Posted on 04/15/2008 10:27:22 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
ELDORADO — Mothers separated from their children as part of a wide-ranging abuse investigation within a polygamist retreat accuse state officials of misleading them before taking their offspring into custody.
Authorities raided the sect's ranch more than a week ago in response to allegations that underage girls were forced to marry older men. Women and children from the secretive community were taken to a West Texas fort-turned-museum and a rodeo pavilion, but on Monday officials began separating women and some of their offspring without warning, members of the sect said.
While some women and children were taken from the shelters to the nearby San Angelo Coliseum, other women were allowed to return to the ranch — but only those who were childless or had children under the age of 5.
About three dozen of the women who returned to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch spoke out Monday, after 11 days in temporary shelters. They said in interviews that police surrounded them Monday and gave them a choice between returning home, or relocating to a women's shelter.
"It just feels like someone is trying to hurt us," said Paula, 38, who like other members of the sect declined to give her full name. "I do not understand how they can do this when they don't have a for sure knowledge that anyone has abused these children."
Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said the move was a typical procedure taken by the agency.
"It is not the normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made," Gonzales said.
Brenda, a 37-year-old mother of two teenage boys, said the women were threatened with arrest if they resisted the court order. Previously, the women had been told they would stay with the children at least until Thursday, when a custody hearing is scheduled, she said.
A call to CPS for comment late Monday on the women's claims was not immediately returned.
CPS's closing of the shelters came a day after three mothers from the ranch petitioned Gov. Rick Perry to inspect the shelters to see firsthand how families were being treated. The women said the living conditions were cramped and that some of the children had become sick.
About 20 children were recovering from a mild case of chicken pox, said Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu with the state Health Department.
Perry spokesman Robert Black said the governor did not believe the children were being housed in poor conditions at the West Texas fort.
"Let's be honest here, this is not the Ritz," Black said. But he called the accommodations "clean and neat."
CPS said officials have been planning the move for a week but that the coliseum was unavailable earlier. About two dozen teenage boys were moved to a facility outside San Angelo with the judge's permission, CPS said. The location was not released.
The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption. The sheer size of the case was an obstacle.
"Quite frankly, I'm not sure what we're going to do," state District Judge Barbara Walther said after a conference that included three to four dozen attorneys either representing or hoping to represent youngsters.
Brenda and others were critical of CPS, saying the agency misled them as to what was to happen Monday, weren't told why the children were removed from the compound and given inaccurate messages about opportunities to meet attorneys.
"We got to where we said, 'We cannot believe a word you say. We cannot trust you,'" she said.
Officials said the investigation began with a call from a young girl who has yet to be located by CPS. The women in the sect said they suspect she may be a bitter ex-member of the church.
The FLDS practice polygamy in arranged marriages, sometimes between underage girls and older men. The group has thousands of followers in two side-by-side towns in Arizona and Utah.
The church has repeatedly fought because of its lifestyle before. Men, women and children have been swept up in raids that took place in 1935, 1944 and 1953.
"It's been all through history, " said Brenda, the mother of two. "We were just here trying to live a peaceful, happy, sweet life. We don't understand why we can't do this freely."
it's a very recent argument 200 years ago or so in Western thought whereby scholars claim slavery (and the degrees of it you adroitly mentioned) is a sin or is condemned by the Bible.
not sure what your quarrel is on my supposition that polygamy is not really condemned either though one man/one woman is the oft mentioned ideal
I'm just curious, what makes you and others like you who take liberty with implications now 2000-3300 years since they were written and feel that your relatively new interpretations are for whatever reason more accurate than the many centuries before you?
Does it have anything at all to do with the truth of the word and history or more to do with believing what you'd like to fit your world view in 2008?
It's like everyone today is obsessed with slavery, particularly whites enslaving blacks and would like to now in defiance of nearly 3 millennium of Biblical interpretation simply loudly trumpet that the Bible really did condemn slavery and that slavery is/was a sin and yet no one else much thought that until quite recently.
Any special reason you're right and they weren't other than this is today and they were “before”.
Does the truth really change?
I stand by my words, were slavery as important to the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles, it would have been singled out and condemned like murder, blasphemy, theft, etc. but it never was.....
ping
Nope. I asked first. You go ahead. What are your sources?
Holy cow! I can’t believe how this topic has brought out the name calling on this thread! I think it’s important to remember there are two groups of people in this compound who deserve our sympathies and prayers. First, the brainwashed women and second the innocent children. Whether the abuse took place or not, children have been pulled from their mothers. Whether you believe the mothers were “in the know”, “brainwashed, or “innocent”, there are children suffering tonight because they miss their mothers. I can’t imagine the confusion and pain they must be feeling.
I wonder about the timing. Was this to keep Romney from being McCain’s VP?
I think she is a different ‘lavender’ wife. The ‘hugging the pole in lieu of my child,’ wife wasn’t wearing glasses, and appeared to have brown hair. Maybe they are color-coded ‘sister’ wives...
“I wonder about the timing. Was this to keep Romney from being McCain’s VP?”
Sure, it is a big conspiracy against your candidate, have you seen the recent history between the cult and law enforcement?
“””Alarmed that the sect’s members were building a compound, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff urged Texas lawmakers in 2005 to strengthen its laws. He described the sect in stark terms.
“Imagine a community run as a theocracy, where women are considered nothing but property,” Shurtleff told the Legislature, “where women have two purposes — to please their man sexually and have children.”
Texas lawmakers heeded the advice and made sweeping changes to Texas law against polygamy and underage marriage”””
“””In 2001, Utah authorities began a crackdown on underage marriages and arranged marriages of teenagers, targeting members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon splinter group that had lived in two towns on the Utah-Arizona border.”””
“””After seeing high-profile FLDS Church critic Flora Jessop on the ABC television program Primetime Live on March 4, 2004, concerned Eldorado residents contacted Jessop. She investigated and on March 25, 2004, Jessop held a press conference in Eldorado confirming that the new neighbors were FLDS Church adherents. On May 18, 2004, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran and his Chief Deputy visited Colorado City, and the FLDS Church officially acknowledged that the Schleicher County property would be a new base for the church. It has been reported in the media that the church is building a temple at the YFZ Ranch, which has been supported by evidence including aerial photographs of a large stone structure (approximately 88 feet wide) being built. Recent pictures now show the temple in a state of relative completion. A local newspaper, the Eldorado Success, reported that the temple foundation was dedicated January 1, 2005 by Warren Jeffs.[20]
On January 10, 2004, the church suffered major upheaval when Dan Barlow, the mayor of Colorado City, and about 20 men were excommunicated from the church and stripped of their wives and children (who would be reassigned to other men), and the right to live in the town. As a result, a few teenage women reportedly fled the towns with the aid of activists who advocate the escape of plural wives from polygamy. Two of the young women, Fawn Broadbent and Fawn Holm, soon found themselves in a broadly publicized dispute over their freedom and custody. They fled state custody together on February 15, and have been on the run in multiple states since.
In October 2004, disaffected members of the church reported that David Allred purchased a 60-acre (240,000 m²) parcel of land near Mancos, Colorado (midway between Cortez and Durango) about the same time he bought the Schleicher County property. Allred told authorities the parcel is to be used as a hunting retreat.
In July 2005 eight men of the church were indicted for sexual contact with minors. At least some of them surrendered to police in Kingman, Arizona.
On July 29, 2005, Brent Jeffs filed suit accusing three of his uncles, including Warren Jeffs, of sexually assaulting him when he was a child. The suit also named the FLDS Church as a defendant. On August 10, former FLDS Church member Shem Fischer, Dan Fischer’s brother, added the church and Warren Jeffs as defendants to a 2002 lawsuit claiming he was illegally fired because he no longer adhered to the faith. Fischer, who was a salesman for a wooden cabinetry business in Hildale, claims church officials interfered with his relationship with his employer and blacklisted him.
In July 2005, a half-dozen lost boys who say they were cast out of their homes on the Utah–Arizona border to reduce competition for wives filed suit against the FLDS Church. “The [boys] have been excommunicated pursuant to that policy and practice and have been cut off from family, friends, benefits, business and employment relationships, and purportedly condemned to eternal damnation,” their suit says. “They have become ‘lost boys’ in the world outside the FLDS community.”
On May 7, 2006, the FBI named Warren Jeffs to their Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on charges of sexual misconduct with minors.
The mayor of Colorado City, Terrill C. Johnson, was arrested on May 26, 2006 for eight fraudulent vehicle registration charges (providing false registration and title papers eight separate times)—a felony. He was booked in to Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah and was released after paying the $5,000 bail in cash.[21]
On August 28, 2006, Warren Jeffs was captured on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, Nevada, after a routine traffic stop. He was captured with his brother, Isaac Steve Jeffs, and one of his wives, Naomi Jeffs, both 32. Isaac and Naomi were both released. Jeffs was tried in St. George, Utah and was found guilty by a jury of two counts of being an accomplice to rape.
November 2007
A judge sentenced polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs to five years to life Tuesday for his role in the arranged marriage between a 14-year-old follower and her 19-year-old cousin.
A jury in Utah convicted Jeffs, the so-called “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, of two counts of accomplice to rape for “enticing” Elissa Wall to marry and have sex with her cousin, Allen Steed, despite her objections.
“Sure, it is a big conspiracy against your candidate, have you seen the recent history between the cult and law enforcement?”
My candidate? I’m not voting for McRomney. I’m just wondering about the timing. Apparently the problems with the fundamentalist mormons has been going on for awhile. Why now? Perhaps because Romney’s name is circulating as a possible VP?
I understand and agree completely.
My only concern, and there is some valid reasons for concern, is that authorities may have mis-calculated in a couple ways which could result in guilty men getting off. If the case goes south in some way, it will make it much more difficult to get a successful case later.
I pray this does not happen and that true justice be done. IMO, this is nothing less than white-slavery... but it has to be proven to 12 people, beyond reasonable doubt.
Sorry about the assumption.
If you look at that list you see that this has been going on for more than four years, you will see the special legislative action that Texas took in 2005, Jeffs sentencing five months ago and now this raid.
None of this has anything to do with a political candidate.
Western states and Canada have been interacting for more than five years, trying to figure out how to successfully stop the child rape that is a fundamental part of the cults reason for existence.
It is a very complicated legal challenge because of the nature of cults, and especially this 10,000 member cult.
The compound and temple that was raided by Texas was filled with the elite of the cult, the men, women, and children were all handpicked for being super loyal and as the least at risk to betray the inner secrets of their activities.
Not one arrest so far. Not one!
It seems to me the older ones have darker hues. It also looks like pictures of mothers walking with children are the same color, but different hue.
Her sleeve wouldn't elicit enough public sympathy. That is why the Salt Lake Tribune had to show the box of tissues next to the woman who pimped her own children so that she could assure her place in the Celestial Kingdom to be called from Behind the Veil.
By the way, I like the "reflective" pose - along with the folded hands.
Too bad she wasn't as "reflective" about her children.
I give total sympathy to the children - both the little girls who were raped by the men (so sorry - "married"), and to the young boys who were thrown into the streets as soon as they reached puberty because they were competition to the 50+ year old fat pigs.
The mothers are "brainwashed" as you called it, but so are all cult members. That doesn't give adults an excuse for the evil that participate in. God (the real one) holds us all accountable.
These women allowed their children to be abused by men. Are the men more guilty in my view? Yes, because it is documented that these pigs would use child abuse as an evil tool to control the women, but - if you watch the news interviews - these women are defending this evil with every fiber of their being.
So far, this woman who left the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint cult is one of the few heroines in all of this mess.
Watch the interview video.
Even when the "mothers" are shoving their daughters into bed with nasty old perverts?
FLDS women console one another at the Yearning for Zion Ranch Monday. Mothers with children 5 years old or younger were permitted to stay at the coliseum. Other were sent home without their children.
Their place in the "Celestial Kingdom" may be in jeapordy. Perhaps their Temple Worthy man won't call them from Behind the Veil now? That will screw up their eternity.
In post 266 you said:"There is nothing but lies - by Law Enforcement. The phone call was a hoax. The "beds" are inventions to whip up the mob (that's you)."
And you know this how? What are your sources? You've been avoiding answering the question. Why should we believe you over anyone else? Give us a good reason. Show your sources and why they're reliable.
All you've replied with are insults, false accusations, hysterical fear mongering, hyperbole, made up crimes (like "mental rape") that you judge to be worse than the real thing.
You cry about the Constitution, well part of our justice system is innocent until proved guilty and you have made up crimes, made false accusations against us, lied, sat as judge and jury and condemned us without a trial, and you complain about what's going on in this situation?
You're worse than the authorities you're condemning. They're following the laws in at least getting a search warrant and they have not assigned guilt without a fair trial.
Why do you hate women and children so much that you would defend the perverts and pedophiles who are enslaving them and denying THEM the freedom to exercise their own Constitutional rights? Do only the men have them?
Why do you hate the USA so much? If you don't like it and think it's so bad, you're free to leave and move somewhere else that has a form of government you like better.
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