Man Accused of Terrorism Embroils Palm Coast Organization in Controversy Over Ukrainian Orphans

The non-profit is headed by Irina Sipko, who is currently in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, volunteering to care for some 62 orphans rescued from an orphanage in Mariupol, one of the cities under heavy assault by Russian forces. She and her husband, Aleksandr Sipko, had over the years–before the war–adopted five children from Mariupol, and are intimately familiar with the orphanage there and the adoption system. It’s what led Irina back to Poland to care for the rescued, her husband said.

But Matt Shea, a 47-year-old resident of Spokane, Wash., who served as a House member in the Washington Legislature from 2009 to 2021 and has a problematic past, has brought unwanted controversy and unsought attention to the volunteer organization even as Irina is spending sleepless nights and days “wiping the butts” of rescued orphans now in Poland, her husband said in a pair of interviews this week.

“We’re not like public people. We don’t do it like, ‘hey, you know, that’s what we did, that’s what we’re doing. ‘” Aleksandr Sipko said, seeking to disassociate himself from the seeming publicity-seeking Shea. “You know, we’re trying to do it for God, for the kids.”

The Sipkos used to live in Spokane and ran in the same Slavic church circles as Shea, whose wife is Ukrainian. Irina Sipko’s sister first had the non-profit in Texas. Sipko chartered it in Palm Coast in February. The organization’s website was registered by a source in Reykjavik, Iceland, in March 2019, its registrant and administrative contacts “redacted for privacy,” according to the who.is registration look-up site. The registration expired on March 5.




She has been out of touch–her phone was not functioning, her husband said, and today a call went to voice mail–but she’s due back in Palm Coast in about a week, he said. Meanwhile, to Aleksandr’s chagrin–he says he was not aware of Shea’s connections with hate groups or accusations of terrorism–numerous press reports have linked his wife’s organization with Shea, and with Shea’s past.

An investigative report for the Washington State House in 2019 found that Shea, a pastor and lawyer tied to Three Percenters, the far-right militia, “participated in an act of terrorism against the United States” at the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge armed takeover. He “condoned violence and intimidation” through a cloaked online identity  in 2017. He “condoned intimidation by supporters of his political opposition to include activists, government officials, Muslims and others” between 2014 and 2019. He “supported the training of youth and young adults to fight a Holy war” and “wrote the Biblical Basis for War and advocated the replacement of US democracy with a theocracy and the killing of all males who do not agree.” And he “engaged in and promoted annual Patriot Movement militia training and readiness exercises in support of anticipated armed conflicts against federal, state and local governments and law enforcement.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 reported that Shea organized a chapter of the Anti-Muslim hate group ACT For America in Spokane, Wash. The group was founded by Lebanese Islamophobe far-rightist Brigitte Gabriel.




On Wednesday, the Seattle Times’s David Gutman reported that Shea was in Poland, claiming that “his group” had rescued 62 children from an orphanage in Mariupol, one of the cities under heavy assault by Russian forces. Shea specified in an interview on Polish television that he was working with an organization called Loving Families and Homes for Orphans.

The group was established as a non-profit by Irina Sipko on Feb. 14–in Palm Coast, out of a two-story home on Woodlawn Drive. The Sipkos bought the property on March 22, 2021 for $361,300, according to property appraiser records. A 4,000 square-foot house was built there in 2021. It is not homesteaded.

Shea in the television interview makes his ties to the organization explicit: “It is a hosting organization that hosts Ukrainian orphans in America with Ukrainian families with the intent that ultimately that ends in adoption,” he said. “Obviously, every child should have a loving home and that’s the the point behind the organization. It’s been doing this hosting program for several years.”

In a 35-minute interview at the Woodlawn property on Thursday, and another half-hour interview today by phone, Aleksandr Sipko, 48, said the organization used to be based in Texas for four years, where Irina Sipko’s sister lives, but is now defunct there, and has been established in Palm Coast. Affable and forthcoming if also taken aback by the attention the organization has draw, Sipko said his wife flew to Poland to help care for the children, not to adopt them, since Loving Families and Homes for Orphans has neither the capabilities nor the authority to conduct adoptions. It is a “facilitator” for families that want to adopt, he said, putting to work the broad experience the Sipkos built over the years adopting their own children from Ukraine.

Why Ukraine? Because it’s much easier than adopting children from Russia–where it’s nearly impossible–or surrounding European countries, where it’s a lot more intricate, Sipko said. The Sipkos also have three biological children of their own, the whole family displayed in a mosaic of handsome portraits taking up an entire living room wall and centered with a family portrait, with Aleksandr as patriarch, in the middle. The family had lived in Spokane for years before deciding to move to Palm Coast out of appreciation for the area, Sipko said. He is a building contractor, not yet established locally for lack of a license.




Shea, Sipko said, is not involved in Loving Families and Homes for Orphans, which consists only of Irina Sipko, her sister, and Elena Loguntsov of Palm Coast. The incorporation document in Florida also includes Vera Savin Ruppel of Spokane. (Irina Sipko’s most recurring reposts on her Facebook page are by Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, the tendentiously right-wing site). Shea, Sipko said, “is not involved. He just came there to help because he’s a pastor from Spokane,” the reference to here being Poland at the moment. A lot of volunteers are flying to Poland, especially from churches, Sipko said.

As for the non-profit in Palm Coast, Sipko described it as “hosting kids for a short period of time,” through other families, for a few weeks at a time in summer or winter, and from Ukraine. But the organization doesn’t itself have the rights to bring children to the country, and it remains unclear whether the temporary hosting has taken place or is a future plan.

“We don’t have any rights on those kids,” he said of the 62  children reports have referred to in Poland. “We don’t, because Ukraine has all the rights, so what we’re doing right now, we’re only trying to help,” because only three adults accompanied the children from Ukraine when they fled to Poland. “We’re trying to help people who actually doesn’t have a parents, you know, and we’re trying to do a nice thing to those kids.” Sipko intimated that Shea was told to leave, but he wasn’t clear who told him so. As of today Shea was still in Poland but would be leaving in a day or two, according to Sipko.

“Shea’s presence, and the lack of information surrounding the American group he’s with, has raised concerns among some residents of Kazimierz Dolny, the small Polish town where the children are staying at a hotel-guesthouse,” the Seattle Times report noted. That may be so, Sipko said, but the intent of volunteers like his wife working in Dolny has nothing to do with the assumptions in press reports about adoptions. “I’m telling you honestly, we don’t want to know anything about this guy. I mean, it’s his problem, you know?”

Sipko said he has known Shea personally in Spokane, meeting him “a couple of times,” and said that while he wasn’t familiar with his past, he didn’t want to “say anything bad about Shea,” and that as a Christian, he thought Shea would have to be given “a second chance.” Still, he said, “I’m not about Shea. I don’t know what he’s got in his mind. From our side, we’re just trying to be open. We’re not hiding anything.”