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
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 sect’s 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 Goldstein’s 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
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.
AUSTIN - An appeals court rejected pleas from the mothers of more than 400 children seized from a polygamist sect to immediately stop authorities from busing their kids to far-flung foster homes, but it agreed to hear arguments in the case next week.
The children, who had been staying in shelters in San Angelo since officials removed them from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado starting on April 3, were boarding buses today.
The state won temporary custody of the children through a ruling by state District Judge Barbara Walther late last week. Child welfare officials removed the children on suspicion of physical and sexual abuse after a family violence center received a call from a female saying she was a 16-year-old girl inside the compound whose 50-year-old husband beat and raped her.
Authorities now suspect that the call may have come from a woman in Colorado who has a history of making fake calls to authorities. The 16-year-old caller has not been identified among the 437 sect children in Texas custody.
Attorney Robert Doggett appealed the lower court's ruling on Wednesday and sought emergency action to halt the removal of the children to foster group homes as far away as Houston - 500 miles away - and elsewhere around the state.
The Third Court of Appeals did not address the request to allow the youths to remain nearby, but set a hearing for Tuesday.
"Obviously, we're disappointed with the Court of Appeals' failure to act timely," said Doggett, an attorney representing 48 mothers in the case. He said "having a hearing after the fact" is pointless.
Excerpt. The rest at GOSanangelo.
this entire thing is a tragedy, all around
from the polygamy to the heavy handed state
neither side can claim to be totally “right”
so much concerning the daughters is talked about
while the plight of the sons is ignored, in the media
if your father’s generation can, and does, take as many wives as they want, including down into your generation, then how many eligible females will there be for you and your brothers and others males in your generation
in the states wherein this polygamous sect resides, the social services of the states have foster-group homes for the coming-of-age boys who leave the sect all the time, because the polygamy of their father’s generation has vastly increased their likelihood of remaining single, particularly the further away from the “leadership” they are - they are “lost boys” when they leave and have a hard time adjusting to life outside their large extended families
still, I pray for solutions that would reduce the thinking that the state has the right, and must, intervene and squash any “lifestyle” that 51 out of 100 hundred citizens oppose
all our Constitutional freedoms are supposed to be above EVEN THE VOTES OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS, unless, that is, a vote to change the Constitution itself
It is a very dangerous place the state of texas is going with these children.
A word on the minors becoming mothers. Many thousands of inner city teens give birth each day in America, and you dont see the state taking their children.
I think the real question here is when a person becomes an adult. And that really depends upon culture and how the child was raised. It used to be that if a woman was not married by twenty she was an old maid.
The Jewish religion, and to a lesser extent the Christian one, taught that a person could be married when they reach their teens, more of a biological definition. Biology says that the moment that a person is capable of reproduction they are an adult.
Of course I agree with laws that set the age of consent to a higher age such as 16 17 or even 18. Those laws were meant to protect from abuse. But fact is many other nations take Germany for example set the age to 14. It is based on a realization that person becomes aware of what they are doing at a younger age.
Teens that are having sex with consent in my opinion are not really being abused. Just being stupid.
Of course if they are actually being forced then its rape. but I think all they have is an anonymous phone call right?
Just a suggestion if you are going to run a daily thread.
The title should include some identification method such as the date so that if one is looking for a specific thread it could be identified. Otherwise it would require searching all the threads....
Some delight in setting the bait for a flame war on this issue-
Accusing a poster of being a child rapist.
Accusing a poster of supporting child rape.
Accusing a poster of being a polymigist.
Accusing a poster of supporting polygamy.
Accusing a poster of being FLDS member.
Accusing a poster of not caring about the children.
Accusing a poster of being an idiot.
Accusing a poster of being a liar.
Wholesale bashing of the mainstream LDS church.
Posting posts of others over and over as facts of the case.
Attacking anyone that asks a question.
Just a handy cheat sheet to refer to for those of you that do want to have a flame war on this thread. Those of you that want reasoned discussion of this issue are very likely out of luck.
