[Jenny Hatch]

Original Post:

OK Texas, Give those children back to the parents!

That whole "they were having sex with underage girls in the temple thing" has been used against poligamists for over a hundred years.

Religious persecution, pure and simple.

If society wants to take an underage pregnant girl from her family, why not start with Jamie Lynn Spears. Prosecute her boyfriend for statutory rape and absolve her mother of all parental rights.

Not these families.

Jenny Hatch

PS - If anyone in the Fundamentalist LDS church is breaking the law then, sure throw the book at them, but if the only crime these people have committed is "being different" and raising their children out of the mainstream of society....LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!

Whose next? The Amish? The Mennonites? The Muslims? Anyone who wants to homeschool? This is America for crying out loud. We were created on the principle of Religious Freedom. You Nanny State Bullies get out of the homes, bedrooms, and religious sanctuaries of "We the People".

The most visible family I see "grooming" children in obscene sexual behavior, immodesty, and living a lifestyle that is DAMAGING to babies and children is in fact the lifestyle of Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. Go harass them if you want to do some good for the country.

[weegee]

If teenage pregnancies are such a scandal these days, why do the Democrats shield Planned Parenthood from reporting suspected child abuse when a minor comes in for an abortion?

Clearly a number of the pregnancies (and funding for the abortions) come from adult males.

[wideawake]

Nice equivocating defense of child rape, Jenny.

Again: the YFZ Ranch warrant was not based solely on phone calls, but also on the visual testimony of sworn witnesses.

[weegee]

This could be hugh!

[RightWhale]

Tomorrow 19 Apr ‘93 is the 15 years anniversary of the inferno at Waco and the last time I turned on my TV. We’re not doing a good job of speaking up for anyone these days.

[org.whodat]

BS, the kids in custody have nothing to do with you post.

[DugwayDuke]

“if the only crime these people have committed is “being different””

Thank you for going on record as considering child rape as just “being different”.

[Revelation 911]

if this woman falsely reported the incident, she should be sued until penniless.

If by executing a warrant based on her information additional threats to the safety of the children were found, prosecute to the fullest extent.

Mennonites, Amish, or any other Protestant denomination do not practice polygamy, sanctioned incest, or pedophilia as part of thier religious practices.

The FLDS, like Mormons, have no root in either Catholicism, or Protestantism

I suspect what will happen is that the FLDS will tie this into a legal boondoggle by the sheer numbers

[SWAMPSNIPER]

All the big inner cities practice a worse form of polygamy, they just sleep around indiscriminately and move on down the line. Plenty of pregnant 12 and 13 year olds!It’s all government subsidized too!
The religious link seems to be what upsets the gubmint, it sure ain’t the thought of older men sleeping with young girls.

[HereInTheHeartland]

“That whole “they were having sex with underage girls in the temple thing” has been used against poligamists for over a hundred years.

Religious persecution, pure and simple”

No, it's called breaking the law. They should be locked just for the polygamy alone.
And it seems very likely that there were perverts impregnating underage girls.

[greyfoxx39]

I found a link to a story on this:

Springs woman arrested for false reporting in raid

A Colorado Springs woman was arrested on charges of false reporting to authorities and is being investigated for her alleged involvement in the call that tipped authorities off to possible abuse at the Texas polygamist compound.

Police say they arrested 33-year-old Rozita Swinton at her home on Wednesday. The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs apparently as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas.

They left and have not filed any charges on Swinton and the Colorado Springs Police spokesman said he could not discuss any aspects of the Texas case.

Our sister station KMGH in Denver found out that this is not the first time Swinton has been arrested on charges of making false reports to authorities. According to records the charge against Swinton was made in connection to calls received by police in February indicating she was 13 years old and trapped in a basement-- all a lie.

It appears the cult defenders are counting chickens before they hatch.

Jenny Hatch's Mormon Mommy Blog: Natural Family Blog. "I am a stay at home mother of five who is a non-apologetic NEO-CON! I love my country, my family, and my faith."

FR HOME PAGE

[colorcountry]

Did you know that this Rozita girl is LDS? It is proported she is a member of the Colorado Springs, East Stake.

[svcw]

I am sorry Jenny but 13, 14, 15 and 16 year olds pregnant is abuse.
Mothers who allowed such behavior are just as guilty.

[dalebert]

I hope they have more than you say on these dirty old men. No excuse for old men bedding children.Lol!

[untrained skeptic]

According to KDRO, Swinton's arrest was for a false call to police in February. A young girl named "Jenifer" claimed she was being held hostage in a basement, causing Colorado Springs police to spend most of the day searching more than a dozen homes.

Flora Jessop, an outspoken ex-member of the FLDS group, told KUSA-TV she believes Swinton may have been the person she spoke with by phone, who claimed to be Sarah's twin sister.

The incident of making a false report that she was arrested for had nothing to do with the compound in Texas, and it appears that the calls to Jessop came after the raid, and were made as someone claiming to be Sarah's twin.

They don't appear to be accusing her of being Sarah, at least at this point.

PS - If anyone in the Fundamentalist LDS church is breaking the law then, sure throw the book at them, but if the only crime these people have committed is "being different" and raising their children out of the mainstream of society....LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!

Well the Bishop's own records show evidence of polygamy, and since some of these kids were obviously pregnant before the age of consent, polygamy isn't the only crime that has been committed there.

If society wants to take an underage pregnant girl from her family, why not start with Jamie Lynn Spears. Prosecute her boyfriend for statutory rape and absolve her mother of all parental rights.

While Spears and her boyfriend are obviously not good role models, He was 18 at the time and she was 16. Since he was less than three years older than her at the time, so in California it would have been a misdemeanor, and if they had sex in a different state, it may not even have been illegal. So basically they don't have a case to prosecute.

If you also don't recognize that there is a difference between two teens having sex, and a man in his 50s or 60s having sex with a teenage girl, and in some of these cases, apparently years younger than Spears, then you have serious issues of your own.

Whose next? The Amish? The Mennonites? The Muslims?

If they are polygamous and have older men having sex with much younger women, they should be locked up regardless of their religion. You can't abuse children like this and then hide under the guise of religious freedom.

The most visible family I see "grooming" children in obscene sexual behavior, immodesty, and living a lifestyle that is DAMAGING to babies and children is in fact the lifestyle of Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. Go harass them if you want to do some good for the country.

So because the Spears family is an example of moral bankruptcy, but not not necessarily breaking the law, the government should ignore the crimes of the people in this "church"?

I guess you feel that any action is ok if completely unrelated acts that you disapprove of aren't being declared illegal and prosecuted by the government in a completely different state?

[ansel12]

Jenny, everyone was concerned about the rape and abuse that these children were suffering in that Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ cult, but they are safe now and being treated well.

Let us just pray that the adults are brought to justice.

SAN ANTONIO, TX— In the complex interaction between the State of Texas and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a San Antonio-based non-profit has a simple task. And, it turns out, a big job.

Fortunately, it’s used to the work load.

Baptist Child & Family Services was tasked by the Texas Governor’s Division of Emergency Management to take the lead in providing shelters for the women and children from the FLDS Yearn For Zion ranch.

In the past few years BCFS has gained a national reputation for its expertise in such operations. Last month the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked it to be a “subject matter consultant” to develop a “functional template” for special needs shelters.

BCFS also is in charge of training Texas cities in setting up such facilities and will begin doing the same for the State of Nevada later this month.

“We are in San Angelo purely and simply to take care of women and children,” said Kevin C. Dinnin, president of BCFS and the “incident commander” for the sheltering operation. “We were not part of the circumstances that brought them here and have no input in what will happen in the future. We’re here to make sure they have safe, clean places to sleep, access to medical care, healthy food and people who care about them.”

[restornu]

Jenny does that women look robus and unrestrain to you she is caught between a rock and a hard place.

The world she lived in in that auster place and not taken to a place she had been brain washed all her life to fear.

This call was a hoax but there sure is some thing that was going on there.

Before you go further please check out a few warning signs tha that have been springing like a leak over the past several years!

Dr Phil Inside the Cult

Dr. Phil delves further inside a controversial polygamous community where girls as young as 14 are reportedly forced to marry older men who have multiple wives, and young boys are forced to leave town.

Hannity America

Inside the World of Polygamy Last year 'Hannity's America' gave you a rare and shocking look inside Warren Jeffs' secretive Eldorado, Texas compound, where April 7 hundreds were taken and an arrest made

[BTW Sean is very fond of the LDS, not to be confused with FLDS]

Warren Jeffs Prison Video I am not the prophet. I never was the prophet, and I have been deceived by the powers of evil.

[deport]

I am SPITTING mad.

---

With time and a little luck maybe you’ll get over it.

A mommy of five and home schooling. I wish your children success.

[Cloverfarm]

Jenny wrote “ ... who’s next? The Amish? The Mennonites? ...”

Beg to differ. Comparing conservative Mennonites or Old Order Amish to the FLDS is not logical. I feel led to point out that Amish and Mennonite men are generally faithful to one wife and support their own families.

They aren’t perfect, of course, but they each are providing for their families with their own hard work, not via welfare fraud.

It’s a very emotional issue of course, of course. So let’s try to look at the facts, not emotions.

[Admin Moderator]

Everyone. Knock off the personal attacks. Stick to debating the issue but don’t make it personal to other FReepers.

[SkyPilot]

I find it amazing that the FLDS defenders thought the questioning of Sect members less mature than outsiders, psychiatrist testifies

SAN ANGELO — A Houston child psychiatrist testified today in the custody hearing for 416 children from a polygamist sect that the group's sheltered environment makes members more immature than children in the outside world.

Dr. Bruce Perry said the adherence by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to underage marriage and underage sex puts all children at risk.

"I think that young girls — 14, 15, 16 (years) — are not mature enough to consent to a marriage," Perry said, testifying for the state of Texas.

Raised in a highly authoritarian culture, girls grew up believing that marrying early and having multiple children was their only option, Perry said. Boys grew up to perpetuate the abuse. Perry said he found even adults to be much less mature and less capable of making their own decisions.

"We found these children grow up to be 10, but they have the thinking patterns of a much younger child," he said.

As the custody hearing entered its second day, state District Judge Barbara Walther said today's session will conclude by 4 p.m., but she indicated the hearings will continue through at least tomorrow.

Attorneys for the sect's children are challenging the custody actions by questioning whether the state overstepped its bounds in seizing all 416 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, and not just the teenage girls who allegedly were sexually abused and impregnated by much older husbands.

In what has become the biggest, most convoluted custody battle in state history and perhaps the nation's, attorneys for the children are saying the state failed to use the least intrusive means available to investigate child abuse at the ranch.

"How would an underage marriage affect a 4-year-old?" an attorney representing the mother of a small child had asked Thursday in court.

Attorneys are seizing on the fact that if Child Protective Services investigators have had so much trouble identifying the followers of the church, not to mention how they're all related, can they really establish that anyone was abused?

A supervisor for CPS said Thursday that she learned of five girls who were 16 or younger when they were married to older men, conceived or gave birth.

A girl can marry in Texas at 16 with a parent's consent. Without it, the age is 17.

This case has brought to town hundreds of big-city lawyers volunteering to represent the 416 children. They're pitted against a handful of CPS attorneys, and in the middle of all this courtroom drama sit the 100-or-so mothers in long, flowing pioneer dresses, and some fathers, too.

Even now, two weeks after the raid began, the state may not have anyone's complete identity and is struggling to determine who is related to whom. One woman who initially claimed four children as her own said Wednesday that none belonged to her, Voss said.

The state's effort to keep the children from being returned to the polygamist sect got off to a rocky start Thursday as hundreds of lawyers fought CPS attorneys on every legal point.

CPS officials want the children placed in foster care because they believe all were either sexually or physically abused or were at risk of abuse.

The parents, members of a breakaway Mormon sect, deny any abuse. They want their children back with their families at their community near Eldorado, where they feel safe from the dangers and perceived sins of the outside world.

The lawyers were unable to prevent testimony from the CPS supervising investigator, Angie Voss, who testified that interviews with scores of children over the past two weeks convinced her that underage girls were routinely married off to much older men and sexually abused by them, and that girls as young as 13 had had children.

"My conclusion is that there are children having children, and there is a mindset that it is appropriate and a goal to be reached," Voss said.

It is part of their faith, she said.

"If the prophet hears from the heavenly father that a girl should marry — at any age — that is what she should do," Voss said, referring to the sect's leader, Warren Jeffs, convicted in Utah last year of being an accomplice in the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

Warren Jeffs

He faces additional charges in Arizona of sexual conduct with a minor, incest and conspiracy.

Under normal conditions, a child-custody hearing could take no more than an hour to decide.

But once the decision was made to hold a single hearing for all cases involving the children removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, the process slowed to a crawl. Lawyers objected to just about anything CPS attorneys wanted to say or introduce as evidence.

The 16-year-old whose call to a family shelter triggered the raid has not been found. Voss said several girls said they knew who she was and one said they had last seen her in a garden several days before the raid.