By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Have you seen the article going around entitled, “BREAKING: Police Seize 10 Children From Homeschool Family Because They’re Off-Grid”? The one about the “off-grid” homeschoolers, Joe and Nicole Naugler, whose children were allegedly stolen because of the family’s off-grid lifestyle? (Karen Campbell’s Relationship Homeschooling​ and HSLDA’s ParentalRights.org​ shared it today.)

Please know that there is so much more to know about the Nauglers than meets the eye in this case: allegations of theft, illegal transportation, fleeing the law, threatening neighbors with death, child neglect, and more. Homeschoolers and unschoolers that actually know the family are cautioning people that this family is troubled. HA blog partner Kathryn Brightbill is working on a summary of the situation that we will crosspost and share once it is complete. (It is complete! Read it here.) In the mean time, please exercise caution (and encourage your friends on social media to do so as well) before promoting their story and/or giving them money.

Update, 05/08/2015, 2:41 pm Pacific: The following image was shared by the family’s mother, Nicole Naugler, on Facebook. Nicole described it as the intake call against them:

Furthermore, Nicole has revealed that her children do not have identification documents:

This can lead to situations of identification abuse, as we have documented in our 2015 Survey of Identification Abuse Within Homeschooling and seen in the stories of Alecia Pennington, Cynthia Jeub, and Eleanor Skelton.

Update, 05/08/2015, 5:23 pm Pacific: Kathryn Brightbill has finished her excellent synopsis of what’s going with Joe and Nicole Naugler. The situation is highly complicated and, as Kathryn points out, “What these things do demonstrate, at the very least, is that this family desperately needs help and they ought not be lifted up by homeschoolers as martyrs for the movement.” Read Kathryn’s synopsis here.