West Valley City family cites religion in fighting deportation

WEST VALLEY CITY — Crystal van der Spek knows how odd it sounds that her family sought asylum after fleeing Belgium. Isn't Belgium a country other people flee to?

But the LDS mother of 12 says that a combination of personal vendetta and religious persecution forced her family to flee the country in 1997. They came to the United States on tourist visas and never left.

Now, having exhausted all legal avenues for citizenship, including seeking help from a U.S. senator, the van der Speks are facing deportation. They hope community support and a news conference today will bring attention to their situation, though such appeals typically have little effect.

Although unable to speak about the specifics of the van der Speks' case, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice issued this statement: "These individuals' immigration cases have undergone exhaustive review by judges at all levels of our legal system and the courts have consistently held they do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States."

The family's flight from Belgium began when, according to Crystal, her parents and siblings — who were upset that Crystal and her husband, Dirk, were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — filed complaints with a child services agency in their town of Boom in 1997, accusing the van der Speks of abuse and neglect.

The complaint had more traction, Crystal says, because earlier that year the Belgian Parliamentary Commission on Cults submitted a report to the Belgian Parliament identifying 189 religious groups it categorized as cults. The list included the LDS Church, as well as Quakers, the Amish mission and 21 Evangelical Christian denominations.

Early one morning in December 1997, armed police showed up at the van der Speks' house, put the 10 children in a van and took them to a "safe house." Dirk, a truck driver, was out of town; Crystal, who was six months pregnant, was taken to court, where she says a judge told her that she could get her children back if they "began living like a normal Belgian family," which Crystal says meant giving up their religion.

Crystal and Dirk were allowed daily one-hour supervised visits at the safe house. During the days that followed, Crystal says, the caseworkers observed that the children had not been abused. And eventually those caseworkers helped the children secretly rejoin their parents. Members of the van der Speks' LDS ward then took them all to the airport.