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Something I have found quite distasteful in FR with the discussion of the dealings with the cult, and it is a cult--I feel no need to put the word in quotation--is the sense I get that so many men here are identifying with the sexual prerogatives of these nasty old men.

This place is a farm for breeding sex slaves. Simple as that.

Which, I guess carries a certain erotic charge.

The children are isolated and married off young, utterly dominated and confused as to their rights to live their own lives. The boys are abandoned by the side of the road when they become old enough to offer any kind of challenge to the horny old goats that run the place. Picture being the brother of one of these girls who is about to be bred by an old bull who is a relative several times over--

This case is hell to try to manage. The judges who think that there is no endangerment lack common sense. I feel for the people who finally tried to rescue these kids with the history of Waco in their minds--likely authorities have been trying to find an angle for years.

What I find distasteful in FR is so many women not using the (obviously outdated) notion that ALL people are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Nobody here has a clue what went on in the compound other than what the lying news media has said. I said it once and I will say it again. We don’t believe them 90% of the time when they report on just about anything else, why the hell are we believing them now?

Assertions were made by Texas CPS that did not hold up in Court.

I personally will go with what the Judges have decreed that have SEEN the evidence (or in this case, the lack thereof) and stay with that old antiquated idea that a Citizen of my country (who practices a religion that I do not agree with) has the RIGHT under our Constitutional form of government, to be considered INNOCENT until he/she is PROVEN guilty.

Perception is everything apparently. Your perception of this apparently is clouding your opinion, and of course the morality of it is repulsive.

But, again, it’s not your business or mine. What the people in Texas did was to remove a lot of children that most likely were NOT abused, and left people who indeed might be criminals walking around.

As has been asked, where are the arrests and why haven’t they done so yet?

The crime as *I* see it was taking all those children from their mothers.

There was a reason I put the word cult into quotations. Because, anything can be called a cult. There is a definition of the word cult, but many people just call something that name to make it a negative connotation.

The POINT is, you can’t make “cults” illegal. Why? Simple. Even academic disciplines are “cultist” in many ways. So too are those of us who follow the principles of the Constitution - and therefore we might be considered “problematic” by those opposed to the Constitution (those whom believe it is a “living document”).

By the way, the usage of a word in quotations is normal in a discourse because you are identifying the word as the object of discussion, rather than attempting to obfuscate the meaning - which is what you’re doing when you use the word “cult” in a sentence.

You are taking only the negative connotation of the word as gospel, which, unfortunately for your argument, it is not.

Something I have found quite distasteful in FR with the discussion of the dealings with the cult, and it is a cult--I feel no need to put the word in quotation--is the sense I get that so many men here are identifying with the sexual prerogatives of these nasty old men. This place is a farm for breeding sex slaves. Simple as that. Which, I guess carries a certain erotic charge. The children are isolated and married off young, utterly dominated and confused as to their rights to live their own lives. The boys are abandoned by the side of the road when they become old enough to offer any kind of challenge to the horny old goats that run the place. Picture being the brother of one of these girls who is about to be bred by an old bull who is a relative several times over--

I would encourage you to consider how much of your perception of the mindset of the men posting on FR is really just a projection of your own thoughts.

If you offered non FLDS men the chance to swap places with one of the polygamous FLDS men I doubt you'd find any takers.

Why would any man want to live in such a structured, complex group, working as hard as they do, under the rule of some "prophet" just so that they could have sex with more than one woman? Any guy who wants to do that can have as many sexual partners as he wants -- without the burdens of supporting children, praying twice a day, building a temple, obeying the leader, etc. Ask any single guy who likes women. There is no shortage of single women in the world today.

Why would some guy who just wanted to have sex - even with a young woman - bother with all that effort when he could just jump in his pickup truck and drive to Nevada where he can have whatever he wants for $200?

Why do you think that for over one hundred years a group of FLDS women have chosen to live the lifestyle that they do, teaching their daughters and sons the beliefs (albeit unusual) of their religion? Given that they outnumber the men, and in many cases apparently groups of women run households with only infrequent visits from their "husband" who is off elsewhere working to raise money to support them, wouldn't it be just as logical to conclude that the entire enterprise was somehow of benefit to, or actually liked by the women who participate in it? Or maybe even that they, like the men, really believe in their religion?

Instead of viewing the actions of the FLDS members through your own perspectives and projections, try to examine them from the point of view of someone who believes in their religion the way you believe in yours. Their beliefs may be strange, but I am sure they hold them as deeply as anyone else holds their religious beliefs.

This case is hell to try to manage. The judges who think that there is no endangerment lack common sense. I feel for the people who finally tried to rescue these kids with the history of Waco in their minds--likely authorities have been trying to find an angle for years.

No, the Texas CPS lacks common sense. The case is hell to manage because a muscle flexing CPS full of hubris decided to conduct a massive, overreaching, ill-advised raid. They calculated (correctly) that the trial court would rubber stamp whatever they wanted to do, and in so doing they needlessly inflicted absolutely devastating separation trauma on hundreds of pre-teen children. They decided to take THE MOST DRASTIC ACTION available to them under the law, removal of children from a household, even though there were less traumatic alternatives prescribed by the law (such as removing the men from the ranch) and even though they had to know that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for them to meet their burden of proof for each child taken.

The CPS knows the law backwards and forwards. This is their business. To chalk this botched operation up to incompetence is to interpret their actions charitably. To remove a child from a household they need to provide evidence of three things:

(1) there was a danger to the physical health or safety of the child which was caused by an act or failure to act of the person entitled to possession and for the child to remain in the home is contrary to the welfare of the child;
(2) the urgent need for protection required the immediate removal of the child and reasonable efforts, consistent with the circumstances and providing for the safety of the child, were made to eliminate or prevent the child's removal; and
(3) reasonable efforts have been made to enable the child to return home, but there is a substantial risk of a continuing danger if the child is returned home.

The CPS knew that they were required by the law to provide evidence at a full adversary hearing within 14 days of taking each child that would convince a reasonable prudent person by a preponderance of the evidence of all three elements of the statute. The CPS not only did not provide evidence for each child of all three elements, they admit that that they did not, and instead tried to shift their own burden of proof onto the parents. Each of the custody determination orders that the trial court issued were required by the law to show evidence of each of the 3 elements for each and every child taken. Those custody determination orders that resulted from that cattle call judicial stampede that was passed off as a full adversary hearing for each individual child contained, as was to be expected, zero evidence pertaining to each and every child that supported the orders that were issued by the court. It was an impossible task, and the blame for that situation rests entirely on the reprehensible incompetence and arrogance of the CPS and a gutless CYA judge. The CPS caused the judicial stampede in the first place, and their excuses for the lack of evidence and their attempts to shift the burden of proof are like a person who kills his parents complaining that he is an orphan.

This outcome was entirely predictable, assuming that the law would be actually be followed. I didn't know that it would be. I said these things here prior to appellate ruling , but I was cynical that they would actually take the requirements of the Statute seriously. The Appellate Court did. The CPS will lose at the Supreme Court level, too , if they go through with an appeal. All they're trying to do now is buy time for THEMSELVES. As far as they're concerned, to hell with the hundreds of young children that they have traumatized and continue to traumatize for no reason.

Not only have they shown clinical indifference to the absolutely devastating effect that separation trauma is known to have on young children, they may have also botched the legitimate rescues of those underage girls who have actually been sexually assaulted and/or raped by the cult leaders. Deciding on such a massive raid necessarily limited the resources that they would be able to devote to those case where they might have actually proved the abuse. Monkeys have more judgment than these morons displayed.

And while I'm at it, collectively attributing to the men on this forum an ulterior motive of getting some sort of perverse erotic charge out of this spectacle is totally uncalled for and is itself perverse. We are as horrified at the massive force combined with massive incompetence and arrogance of a rampaging, out-of-control State bureaucracy that is supposed to exist for the protection of children as we are the sex crimes and abuses committed by these cultists. That sort of invective is a disservice to this forum, and it is an insult to many decent American citizens here who prefer to see the guilty punished, not the innocent.

We don't like assignation of collective guilt, here, OR in a courtroom.

FAMILY COURT - TEXAS STYLE

Cordially,