LTRP Note: One of the highlights of 2024 for Lighthouse Trails editors was our chance to help Philip Zodhiates get his biographical prison book, Innocent: The Price One Man Paid for Doing What Is Right, into print. While we were not the publishers, we were given the opportunity to format the book and prepare it for publication. While doing that, we read the entire manuscript. We were humbled as we read about this believer in Christ who was thrown into an American federal prison for helping a mother and her daughter escape the grips of child sexual abuse. As we read Philip’s account of his days in prison, we hoped that we would be as brave if ever in a situation where doing what is right could put us behind bars.
Now that Philip has finished his prison term, he is still facing a civil suit in which the Southern Poverty Law Center is heading up against him (trial date still unknown). If SPLC and the Vermont courts have their way, they will convince a jury that this is a hate crime, which could send Philip and others who helped the mother to prison for a very long time.
The following is the introduction to Innocent, which gives an overview of what led up to Philip’s imprisonment.
Introduction (pages 9-12)
By Philip Zodhiates
On December 5th, 2018, I began a three-year prison sentence at the Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky. My crime was being called a “greatest severity crime.” The following letter that I wrote to the prison warden while incarcerated details what led up to my imprisonment.
Sir,
My name is Philip Zodhiates (18649-084), and I arrived here at FCI Ashland on December 5th for a three-year sentence. Yesterday, I went for my first “team review” and was told that my “crime” is listed as a “greatest severity crime,” which I was told only you could review and make a recommendation to remove.
Sir, I would like to request that you look into the background of my case, the egregious political and anti-Christian nature of the prosecution against me, which has been confirmed to be a political vendetta mandated by Barack Obama’s White House. I request you remove the “greatest severity” factor so I can be eligible for a camp.
Simply put, I am here solely because I am a Christian practicing my faith. The young girl (conceived through artificial insemination) for whom I allegedly “aided and abetted” her mother to commit “international parental kidnapping,” was being sexually abused on court-ordered visitations to the former lesbian lover of her mother. All three were Virginia residents. Her mother had become a born-again Christian, repented of her sin and former lifestyle, and dissolved the Vermont “civil union.” The mother was awarded full custody of the child and agreed initially to visitations with her former sexual partner.
However, the former lesbian partner, who had initially wanted nothing to do with the child, went for years without asking to see the young child. She had on three occasions refused to adopt her. In the meanwhile, Virginia had passed a constitutional amendment declaring it illegal in Virginia to recognize any official designations of “marriage” or “civil unions” of any other state.
However, the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and LAMBDA Legal got wind of the case and talked the lesbian partner into allowing them to make the precedent-setting case that would nullify not just the Virginia Marriage Amendment but all the marriage amendments in more than half the states where similar protections were in place. That was the goal. And for that reason, they convinced her to request visitations.
After the child’s mother began allowing visitations is when the sexual abuse began to take place. The mother notified authorities and had affidavits from social workers and psychologists verifying the trauma to the girl, but the family court judge in Vermont refused to allow any evidence of it in court for reasons mentioned above. In the meanwhile, a judge in Virginia ruled the mother had full and complete custody of the child.
Yet the liberal groups pursued the transfer of custody because the birth mother no longer allowed visitation because of the sexual abuse taking place. When the mother left the country in 2009 (long before the Obergefell ruling* by the U.S. Supreme Court), she had full custody of her child with valid passports and freedom to travel anywhere in the world. The custody dispute, including further rights to visitation, continued to be battled in the courts till long after they were gone. Custody was not transferred to the former lesbian partner till the year after mother and child left the country. I was convicted for merely giving her and her child a ride from Virginia to Buffalo at a time in which she had full custody and giving her $500. It did not matter to the courts that the child was being sexually abused because they had a political and social agenda they wanted to enact, regardless that the real victim was a helpless child, whose mother had to choose between leaving the country or allow her child to continue to be sexually molested with the sanctions of the Vermont authorities.
Years ago, after I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior, I determined to abide by certain commands of all Christians, the first being: “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and tomorrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee” (Proverbs 3:27-28). Then there is: “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). And: “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?” (Proverbs 24:11-12). And: “I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. . . . Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me” (Matthew 25:43-45). And: “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:4-6). And last: “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17).
At the government’s request, the court in my case refused to allow any mention of the alleged sexual abuse of the child, not any mention of the other multitudes of ways I have helped others going through difficult times. This was an attempt to falsely portray to the jury I am nothing but an agenda-driven “homophobe.”
I take heart in Jesus’ words: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12). Joseph, Daniel, Peter, John, Paul, and even Jesus were all falsely imprisoned for righteousness’ sake under false charges. I, like each of these men, broke no laws, but am merely imprisoned for my faith in Jesus Christ and God’s Word.
I encourage you to watch the twelve-minute video on www.wall4america.com and to review the listing someone placed on the website, www.419fund.com about my case. There are also numerous other articles and interviews on the Internet. The best document, which includes the evidence of the sexual abuse of the child, is the “Petition for Pardon” to President Trump, which can be obtained from (specifically withheld).
Thank you, sir, for considering recommending the waiving of the “greatest severity” nature of my alleged “crime.”
*In 2015, the Supreme Court wrongfully ruled that it is unconstitutional for states to ban and not recognize same-sex marriages.
(top photo from the cover of Innocent; used with permission)
LTRP Note: You may purchase Innocent through Amazon or through Lighthouse Trails. If you wish to help Philip with his legal expenses, you may do through www.419fund.com (tax deductible).
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