Despite her love of Christianity, a young Maine girl has been prevented since 2024 from going to church, attending religious holidays, being “exposed” to the Bible or other scriptural literature, and even having Christian friends — all because of a judge’s order in a parental right’s case.
The draconian restrictions have been in place for some 18 months as Emily Bickford and her daughter Ava, 13, wait for a decision on an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court eight months ago after Portland District Judge Jennifer Nofsinger issued the shocking ruling in late 2024 as part of a dispute between the girl’s parents.
Not only has the ruling impacted the lifestyle and pursuit of happiness by both mother and daughter, on its face it appears incompatible with the founding principles of the United States.
The right to worship granted by the First Amendment is not in the grip of any judge to grant or abolish, the Portland mother told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview this week.
“That is not theirs to take away,” Bickford said. “It’s in our Declaration of Independence. Our forefathers knew we had inalienable rights given by God. God gave us the freedom to worship him, and there’s no government that can take that away from us.”
The long-awaited decision in the appeal could influence judicial decisions in similar cases across the U.S., says Matt Staver, attorney and founder of Liberty Council, the religious rights advocacy group which has taken on the appeal of the lower court’s decision.
“Liberty Council doesn’t usually get involved in the general domestic dispute kind of case unless there’s a significant religious liberty component,” Staver told Breitbart News exclusively this week. “And this one screamed of having a religious liberty violation that got our attention.”
There are tens of thousands of separated or divorced parents in the U.S. in shared custody arrangements, which sometimes result in differences between parents as they try to “co-parent.”
Staver continued, “If this ruling is allowed to stand, it could set a precedent enabling courts to strip Christian parents of the right to raise their own children in accordance with their faith.”
In making her decision, Staver said, the judge relied on author and “cult expert” Dr. Janja Lalich, a California State University sociologist professor, who described Calvary Chapel of Portland as “cultic” and its pastor of as having a “Moses complex.”
“So, a Moses complex, I guess, is somebody who’s a strong leader, somebody who is confident in their beliefs,” Staver said.
Staver continued:
And what’s what makes it “cultic?” Well, because they believe in heaven and hell. Eternal life. They believe in angels and demons. They believe in salvation through Jesus… The pastor teaches the Bible “verse by verse, chapter by chapter.” And that alone makes this a cult. And so, if that makes this a cult, then every religion, every Christian religion is a cult. Every Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, they’re all cults, because they all have the same thing in common. They all have that similarity of belief.
Calvary Chapel, a fast-growing evangelical denomination, has more than 800 churches in the U.S. and another 200 internationally.
Staver also noted the judge was hostile to monotheistic belief since the complaint by the attorney for the father and the judge’s order wrote “god” in lower case.
God is typically capitalized because as a proper noun it describes the singular supreme being of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
The judge also gave Ava’s father sole control of her medical care after the mother chose not to give her preteen daughter the COVID and flu vaccines — ironically, shots that since the ruling are no longer universally recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for children under the Trump administration.
Ava was born when the couple separated after dating for four years without marrying and before Bickford embraced evangelical Christianity.
Shared custody for the girl was established in 2013 with a court decision that required the parents to “share parental rights and responsibilities regarding religious education and upbringing.”
Bickford, 38, has her own house cleaning business. The father, Matthew Bradeen, has his own property management company, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The legal dispute hatched when Bickford petitioned her daughter’s father for child support; he made a counter-claim when he learned Ava wanted to get baptized at the Calvary Chapel.
Judge Nofsinger’s court order came after Bradeen claimed in his petition that his daughter had a panic attack and was leaving notes around the house saying “the rapture is coming.”
Brickford said her daughter never mentioned she had a panic attack, and when she asked her about it she denied one had occured.
He also claimed that his daughter’s anxiety began because she allegedly believed her sister and father would not go to heaven.
Bickford, meanwhile, told Breitbart News she has never said anything disparaging about Bradeen’s beliefs or lack of them to their daughter. He’s not an atheist, she said, but is not convinced there is a “higher power.”
“Ava asked him, ‘Do you believe in Jesus?’” the mother recalled. “She would come back and say, ‘Dad doesn’t believe in God.’ I said, that’s okay. He doesn’t have to believe right now.”
Lalich, the expert witness, told the Court she analyzed the church’s sermons and testified they likely posed a psychological risk to the child.
The judge also cited a prayer-like sermon that Ava at age 11 had heard in the church during the week of the family court trial in August of 2024, claiming the pastor’s words presented the legal dispute as a “battle” between “good” and “evil.”
Judge Nofsinger wrote:
The risk of psychological harm to Ava from hearing her church leader characterize her father’s actions as bad, or evil, is apparent. In the context of Calvary Chapel’s prior messaging, which has been accepted without reservation by Ms. Bickford, the risk to Ava from hearing the messaging delivered on August 28 is that she will form the belief that her father is attempting to block her from salvation and condemn her to eternal suffering.
However, the Calvary Pastor Travis Carey’s words directly quoted at length in the order never mentions heaven or hell or “eternal suffering,” let alone Ava’s damnation, according Breitbart News’s examination of the court document.
Still, the judge accepted the expert witness’s assessment and granted the father all final decisionmaking authority over the child’s religious education.
It has been enforced by the father in the extreme, Bickford and her attorneys say.
Since, Bickford has tried to get the father’s permission to have her daughter attend other churches or attend Christmas celebrations and he has refused.
Bickford said she and her daughter learned about the lower court judge’s decision as they were preparing to attend Calvary on a Wednesday, the same day she makes the exchange of custody with her ex. It’s when her daughters always looked forward to seeing her friends in church.
The impact of the order produced frustration and crying spells early on for Ava, she said.
“She’d say ‘I don’t understand why I can’t just go if this goes against the Constitution. Why can’t I just go to church?’ Bickford recalled. ‘She’d say, ‘Why can’t I go against the order?’ I said we need to follow this order because it was written by a judge, and we will appeal it. It was a mourning process for her.”
She continued, “With the loss of something, eventually with time, you have a new normal, and so she still believes in Jesus, nothing can take away her faith. She has a personal relationship with him.”
Bickford also said people don’t realize the impact such a case can have on any mother.
“People think oh, you lost a legal case,” she explained. “It has been the most difficult trial I’ve ever been through because they tried to make me look crazy and took my parental rights away. They took so much more away. I can’t make decisions for my own daughter right now.”
Bickford’s legal team, led by Staver and the Liberty Counsel, appealed the lower court’s order, arguing the the evidence did not rise to the standard of harm necessary for such a draconian decision.
Staver also told Breitbart News that in her written order the judge admits there was no evidence of psychological harm to the girl and that real harm actually may come from removing her from the church and her friends.
Arguments can be seen streamed live by the high court.
“The order below should be reversed because it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” Staver began before the justices. “In this particular case there is no finding of abuse or neglect. In fact, what we have is a fit parent. A fit parent is presumed to act in the best interest of their child.”
Meanwhile, Michelle King, the appeals attorney for Bradeen, argued that the future “safety and wellbeing of the child” was at stake and the lower court’s decision did not “show hostility to the mother’s religion.”
Associate Justice Wayne Douglas asked whether the lower court evoked an unwarranted “nuclear option” that effectively gave the father total control over the child’s religious upbringing.
“Hypothetically, that could be done, your honor, but in this case the court was very clear it was the particular thing that this church was doing. Ms. Bickford allowed her daughter to go in and listen to a sermon that disparaged her father.”
A bigger principle is in play in the appeal, Staver said.
He told Breitbart:
The essence of this appeal is the religious freedom protection that parents have to raise their children according to their faith. And this particular order denigrates Christianity… That is the essence of this case. It’s a very severe intrusion into religious freedom that’s otherwise protected by the First Amendment and state laws as well.
Associate Justice Catherine Connors questioned whether scrutinizing the language of the sermon was “judging the religion itself.”
“Aren’t we not supposed to do that?” Connor asked. “And if we did that there would be an awful lot or religions that would not be considered in the best interest of the child.”
King argued the order was appropriate.
“We’re not talking about a little bit of anxiety,” she said. “We’re talking about a panic attack, which is a very big manifestation of anxiety in a kid. Courts across the country have said this kind of exposure is harmful to a kid.”
Bradeen’s attorneys have never made the father available for interviews.
Staver told Breitbart News that in such cases with religious disputes between parents, judges typically rule that each parent is allowed to practice their chosen faith with the child when the child is in the custody of that parent.
Liberty Council has prevailed in many high-profile cases involving violation of rights for Christians, a record which earned it the designation as a “hate group” by controversial Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the group now under a grand jury indictment for funding the very groups it claims to oppose.
Staver, whose background includes serving as dean of the law school at Liberty University, has been called “a leading Christian legal theorist” and founded the nonprofit legal advocacy organization in 1989.
Liberty Counsel has also won cases involving mandatory vaccines for those citing religious exemptions, including a $10 million class action settlement with a Chicago health system that didn’t honor such requests.
Staver said if the appeal is not successful at the state level, Bickford and Liberty Counsel will take it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bickford said her daughter still loves both her father and her, but there’s a lingering challenge that remains in the case even if the appeal is successful.
“Some of her best friends have moved away,” the mother said. “So that’s going to be hard for her if the order is reversed because of this appeal. We’d go back [to Calvary] and her best friends won’t be there.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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