Posted on 04/25/2008 6:36:20 AM PDT by MizSterious
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) - Dozens of mothers from a polygamist retreat were bused away from their children Thursday, their legal efforts to stay united rejected as Texas officials sort out their massive custody case.
Two buses took the women from the San Angelo Coliseum, where they had been temporarily housed with their children. Texas officials were preparing to move the last of more than 400 children to group homes, shelters and residences, some hundreds of miles away, over the next few days.
One woman held a handwritten sign out the bus window that read: "SOS. Mothers separated. Help."
"There are no words to describe how it was," said Velvet, a mother who was forced to leave her 13-month old. She and other sect women have refused to give their last names, fearing it will affect their custody cases.
"We've been staying up nights to watch over the children because we didn't know what would happen," she said in a news conference outside the ranch gates Thursday.
In Austin, the state's 3rd Court of Appeals rejected the mothers' pleas to immediately stop authorities from busing the children taken from the ranch to foster homes.
The court agreed to hear arguments Tuesday, but attorney Robert Doggett, who represents 48 mothers, said that "having a hearing after the fact" was pointless.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyiowan.com ...
Seized polygamous sect kids face tough adjustment, articles on how and where the children were placed, Carolyn Jessup on Canadian children possibly at the ranch, legal aid group challenges judge, interview with Benjamin Bistline, 40 women choose to go to safe house instead of back to cult, 25 girls claimed to be adults, now found to be minors.
Currently collecting informative links to include with the daily threads--should appear this weekend.
As always, for the sake of orderliness (and to prevent the pulling of threads and/or messages), let's do try to stay on topic and polite. You can't have a flame war if you don't take the bait.
Now they can watch TV shows with gay protaganists and play “Grand Theft Auto” while dining on supersized McDonald’s Bic Mac combos.
And just exactly how old were the children of these mothers, hmmmmmmm? Any children over the age of one-year-old means the "mothers" were impregnated when they were under the age of 17!
Ping
What’s worse—watching McDonalds commercials, or being forced into sex as early as (according to some sources) 10?
Howdie, Miz. Thanks for the daily threads!
I see you've picked this special time to humiliate yourself.
How cute.
GOD BLESS TEXAS~
I’m missing something here. Exactly why are the babies and toddlers being removed?
I can understand removing those in dangerous situations but not the little ones. Wouldn’t it be better to leave them with their mothers until the case has been tried?
Can someone enlighten me?
I hope it turns out well and that any child abuse is properly punished. Yet, this thing has left me with an uneasy feeling. A hoax call sets off the rounding up of hundreds on the assumption that all are guilty of something.
Those poor kids probably don’t know which end is up. I hope they all can deal with what lies ahead of them.
One thing I’ve thought though- why are we not prosecuting people in our own society who impregnate 15, 16, 17 yr old girls? It happens every day, all the time and the guys go free.
We haven't had a really good "flame war" around here for a while.........
In a sweeping indictment of the raid on a secretive polygamist compound in Texas, Aspen attorney Gerry Goldstein is accusing law enforcement there of reckless disregard and unlawful taking of DNA, and he is demanding a review of their actions.
At the crux of the 39-page motion Goldstein filed Thursday in the Texas 51st Judicial District Court on behalf of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a revelation that the man authorities were looking for, Dale Evans Barlow, was in Arizona at the time of the April 3 raid. Texas Rangers searched the polygamist sects Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, for a week after receiving reports from a woman claiming to be a 16-year-old named Sarah Jessop, who alleged that Barlow was sexually abusing her. However, police now suspect the reports were a prank engineered by a woman in Colorado Springs with a history of false reporting.
Those officers could have and should have exercised greater diligence in verifying and determining the true whereabouts of a known convicted felon serving a probated sentence in another state. At the very least, alleging that Dale Barlow was located on the YFZ Ranch without checking with the Arizona Probation Office these officers knew to be supervising him constituted a reckless disregard for either standard law enforcement protocol or common sense, reads Goldsteins request for a hearing to investigate the issuance of the search-and-arrest warrants.
Moreover, prior to executing the initial warrant, (Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran) was advised that Dale Barlow was in Arizona and not on the premises sought to be searched. In fact, prior to entering the premises Sheriff Doran actually spoke to Dale Barlow in Arizona by cell phone, confirming his driver license number and the fact that he was in Arizona.
Barlow advised the sheriff that he did not know Sarah Jessop, that he had not been to Texas in more than 20 years, and that he had never been to Yearning For Zion Ranch, according to the filing. Thus, Goldstein argues, law enforcement had been advised and had verified that the only person suspected of posing an immediate risk to children was not located at the polygamist compound.
Excerpt--the rest at source: Aspen Daily News Online
I feel for these children. They are all in my prayers. This case is a mess and the children end up bearing the brunt of everything. It’s a terrible situation all around.
I remember the outrage when children were seperated from their mothers when ICE raided a sweatshop in MA. If these people were Illegal Aliens this would not have happened.
Women gather with their children at temporary housing in San Angelo, Texas, soon after being removed from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' compound in Eldorado. The children are playing with bubble water.
The roots and beliefs of the Texas sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, go back to the founding of mainstream Mormonism in the 19th century.
In the 1840s, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith taught that "plural marriage" was given to him in a divine revelation and was ordained by God as sacred. As Mormons migrated west, they took polygamy with them.
But in 1890, after Smith's death, the mainstream church disavowed polygamy, partly as a means of gaining statehood for Utah. By 1904, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pledged to excommunicate anyone in plural marriage -- a policy that continues today. Modern Mormons in good standing with the church eschew polygamy as an earthly practice, but they recognize it as a "divine principle" that may apply in heaven.
But some Mormons continued the practice. "These people believe God doesn't change his mind," said Jan Shipps, a prominent historian of Mormonism.
"They felt the main church went astray," Shipps said.
In the early 1900s, polygamous Mormons clustered in the remote southern Utah region called Short Creek in hopes they could avoid church and government oversight. They could not, and all Short Creek polygamists were excommunicated by the church in the 1930s.
Soon, schisms led to multiple polygamous sects, including the sect at the center of the Eldorado raid. Members of that church believe in:
The group is led by a single man known as "the Prophet" who is believed to receive divine revelations from God. The mainstream Mormon church also is lead by a male prophet (currently Thomas S. Monson) who receives divine revelations. But unlike the mainstream church, nothing is done without the permission or direction of the sect's prophet, who arranges all marriages.
Scholars are not certain of the identity of the current prophet. Until his arrest and conviction as an accomplice to rape in 2007, Warren Jeffs was the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Some experts think he continues to guide the group from prison.
Excerpt. The rest at source: The Columbus Dispatch.
‘Gummit... now y’all got me itchin’ for a trout.
“But to suggest all of them be painted with this broad brush because they belong to a particular religion is a very dangerous thing, and that’s why we have courts.”
My premise from the get go!
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