Details Emerge of Hakkens’ ‘Anti-Government’ Beliefs
“She’ll tell you she’s not anti-government,” said Tampa lawyer Bryant Camareno, who is representing Sharyn Hakken, 34. “She’s anti-big government.”
Authorities say the Hakkens, after learning in April their parental rights were terminated by a court in Louisiana, kidnapped their children from Sharyn Hakken’s mother and set sail from Madeira Beach.
They were apprehended in Cuba and are now being held without bail at the Falkenburg Road Jail on charges including kidnapping, child abuse and false imprisonment.
The portrait of the defendants emerging from their attorneys is that of an educated couple who adhered to some tenets of old-line libertarianism — distrust of public schools and organized religion — as well as ideas of newer vintage that fall well outside the mainstream.
Those include the concern that vaccines can harm children — an idea popularized in one form by Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann during the 2012 presidential primaries— and the theory that some airplanes’ exhaust trails contain substances spread for secret purposes by government officials, according to the Hakkens’ attorneys.
Jorge Chalela, attorney for Joshua Hakken, 35, said the couple are “impressive, nice” people who “happen to be educated and are asking questions” about the U.S. government’s activities.
Camareno said the Hakkens strongly desired to home-school their boys, ages 2 and 4. While they believe in a deity, Camareno said, they did not want their children brought up in a church.
The chain of events that led the Hakkens to lose parental rights began in 2012 in Slidell, La., on the northeastern rim of Lake Pontchartrain.
The Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that police encountered the Hakkens there after the couple attended “some type of anti-government rally.”
But Camareno said the Hakkens were on a road trip from Florida to Arizona, where they planned to meet “like-minded people” who shared their suspicion of government. He said there was no rally along the way.