placemark
Posted on 11/24/2009 7:45:07 PM PST by delacoert
Yesterday on Daily RFT we had a couple bones to pick with a misleading headline in the local daily and the bible-thumping defenders of Burrell E. Mohler Sr. Along with his brother and four sons, the 74-year-old Independence, Missouri, native is accused of repeatedly raping his elementary school-aged granddaughters.
Turns out the article in the Post was cribbed from a much longer and much more compelling piece that led Sunday's Kansas City Star.
The latter feature lays out the Mohler family tree, details all of the disgusting deeds in question and sets it all against the backdrop of the family's involvement with the Mormon Church and an obscure offshoot called the Community of Christ, headquartered in Independence and also founded by Joseph Smith.
The take-home message of the piece? Both churches failed to step in and stop the unspeakable abuse.
The RFT's sister paper in Kansas City, The Pitch, sums up the situation thusly:
The Star balances the accusations against the Mohlers with character witnesses on their behalf (granted they're from hypocritical religious fanatics, but still) and excellent reporting on how and why such unfathomable abuse can occur (still no word on how Wilford Brimley got involved though.)
Burrell Mohler Jr. left the Community of Christ in 1982 and joined Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), or Mormon church. Burrell Jr.'s former wife, we've learned, took her children's complaints that they were being abused to the church. But a church bishop, Paul Tonga, made the idiotic decision to investigate the matter himself. (The Star reported that Burrell Jr. was excommunicated from the LDS church in 2007 for personal conduct unrelated to child sexual abuse.)
The Community of Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are similar but different. The Community of Christ reacted quickly when the story broke. The church said it took the allegations seriously and stripped the three Mohlers of their licenses. The church also held a prayer vigil. In a Fox 4 report about Tonga's inaction, Community of Christ officials made a point to distance themselves from the Mormon church.
For its part, the Mormon church has said Tonga should have consulted with church leaders, who would have told him to notify the authorities
Read the whole thing here.
Last June, 76-year-old Burrell E. Mohler Sr. seemed a perfectly reasonable choice to give the Father's Day sermon at his tiny Bates City Community of Christ Church.
After all, he was a family man. Proud of his four sons. Loved all those grandchildren.
A churchgoer who was present that day believes Mohler's message followed the lectionary Scripture suggested by the mother church: the Gospel of Mark 4:35, the story of Jesus quieting the storm at sea.
Fortunate, perhaps, that he did not speak on Mark 10:14: "Suffer the little children to come unto me."
“Read the whole thing here.”
No thanks, troublemaker...
“... obscure offshoot called the Community of Christ, headquartered in Independence and also founded by Joseph Smith.”
The RLDS (now called Community of Christ) is not really that obscure. Okay, it’s not as well known as the LDS, but ‘obscure’? It wasn’t founded by Smith either. It was founded by his family, his brothers really, and led by a Smith family leader until very recently. The RLDS claims to be the REAL Mormon church.
Apparently the family members go to three different Mormon sects:
LDS
RLDS (Community of Christ)
and the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
This is probably how it was in Brigham Young’s Utah...
No female over the age of 8 was safe from pedophiles...
Even in her own family...
“Independence, Missouri.”
The place Joey Smith prophesied was the “new jerusalem” and the place that the mormon jesus was going to return to in “the second coming”...
The place that all mormons have set their future hopes and sights on...
Joey Smith would be proud that “the principal” worked out so well there...
Once the charges — 42 so far — were filed, it seemed the Mohler family was shattered as irreparably as the bad-memory jars the little girls purportedly buried and authorities earlier this month hoped to dig up.
It’s a dark and ugly family portrait, causing dismay and disbelief among relatives and friends. They paint a starkly different picture — one of people who took joy in their children, their churches and friendships.
Time in court will tell which is the correct one.
Many stand fiercely by Mohler and his four sons, Ed, David, Roland and Jared, as well as his brother, Darrel — all in jail.
Gina Fauth, a good friend who sang church duets with Burrell Mohler Sr.’s wife, doesn’t buy any of the allegations.
“He’s a very respectable man,” Fauth said. “I have no reason to not trust him. It’s mind-boggling. I’m just sick over it.”
It's mind boggling alright.
Normal hillbillies would have taken gramps out back and shot him.
I tell you; it's a MIRACLE!!
How did those folks manage to evade the MURDEROUS MOBS that CHASED the GOD-fearing and peaceful LDS mormons out of Missori?
Why were they not all KILLED and RAPED and RAVAGED by those HEATHEN Christians of their community??????
Why were their HOUSES not BURnt and their CROPPS all DESTOYED!!
I tell you; it's a MIRACLE!!
“Iffn ya ain’t good enuff fer family; why would anyone ELSE want ya?”
I started to say that posting this article was an insult to hilbillies everywhere. Then I remembered I am from the high plains of New Mexico, dragged kicking and screaming to the Ozarks fifty five years ago.
My brother did a term paper on the local school children and found EVERYONE in his class were kin to everyone else in his class, except us!
So your comment stands.;-D
placemark
Is it really hillbillies?
Or hillbilly's?
I've got to know!!
Apache?
Navajo?
Apache?
Navajo?
We came from Farmington NM to the Ozarks. Everyone here was kin to each other, except us. Everyone in NM was not, Too many gas field workers, uranium miners, construction workers.
Ah...
I erred when I thought the ‘class’ was in NM.
(didja ever get to see the SALMON ruins before you went back east?)
Let's see...
You're about 63 now, so you left around 8 years old?
We left NM in 1956 when I was 9 years old. I moved back in 1973 and left in 1977 when I got a good job in (gasp) Arkansas.
I was back in Farmington NM just two months ago. I miss it every day!:-(
Meanwhile, here in Arkansas the old fogeys have died off and new blood is coming in, mainly Hmong, Katrina refugees, Texans, Mexicans. Some areas here sound to me like Mexico.
Sounds like Michigan in some places, most of young people with out family roots have left that politically back wards state for jobs in the south, while these new blood lines fill in the void left behind. I remember an old rock and roll song with the words in the lyrics to the effect of "Nothing but the dead and dieing back in my little town."
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