Another FLDS thread by never-Mo onlooker, another way?

[_Jersey Girl]

Home visits were what I was thinking of, skippy. I didn't read about the separation of nursing infants from mothers. That in and of itself, is abusive.

This truly is a case of shoot first, ask questions later. And I don't think it will end well for anybody.

The state keeps doing amazingly idiotic things, and I think "That's the worst thing they've done yet." Then they do something even more idiotic. For instance, they send all the adolescent boys to a ranch for troubled teens 400 miles away. Any attorney representing them now has to drive over 7 hours to meet with them, then 7 hours back to the courthouse where the hearings are. How asinine is that? Then it gets worse - they have a mass hearing for all 425+ kids, where some bozo testifies that the religion itself is abuse, blanket statement. Then they realize that they didn't even count the kids right - there's an extra dozen and a half. Then they can't let the mothers pray with their children without supervision. Then they say "Hey, let's get a Mormon out here to monitor the prayers, because they're pretty much the same religion." Then they decide that once the DNA samples are given, they'll take all nursing children away from their mothers.

It's like they can't get one stupid detail right. It's maddening, and it's going to make any kind of law enforcement amongst the polygamous clans in the future darn near impossible.

I haven't read about some of the stuff you just listed, such as the boys being transported 400 freaking miles away from home. So they take 400+ children away from home, separate them all over hells half acre including away from their mothers. They're going to do DNA testing on all of them and take the nursing children away from their mothers...

WHAT???

They could have easily taken the 18 years + males out of the ranch and sent in social services to interview the women and children in their own homes.

But no, they're gonna spend god knows how much money on this carnival side show and traumatize the children in the process.

Who are the bad guys again?

[_Jersey Girl]

Where are the FLDS men? I haven't seen them interviewed in the news...don't see anything about them online.

Have they abandoned their families?

[_asbestosman]

Who are the bad guys again?

The ones who wear the strange clothing. I just can't figure out wheher that's the FLDS men or the Texas judges and law enforcement.

[_moksha]

One of the posters on another forum mentioned that he has worked with young boys from the FLDS culture in Las Vegas, who sold themselves for money after they were routinely tossed out of the FLDS community so as not to provide competition for the hand of the teen brides.

Another poster commented:

Quote:
You comments blew me away. How horrible. What does the FLDS do to its children? To think that they throw out so many young boys who basically have no job skills and have to sell their bodies in order to survive. I thought it was just the girls that were being abused and now it seems that many of the boys are also abused. May God have mercy on these poor kids and protect them.

Blew me away too.

This is one result of driving the young boys out that I had never considered. They would have to hustle to make it in the world. Where their counterparts from mainstream society would be going to high school, these kids are on the streets. Even worse, they are so ill prepared to fend for themselves due to their unusual upbringing.

Makes me sad.

.

[_Sethbag]

One thing to keep in mind here is that there is a pretty good likelihood that many of the "loving mothers and fathers" are perpetrators under Texas law.

Who were the mothers of the 13 and 14 year old pregnant girls they found in the compound? They're all perpetrators, for knowing about the abuse of their daughters, and allowing it to happen, or contributing to it happening.

Who were the husbands of all of these 13 and 14 year old girls who had children by them? Those men are perpetrators, and in most states the children will be removed from the care of the perpetrators in order to protect them.

So every mother, and ever father, in whose household sex with underage girls was going on, and every man who set up and arranged these fake, sham "marriages" to the underage girls, and every adult who facilitated these sham marriages and the sexual abuse that is inherent in them, is a perpetrator, and it's right and proper for the state to remove the children, and yes, even the young children and infants, from such parents.

Since such abuse was manifestly going on (after all, the 13 and 14 year old pregnant girls didn't f*ck themselves), and since the residents of the compound have apparently been colluding with each other to hide or mask the perpetrators from the child protective services, or cover up who they were, and who the victims were, it's right and proper for the state to have removed all of the children, until the facts of the case can be established and the children of parents who can't be pinned down as perpetrators can be returned to them.

If the people there want the children back they can hand over every single adult who had a hand in arranging the fake, sham "marriage" of underage girls to adult men, to the government, and then those adults who are left (who would probably be relatively few) can petition to have their kids back.

I'm not sympathetic at all here. Someone cries and wrings their hands over some mother being separated from her suckling infant. Well, that same mother may have facilitated the sexual abuse of a child, and represents, as such, a clear and present danger to the welfare of the other children in the compound, and it is right and proper that she should be separated from them.

[_truth dancer]

First, lets remember who started this whole lifestyle to begin with. :-(

Secondly, no the state was not in any way prepared for what they found.

Third, as I have stated, there are no good solutions, just a variety of not so great options.

A couple of things...

If a mother reports her husband is abusing their children, the husband is often separated from the family and the children can remain with the mother.

However, if an outsider, say a school reports abuse to CPS, and the case worker find evidence of abuse, the children are removed from both parents because even if one is doing the abuse the other did not protect the children.

This is law.

In this case, where the adults involved are dishonest, lying and deceiving law enforcement and social workers, the case workers seemed unable to even determine what children had what parents. As horrible as I think this whole situation is in near every respect, I don't think CPS had any choice under the law but to remove all the children.

Now, I would wish that it could've been handled much differently... I think "supervised visitation" would be more appropriate. In other words, allow the moms to be with their children with a social worker or volunteer present. I do not think there is any need to totally cut off mothers and children even if the mothers have allowed the abuse. I say this not for the benefit of the abusive mothers but for the sake of the children.

The point is if the state could approach the situation with the attitude of "rehabilitation" in hopes of teaching correct parenting skills and basic healthy lifestyle practices, perhaps much (or at least some) of the horror of the unfolding drama could be avoided.

Then again, this group, evidenced by their unwillingness to abide by the law may not have been open to this... I don't know.

But again, I think no one had any idea how many children were in the compound. Nor do I think they realized that many children couldn't identify who their mothers and fathers were. This alone may be evidence of neglect. (I don't know this but it certainly seems possible).

The whole thing, from the origins of the practice to the handling of the children is one horrific event. My heart breaks for these children, being separated from their mothers, being raped by older men, being taken from their fathers by their leaders, being thrown out as garbage to fend for themselves, all of it. ALL OF IT is heartbreaking.


~dancer~

[_Coca Cola]

I realize the situation isn't exactly the same, but..


If we could go back in time to a year or so before the Jim Jones People temple mass suicide, and if some anonymous person had made a phone call to authorities about abuse occuring at the temple..

Knowing what we know now - don't you think a large scale intervention would have been warranted?

Carolyn Jessop and her sister used to say to each other when they hung up the phone "Don't drink the Kool-aid." They believed that Warren was leading them to some kind of disastrous measure, and he was preaching blood atonement.

Even though I am a firm believer in due process and the Bill of Rights, and I hate what has happened to our Bill of Rights since 9/11, I still believe that this FLDS cult needed some intervention by authorities. It is, in every respect, abusive.

Like TD says, there are really no good options. Just lots of sad ones.

[_Coca Cola]

One of the posters on another forum mentioned that he has worked with young boys from the FLDS culture in Las Vegas, who sold themselves for money after they were routinely tossed out of the FLDS community so as not to provide competition for the hand of the teen brides.

Another poster commented:

Quote:
You comments blew me away. How horrible. What does the FLDS do to its children? To think that they throw out so many young boys who basically have no job skills and have to sell their bodies in order to survive. I thought it was just the girls that were being abused and now it seems that many of the boys are also abused. May God have mercy on these poor kids and protect them.

Blew me away too.

This is one result of driving the young boys out that I had never considered. They would have to hustle to make it in the world. Where their counterparts from mainstream society would be going to high school, these kids are on the streets. Even worse, they are so ill prepared to fend for themselves due to their unusual upbringing.

Makes me sad.

.

The problem of what to do with the surplus young men was a problem in 19th century Mormon polygamy too. There was talk of making them "eunuchs." They sent a lot of them away on missions.

Then there is the disastrous Bishop Warren Snow story. Ugh.

If a young woman persisted in rebellion and a young man refused to go on a mission, castration was a punishment the Church did not hesitate to employ:

Bishop Warren Snow of Manti, San Pete County, although the husband of several wives, desired to add to his list a good-looking young woman in that town. When he proposed to her, she declined the honor, informing him that she was engaged to a younger man. The Bishop argued with her on the ground of her duty, offering to have her lover sent on a mission, but in vain. When even the girl's parents failed to gain her consent, Snow directed the local Church authorities to command the young man to give her up. Finding him equally obstinate, he was one evening summoned to attend a meeting where only trusted members were present. Suddenly the lights were put out, he was beaten and tied to a bench, and Bishop Snow himself castrated him with a bowie knife. In this condition, he was left to crawl to some haystacks, where he lay until discovered.[he] regained his health but has been an idiot or quiet lunatic ever since. And the Bishop married the girl.24

(This is from Tanner's, but you can find the story from many sources.)

[_Dr. Shades]

I wonder if there wasn't a better way to deal with all of this?

No, there wasn't. Look at the history of early Utah to see how well the kinder, gentler approach worked back then (it didn't).

Could the state have sent in counselors to sort things out with the families without displacing children?

No. How do you "sort things out" on the ranch itself? Slap the hand of the 50 year-old pervs and ask them not to do it again? Yeah, I'm sure that'd work.

Med tech's to do the dna testing right at the ranch?

Possibly, but how many more underage girls would be raped while waiting for the results?

I've given this an inordinate amount of thought over the last couple weeks. My big issue now is that the state had no real plan for taking care of these 425+ kids, and each step they've taken since the raid has been increasingly stupid and harmful.

But nothing they've done would've been even 1% as stupid and harmful as the fates that awaited these kids had the state not put a stop to the institutionalized statutory rape.

Although they may have thought that they had a basis to go in as a result of the (now likely false) phone calls, the way that they've treated the women and children since removing them from the compound is deplorable. That they are now taking nursing babies from their mothers is absolutely revolting. Handling the dependency case en masse is a huge boneheaded move.

'Tis not nearly as boneheaded as it would've been to throw them back to the wolves.

I'm glad that the ACLU is stepping in now - there needs to be some greater power brought to bear against the state to right this wrong.

The only wrong committed here is the statutory rapes the adults were committing or consenting to en masse.

It appears that the state is arguing that the religion itself is harmful to the children, and that's not just at the top of a slippery slope, but darn near the bottom of said slope. The state needs to identify precisely which children are in imminent danger of harm, and handle their cases individually.

ALL the children were in imminent danger or harm. The girls are/were routinely married off at age 13 or so to their uncle or some other 50 year old, while the boys, if not the favorite of the sect leader, were tossed out on their butts.

The rest of the kids should go home with their moms and have CPS come in and conduct home visits and interviews where warranted.

"Home?" Back to the compound where they'd be "married" off at 13 and statutorially raped in the temple, possibly in front of witnesses?

I cannot disagree more strongly with the lifestyle imposed on the kids, but I'm not prepared to have them all taken away from their families under the guise of abuse. That's just plain wrong.

That's just it--it wasn't a mere "guise." It was a religious commitment imposed upon them that was strictly enforced by the entire community.

[_Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl: Could the state have sent in counselors to sort things out with the families without displacing children?


Shades: No. How do you "sort things out" on the ranch itself? Slap the hand of the 50 year-old pervs and ask them not to do it again? Yeah, I'm sure that'd work.


Jersey Girl: Med tech's to do the dna testing right at the ranch?


Shades: Possibly, but how many more underage girls would be raped while waiting for the results?

No, Shades. You send in counselors, med tech's and officers. Pull the adult males out and place them in some holding area (instead of shipping the boys 400 miles away) and put the females and underage boys under protective custody until it's sorted out.