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."
So many Mormons have come on these threads defending polygamy that the veil has been lifted and a lot of people are seeing the ugly truth about the LDS Church and its sordid history (like Joseph Smith taking a 14 year old plural wife) and are shocked that the LDS members on this forum are so quick to defend polygamy.
Doctrine and Covenants section 132 is a doctrine of demons. The fruit of that evil doctrine is on display in this wicked little encampment in which 50 year old men were deflowering 14 year old girls in hidden bedrooms in their Mormons Temples and LDS Mormons are defending polygamy as a righteous practice not only tolerated by God in the old Testament, but specifically commanded by God in Doctrine and Covenants section 132. That section is blasphemy of the worst kind and yet the LDS Church (which has quietly changed or removed other revelations, keeps that one in their so-called book of "scriptures".
Again thank you for coming here and lifting the veil on your religion. It is clearly an eye opener to those who really thought that the LDS Church was just another "Christian" sect.
Likewise, there are legions of FReepers who don't care that their fellow citizens ARE living as slaves and not free citizens.
What is your suggestion on how to deal with this? What are the authorities doing wrong and how would you have done it right?
Good Lord. I never thought of that. I suppose they have to keep the wives straight somehow. I hear the men don't even know the kids names, much less who's theirs.
Since they swap them like trading cards, that is no surprise.
Thank you for clarity in your post!!
Notice how they’re all just neat as a pin in each picture. No muss, no fuss, dresses all neatly pressed and unwrinkled, hardly a hair out of place?
Don’t forget their special underwear....
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=mormon+underwear&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
"Recent," eh? (Maybe as "recent" as what the basis was for the content of the movie, "The 10 Commandments?" With Charlton Heston recently dying, surely you've seen this movie? No? What? You haven't gotten out much to see a DeMille movie in the past half-century?)
Again, dust off your Bible. May I suggest you go back & (re?)-read the book of Exodus from end to end? Perhaps you could go thru the book of Exodus & count up how many times you see the phrase, "Let my people go." (Here, let me give you just brief highlights, and please especially note the highlighted verses):
Exodus 1:11-14: So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor...But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
Exodus 2:23-24: The Israelites groaned in their SLAVERY and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.
Exodus 3:7-10, 16-17 : The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians...And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt...I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt...
Exodus 6:5-6, 34: Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment...When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he SINNED AGAIN: He and his officials hardened their hearts. (Ex. 9:34)
Exodus 10:16: Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "I have SINNED against the LORD your God and against you.
What you fail to understand is that people already tend to exploit others. We see this in the sex trafficking industry. We see this in prostitution. We see this with the porn industry. (And prostitution & the porn industry is simply evidence of others "renting" or "leasing" somebody else's body for short periods of time instead of "owning" them outright). Pimps often serve as contemporary slavemasters. (You're not advocating that pimping is "righteous" blue-collar work, are you?)
Slavery simply invites intensified oppression & suppression by sinful people already prone to exploit others.
1 Timothy 1:9-11 We also know that law[a] is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and SINFUL, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Timothy 1:9-11)
I suppose next you're going to tell us that "lawbreakers and rebels...ungodly...sinful...unholy...irreligious" are all "compliments" courtesy of the apostle Paul.
So, let's also go back to your previous statement: "Slavery...barely mentioned and never condemned..." "NEVER" condemned, eh?
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?
I'm just curious as to why you've flunked Old Testament history or have missed out on seeing cultural epics--movies like the 10 Commandments? ABC putting it on around Easter isn't enough to put it right into your lap?
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?
Allow me to put 2 & 2 for you together: If God didn't allow slavery, would we have any comprehension at all of the enslaved effects of sin? (Please read Romans 6 & view the multiple "slavery" descriptions of sin...or Jesus' words in John 8..."He who commits sin is a slave to sin.") If God didn't allow warfare, would we have any idea of spiritual warfare?
Therefore, God also allowed the Israelites to be 400 years in bondage. A deliverer came and freed them from their foe (Psalm 106:10). Those who didn't have the blood of the Lamb on their household saw their firstborn die. There's many more minute parallels to Jesus the Deliverer in the New Testament, but suffice it to say for now...our bondage to sin & to Satan was embodied and typified in the Israelites bondage to Pharaoh.
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.
First of all, most folks ARE NOT "obsessed" enough with contemporary slavery like sex trafficking. (And that which is the subject of this thread is simply a different manner of "sex trafficking"). Secondly as I stated earlier there are degrees of slavery in the Bible according to the economic & warfare of the times.
If a people group won a battle, and killed all or most of the men, for the remaining women to survive, slavery was actually a means of survival for them. If their menfolk were "stupid" enough to try to, say, attack another tribe & wound up losing, then slavery might be the lone "means of redemption" for these women. If a man owned a debt, there was no modern court system to garner their wages, etc. Such a man would become a bondservant for, say, 6 years, and be freed on the 7th upon full payment of his debt. Ya wanna tell us how that's much different than a man who works a second job to pay off debt, & rarely sees his family because of it? Ya wanna tell us how a man who does DUI/narcotic jail time & pays his "debt to society" & doesn't see his family due to being enslaved to substance abuse is much different?
These are people who "voluntarily" (or some might say, by extension to their bondage to sin) decided that the credit card company or some substance would become their "master."
Now if a credit card company or a judge holds these folks accountable, are they guilty of sin? (NO!) Therefore, like I said, there are "degrees" of bondservice/slavery. And if you think what Muslims & British & Portuguese & American slavetraders did off the coasts of Africa is comparable to economic indebtedness, you really did flunk history, didn't you?
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...
The Prophets? In the chapter after the 10 Commandments: Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death. (Exodus 21:16)
In the context of being delivered from a chasing Pharaoh thru the Red Sea... He saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them. (Ps. 106:10)
We have been freed from the bondage of sin. Christ hated bondage to sin so much He became mere mortal & became sin (2 Cor. 5:21) & became a curse (Gal. 3:13)--the curse of the fall--on our behalf.
*
I realize these women may eventually be convicted of giving their children over, and rightly so. But my sympathies and prayers are for women who are so dependent on their husbands for their physical and emotional needs that they are blinded by what they’re doing. They are emotionally trapped by these men. You can hear that when you listen to them talk. Again, I am not saying that the kids should not have been removed from them. And I’m not saying that they should be let go because they are not guilty. My sympathies lie in their state of mental and emotional health.
The MISDIRECTION part was STATING that Abraham PRACTICED polygamy in the FIRST place.
Of COURSE you'll find no condemnation of something that did NOT occur!
I asked for one Biblical scripture condemning Abraham or Israel for practicing polygamy.
Yow!
Did you see them on the TODAY® Show this morning?
Zombie like!
BIG laugh!
This was not the prevalent idea in UTAH in the 1890's!
This is true.
But NOWHERE is there any EVIDENCE that GOD told him to STOP THE PRACTICE.
Yup!
Show us ONE instance in ANY of the LDS scriptures that COMMANDS polygamy.
That's what happens when bad people pick on the ONLY true Christians: LDS members!
It's been predicted and now YOU are in it's crosshairs!
Repent! Accept the RESTORED Gospel; Gentile; and there is hope for you yet!
--MormonDude(When would be a good time for a couple of our highly trained missionairies to come by and illuminate GOD's word to you?)
THE
DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS
OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
SECTION 71
Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon, at Hiram, Ohio, December 1, 1831. HC 1: 238–239. The Prophet had continued to translate the Bible with Sidney Rigdon as his scribe until this revelation was received, at which time it was temporarily laid aside so as to enable them to fulfill the instruction given herein. The brethren were to go forth to preach in order to allay the unfriendly feelings that had developed against the Church as a result of the publication of some newspaper articles by Ezra Booth, who had apostatized.
1–4, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon are sent forth to proclaim the gospel; 5–11, Enemies of the saints shall be confounded.
1 Behold, thus saith the Lord unto you my servants Joseph Smith, Jun., and Sidney Rigdon, that the time has verily come that it is necessary and expedient in me that you should open your mouths in proclaiming my gospel, the things of the kingdom, expounding the mysteries thereof out of the scriptures, according to that portion of Spirit and power which shall be given unto you, even as I will.
2 Verily I say unto you, proclaim unto the world in the regions round about, and in the church also, for the space of a season, even until it shall be made known unto you.
3 Verily this is a mission for a season, which I give unto you.
4 Wherefore, labor ye in my vineyard. Call upon the inhabitants of the earth, and bear record, and prepare the way for the commandments and revelations which are to come.
5 Now, behold this is wisdom; whoso readeth, let him understand and receive also;
6 For unto him that receiveth it shall be given more abundantly, even power.
7 Wherefore, confound your enemies; call upon them to meet you both in public and in private; and inasmuch as ye are faithful their shame shall be made manifest.
8 Wherefore, let them bring forth their strong reasons against the Lord.
9 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you—there is no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper;
10 And if any man lift his voice against you he shall be confounded in mine own due time.
11 Wherefore, keep my commandments; they are true and faithful. Even so. Amen.
Then just reply to the nuggets of gold.
Some.
Just what percentage is 'some'?
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