Claim: Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, was raised by her ex-husband after the couple divorced and both remarried.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2005]
Another view of Cindy Sheehan What is most interesting is that the press gives this little bunch of people who are protesting with Cindy so much air time without discussing Cindy's background. This is a case of more press bias. It has been pointed out on just a couple of media outlets that Cindy divorced her first husband and left her son with him to be raised while she became a political activist for the Democrat Party. She had very little to do with her son in his growing years. She remarried. The 1st husband remarried. The original father raised the son with his new wife. They miss their son and mourn the loss of his life. They have stated that they are very proud of their son and that they agree with the stance of America in Iraq and on terror. They said that their son was eager to serve and to go fight the terrorists in Iraq. He volunteered. How many news stations carried their interview? Not many. So the son dies in Iraq and then Cindy shows up to make a stink. She gets an audience with Bush. That was not enough. She goes to Crawford and demands another audience. How many news stations carry the ongoing saga of Cindy? Practically all of them. Cindy didn't care about her son. She let another woman raise him. Cindy doesn't care about the other soldiers in Iraq. Cindy cares about her liberal, feminist agenda and about using the death of her son to lobby against Republicans and Bush. And the press is helping her. Why? Then a few days ago, Cindy's 2nd husband filed for a divorce from Cindy. Cindy sounds like a feminist opportunist who did not have the sense of responsibility to even raise her own son. It looks like her |
Origins: Casey Austin Sheehan,
a 24-year-old
The piece quoted above, criticizing Ms. Sheehan's alleged lack of involvement in her son's upbringing after divorcing his father, is something fabricated out of whole cloth, evidently the product of someone's confusing a completely different family with the Sheehans. Cindy Sheehan and her husband, Patrick, were high school sweethearts who wed while both were in their early 20s and who have been married to each other for over
Ms. Sheehan has maintained that her recent political activities placed a strain on her marriage that caused her and her husband to separate, as she expressed in an
A: I have lost almost every friend that I had before Casey died. My husband and I are separated, because he doesn't support my activities, although he knows the war is a lie.
Q: Have you lost any friends or family over this? Or, how do your husband and neighbors feel about your sudden rise to prominence in the media and the role you've accepted in those venues?
In fact, in August 2005 Patrick Sheehan filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences" as the cause and stating that the couple had been separated since
terror."
An interview conducted by Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News Channel possibly contributed to the mistaken belief that Cindy Sheehan's son Casey had come from a previous marriage and was raised by her
Last updated: 6 September 2005
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