma and therefore must wear a mask, something that many doctors believe could actually worsen his condition.
Joseph says that she was lead to believe that if she did not agree to what was being offered to her, she would never see her son again. She explained that it was getting to a point where her legal team believed that the judge would begin ordering further unnecessary requirements, such as reunification therapy, to drag it out until after her son was 18-years-old — out of spite.
As the National File reported, Judge Cohen also completely cut off parental timesharing for another mother who was accused in court of consistently not wearing a mask and photographed not social distancing at the beach. That mother eventually made an agreement that came with a gag order.
Judge Cohen recused himself from the case after Joseph went public with her heartbreak to the National File — but she has still not been able to see her son. Logan has several siblings who miss him deeply.
Joseph reached out to the Gateway Pundit following our report on a 6-year-old child that was removed from her mother in New York City because she did not wear a mask outside the school. She believes that her case, and what she has been going through, has paved the way for this judicial bullying over masks.
The two mothers are also in touch and working to support each other in their fights.
Now, Joseph is asking the public for help both finding a decent lawyer and raising the funds to afford them. Her husband of 14 years has been laid off from the job that they moved for and is working as a delivery driver to support their large family.
Those who want to help Joseph afford to fight back can do so through her GoFundMe. She has also started a Facebook group to share updates on her situation and help others facing similar overreach.
The post EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: Stripe Payment Processor Bans Fundraiser for Mother Who Had Son Taken Over Maskless Facebook Photo appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.