Mark Houck, the pro-life father of seven who was arrested in a pre-dawn home raid by the FBI last fall, is speaking out about his family’s horrifying experience now that he’s been acquitted in federal court.
In an exclusive documentary produced by The Daily Signal, the news arm of The Heritage Foundation, Houck, his wife, and children talk about what happened on the morning of Sept. 23, 2022, when gun-toting FBI agents raided their home in Bucks County, PA.
Houck’s entire household was awakened by banging on the front door.
“They were all the way lined down my driveway,” Houck told The Daily Signal. “I had agents on my porch with long guns.”
Despite putting his hands up and willingly cooperating, multiple agents pointed guns in Mark’s face as his family – including his seven young children – were forced to watch their dad “shackled” and taken away, family representative Brian Middleton told CBN’s Faithwire at the time.
Now the Houck children are speaking out too.
Nine-year-old Joshua Houck told The Daily Signal he remembered waking up and all of his sisters were at the front door crying.
“And I asked them what was wrong and they didn’t answer, and I looked down the stairs and I saw guns pointing at Mommy and Daddy,” he said.
“I was shaking,” Ryan-Marie Houck told the outlet. “I didn’t even know why they were there to arrest him.”
“I was scared for my children who were all screaming and crying,” she says in the video.
Houck said his first thought was to protect his children, according to The Daily Signal.
“Stay calm,” he said he told the agents as he opened the door and showed his hands. “I have seven babies in here. Please, stay calm.”
When he asked the agents why there were at his door, one reportedly told him, “You know why we are here.”
“Oh, you’re here because I rescue babies,” Houck responded. He added, “You wouldn’t be here if the Trump administration was in the White House.”
Houck told The Daily Signal all of the agents “kind of looked down” at this remark, and no one said anything.
Ryan-Marie says when she asked to see a warrant, an FBI agent told her to go get a sweatshirt for her husband, and when she came back they had disappeared with her husband. “I was shaking, like my body was physically shaking. I felt like I couldn’t breathe,” she recalls.
As CBN News reported, Houck was later charged by the Department of Justice with counts of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act after he shoved a pro-abortion volunteer escort who was harassing his young son outside an abortion clinic in Philadelphia.
If convicted, he was facing up to 11 years in prison and a $350,000 fine.
Then on Jan. 30, a jury acquitted Houck on all charges.
Houck and his family later prayed outside of the Philadelphia federal courthouse.
“I thank you, Lord. When two or more are gathered in your name, you are there in our midst. Your Spirit is here,” he prayed.
“We are, of course, thrilled with the outcome,” stated Peter Breen, Thomas More Society Executive Vice President & Head of Litigation. “Mark and his family are now free of the cloud that the Biden administration threw upon them. We took on Goliath – the full might of the United States government – and won.”
“The jury saw through and rejected the prosecution’s discriminatory case, which was harassment from day one. This is a win for Mark and the entire pro-life movement. The Biden Department of Justice’s intimidation against pro-life people and people of faith has been put in its place,” Breen said.
Both Houck and his wife believe they were targeted by the Biden administration’s Justice Department to intimidate them for their pro-life work that included praying outside of abortion clinics, The Daily Signal reported.
“We were definitely targeted,” Ryan-Marie says in the Daily Signal documentary. “To silence us. To scare us. To intimidate us.”
“It was an act of pure terror on the part of the government,” Mark says.
“The United States of America v. Houck was not something we would wish for,” he says in the video. “But we recognize that we were called to. That God had created us for such a time as this.”
Watch The Daily Signal’s Documentary on Mark Houck and his family below:
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