OAKLAND TWP — Gary and Marlene Gilliland have never had any trouble with the law. Never arrested. Never charged.

But despite their clean records, the retired Oakland Township couple — he 68, she 67 — find themselves caught in Butler County prosecutors’ cross-hairs.

District Attorney Richard Goldinger is trying to take the house in Butler that the Gillilands bought three years ago for their 44-year-old son.

Authorities claim Gregory A. Gilliland, the couple’s middle child, was selling drugs out of the home at 201 American Ave., as recently as a few weeks ago, and the parents knew it.

The Gillilands insist they had no knowledge that their son was dealing drugs there.

Nevertheless, the parents’ house could be lost, even though they have never been accused of a crime.

“It tears me up,” said Gary, fighting back tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

Goldinger cites the state’s civil forfeiture law, enacted in 1988 to strip drug dealers of ill-gotten gains, for his bold court action taken this week.

He and his assistant, Ben Simon, on Tuesday filed in county court an application that seeks forfeiture of the Gilliland home.

“We are dealing with the assets of people who are complicit in the drug-dealing,” Goldinger said, “but not directly doing it.”

“Their son is the primary culprit,” Simon said of Gary and Marlene, “but they’re enablers.”

The county Drug Task Force and city police had their eyes on the house from May 2015 to March of this year, during which they believe heroin and crack cocaine were being sold by Gregory Gilliland and others he allowed there.

The allegation seemed to surprise Gillilands’ parents.

“We suspected he was doing drugs,” Marlene said, “but not dealing. He never had any money.”

When Gilliland was first arrested at the house last July, he was charged with simple possession. Task force officers had gone there at the pleading of neighbors, who were angry with the numerous people coming and going.

Within the next few days, county Detective Tim Fennell, who supervises the task force, spoke to the couple.

According to civil forfeiture process action filed this week, Fennell notified the parents of the “immense illegal drug activity” at the home as well as the “involvement/conduct of their son.”

But Gary and Marlene say neither can remember having any such conversation with Fennell.

The Gillilands also disputed claims in the documents that they “acknowledged the drug activity and acknowledged that they were fully aware that their son was illegally selling, storing and using controlled substances” at the house.

However, they conceded that during that time both were dealing with the death of siblings as well as the death of their daughter-in-law, killed in a traffic crash in South Carolina.

“It was a trying time for us, with all that was going on,” Marlene said.

On March 18, Gregory Gilliland was arrested again, this time jailed, after a task force raid at the home that followed a controlled drug buy, authorities said.

That police action, Goldinger said, was prompted in part by an e-mail his office got from a resident of the American Avenue neighborhood. The neighbor was begging for a raid, outlining the drug activity and effects.

“I’ve got to go out in the yard in the morning and pick up needles and stuff so kids don’t get stuck,” the e-mailer said. Goldinger forwarded a copy of the message to Fennell.

“I honestly didn’t have any idea what was going on there,” Gary Gilliland said.

But the Gillilands acknowledged they only made occasional brief stops there, mainly long enough to bring their son groceries.

“We never stayed there,” Marlene said.

She said she and her husband never saw drugs in the house.

“But we wouldn’t know what to look for anyway,” she said.

In hindsight, they confess to being too accepting of their child.

“We were gullible. He’s our son,” Gary said. “We didn’t think he would do the things they say he did.”

But Goldinger and Simon have no doubt the Gillilands knew what was going on in the house they bought in 2013 for $20,000.

And they have no qualms about trying to seize it.

“They had no problem letting their kid sell drugs and use drugs in that place after they knew that he was doing it,” Goldinger said. “So we have no problem taking that problem off their hands.”

Not surprisingly, the Gillilands see it differently.

“If they take this house, it’s a darn shame,” Gary said.

But the loss of the house, which is unoccupied would not be the couple’s biggest loss in wake of their son’s latest drug arrest.

They have not spoken to or visited Gregory since then. They acknowledged to “pretty much” having disowned him.

“We don’t want anything else to do with him,” Marlene said, “for what he did to us.”