Rally supports couple who fled with their son

Protesters young and old paraded in front of the Matheson Courthouse Tuesday, waving signs of support for Daren and Barbara Jensen, the Sandy couple who fled Utah to avoid surrendering their son to state custody.

"Jensens are parents, not criminals," one sign said. "Parental choice, the only choice," read another. Another, "The state does not own our children."

"This boy should be going to school today, he should be home with his family, not on the run," said Deborah Neilsen, organizer of the protest, which drew about 25 people.

Parker Jensen, 12, and his parents have been missing since Aug. 8, the day the boy was supposed to be turned over to state custody. The state had also ordered that the boy undergo chemotherapy treatments for a rare form of bone cancer that doctors from Primary Children's Medical Center said he had contracted. Daren and Barbara Jensen question both the diagnosis and the treatment.

This morning at 9:30, Daren Jensen is expected to appear in a Pocatello, Idaho, courtroom for an extradition hearing, which could bring him back to Utah to face a felony kidnapping charge. He is expected to fight extradition.

Barbara Jensen has also been charged with kidnapping, but her and Parker's whereabouts remained a mystery Tuesday night.

"I don't know if they did the right thing (by leaving Utah)," said Neilsen, who lives in the same neighborhood as Daren's parents, Bob and Lois Jensen. "But I'd run too."

Among protesters — and the Jensens' own family — there is agreement that in cases of abuse, the state should intervene on the behalf of children. But the Jensen case doesn't fit, they said, and many parents are wondering if they might suffer the same fate.

"I just worry that (the state) could do this to my kids and I wouldn't be able to make a choice for my child," said Janet Jefferson, 20, who has three children and a fourth on the way. "It's their child; how can they be charged with kidnapping?"

The kidnapping charge has also raised another question for parents: Does the state now have grounds to take custody of the Jensens' four other children?

Officials from both the Division of Child and Family Services and the Utah Attorney General's Office are under court order not to talk about the Jensen case. However, Mark May, chief of the AG's child protection division, said he believed that in any child protection case, "the state would only intervene if it believed the other children were in some substantial danger."