Posted on 04/18/2008 6:30:59 PM PDT by granite
SAN ANGELO, Texas -- More than 400 children taken from a ranch run by a polygamous sect will stay in state custody and be subject to genetic testing, a judge ruled Friday. State District Judge Barbara Walther heard 21 hours of testimony over two days before ruling that the children be kept by the state. Individual hearings will be set for the children over the next several weeks. She ordered that all children and parents be given genetic testing. Child welfare officials have said they've had difficulty determining how the children and parents are related because of evasive or changing answers.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
In reference to my comments regarding the similarities to Waco, my leftist, feminist, card-carrying communist neighbor agreed with me last night. ;)
You said: “I don’t know enough about this yet but if the older women channeled 13-14 year old girls to older men at first mense cycle sexual rituals as some here claim then they too are guilty.....brainwashed or not....same as a women who keeps her kid in a home with a child abusing boyfriend.”
They don’t channel them though, they don’t have a choice, that is the point. The girls are taken by the men and told and forced (or beaten if they resist). The mothers don’t have a say whether or no they want their 13 year old daughter to marry a 50 plus year old who has other wives.
The difference bewteen this and the abominable occurance of the woman who (and I hate that with a purple passion too) keeps a boyfriend with her child (and who sometimes kills the child, you hear of that far too often). The difference is that we hear of it, the guy is arrested because the child goes to the hospital, alas the mother does get off often, sorry to say, but these situations are open and accessible, a neighbor can report abuse.
In these closed compounds no neighbors can report abuse, no woman is free to object if she does and the local police are sometimes FLDS members themselves. They are operating outside of our laws which is part of the problem here.
Please don’t be rude. I have no beef with you and I admit there’s a problem. The problem is, Liberals put these programs in place with NO stoppers of any kind, whatsoever.
That said, in doing so they created the perception of public need. Now that they’ve done that, you have to take baby steps to get away from it. Yanking welfare away from 4 generations that have accepted it as a way of life will not work.
Your rant on ‘government abuse’ notwithstanding, it is not the way to attack reducing government in our lives. The all-or-nothing of it will only make matters worse.
It’s easy for you to speculate that people will be self-sufficient. I’m afraid that without entitlements, they will simply find another source to take what they want. I hope you and me won’t be the targets. More police is still more government, BTW.
You can absole the mature women if you want, I’m not.
But you did answer my question about the women being brainwashed thn why not the same standard to the boys born into it who became men thinking this was right.
What great great grandaddy Jessop and Brigaham and Joseph Smith did and so forth.
I was just reading a CBS transcript and discovered that quite a few of the women who are in FLDS come there, they are not born into it.
How does that figure into the prevailing logic on these threads?
Whether or no, the central issue is men who are abusing too young girls.
If they were practicing polygamny with women marrying only over 18 years and if they expelled no boys and never beat their children and were successful and hard working expanding communities there would be no issue. Our country would not bother them at all.
All this is because of abuse of children, principally by older men.
Your absolution of the women is faulty to me but it’s an opinion like mine...unprovable and reflecting of our gender presepctives I’d wager. I have never seen myself as a victim without recourse...even when I was one.
I consider a man over 18 marrying a girl of 16 a crime. Arranged marriages are not a crime. Some here think teen girls should not marry yet they did once at a much higher rate than now. Today many who woulda have married early in the past simply don’t marry at all now.
Forced sex , turning out boys and sex with young teen girls is more the issue for me....it’s complicated....folks here are hysterical about something that is not too far removed from how my ancestors lived in the late 1880s and early 1900s in the rural South. I’m old enough to hear them talk about being married at 14 to know they didn’t make it up and it more often than not was rewarding for them. It may seem weird to us now but for them it was normal unless one was rich and had the money to send a girl to college or finishing school. Median age for girls in the rural south to be married in 1900 was around 18....lower than say New England obviously....so that means that half the girls were married by then.
I dunno....just trying to really olook at this whole picture. I’m ambivalent about parts of it.
btw....who determines what is beating children?
marks?
a belt?
paddle?
whip?
razor strap?
willow switch?
standing in a corner?
no PSII?
Thank you for serious and interesting discussion wardaddy, I mean that. I think though that girls married in the south and everywhere in the world in the past, so young because life expectancy was much, much shorter.
I think too people were raised much more seriously then than they are now, they saw death much more frequently and to be honest they were likely more mature than they are today.
I’m not sure we are not living in a kind of twilight zone of ease, comfort and are spoiled. I was in Pakistan a couple of weeks in 1986 (just as we bombed Libya) and it was an experience I will never forget, very scarey in many respects.
I like my life here and now, but I’m aware that many forces would much rather have me not so comfortable and want “subjects” not fellow citizens to share a good life with.
A very good question, what is beating children, or what is true abuse. I can’t answer it. What is PSII?
Grandson just got one, partially with birthday money, but mostly with what he made mowing yards.
“...folks here are hysterical about something that is not too far removed from how my ancestors lived in the late 1880s and early 1900s in the rural South.”
Your ancestors were brainwashed in a cult and threatened with eternal damnation if they left, and were forced to marry much older men who were also married to other girls, and may have suffered sexual and physical and emotional abuse? I don’t think some people grasp the cruelty these cult members live under, mental and physical. They are essentially slaves.
I agree with the physical abuse stuff....I would probably go a hair broader like closed fist etc...
a good spanking, collar bone pinch and even an occasional slap to an older male child from mom is sometimes in order if they are really out of control
i use a large paint stirrer stick....about 1/4 inch thick, 3 inches wide and 30 inches long
1-5 licks....pants on....unless a bathroom fight tween siblings (5 in my home)..enough to sting but not bruise
I was responding to comments that girls who marry undr 18 are by default abused. I don’t agree with that per se.
That is the problem here...no one is interested in the details and some here are to be fair....anti-Mormon.
I would simply like to know more and worry about 400 kids and the complete culpability or not of everyone involved.
Nor do I absolve all the women.
And what about brainwashed men?
and what about the 20-30,000 other polygamous Mormons in that area?
and what about the other cultures here who do that and arranged marriages?
it’s just a bit more complicated on so many fronts here than some want to admit or care to see.
this is an issue beyond simple child abuse.....it’s a huge cultural issue for this sect of Mormonism.
are you telling all Mormon polygamist sects are like this?
are these folks and different from Smith and Young or the original Jessop?
and what about the women who come to these cults and aren’t born into them?
the boys turned out is an issue too....to be sure
lots of stuff going on here.....I doubt I’ll see it straightened out anytime sson.
“So if youre neighbor abused his children can the state come take your kids and separate them from you...since obviously you must have known about it and would be tampering with the “evidence”.”
Very bad analogy. This isn’t the case of a neighbor, but the residents of a compound associated with persons known to practice child rape.
A better analogy would be if you and your neighbor were known to be members of a group that practiced child abuse.
“That sort of rolls back into my question on absolving the mothers/women of any guilt. Could the state be leaning the other direction here? (that there is guilt to some degree)”
I doubt the mothers would ever be prosecuted due to too many extenuating circumstances like being victims of abuse themselves. The state is simply ensuring that untainted evidence can be obtained. If there is evidence.
“Remember the case in the 80’s of the day care center where the kids were interviewed and all started saying they were abused?”
That case was absurd on first glance. The children’s stories were so fantasy laden that the case should have been thrown out of court in an instance. And, I’ve not heard any stories of clowns and scissors in this case have you?
“If someone came after my children and said I couldn’t speakt to them because they may be witness to a crime...I’d be shooting someone.”
That would only occur if you and your children were both witnesses to the same crime. You would probably be simply warned not to discuss the crime without lawyers present. However, in this case, the parents must also be considered suspects.
“The problem with your theory is that you are assuming all the parents are guilty.”
At this point, I assume nothing. Some may be guilty some may not be. But, at this point, you do not known which parents should be suspects and which children might be witnesses. The only way the state can proceed is to segregate the children until evidence is obtained.
“i think you need to have a court ruling before you can make that decision on a legal basis.”
There is a court. It is having hearings. It will make a ruling on whether the mothers can have access to the children. If you say you cannot segregate until the court rules, then that is probably too late to preclude possible witness tampering. Let the court handle this. The court is attempting to balance parental rights and the need to gather untainted evidence. There is no information that any one’s rights are being unreasonably trampled.
I disagree the analogy still holds. But we’ll go with yours. If you and your neighbor were close and they were pedophiles and they went to the same church as you. Do you think the state should be allowed to separate you from your kids and give your kids to foster parents with no direct evidence of your wrong doing or abuse of your kids? All under the guise that you probably are guilty.
I’m not saying let the kids be abused. But I am saying you need to prove a child is abused or someone is abusing children before you can just take kids away. I guess for you it’s ok to take kids away from their parents because they are likely to be abused. So then we should just take away kids from poor parents where the parents were abused as children...because statistically they are the most likely to abuse their kids.
Wow! Just wow! You believe in taking a kid away from a parent with no real evidence only the fact that they have common friends that were pedophiles. Amazing.
What next? How about taking kids from parents that smoke? Some would consider that abuse to the children. How about parents that spank their children? Or how about parents that know parents that spank their children...obviously they are guilty too for hanging out with those parents. See where this is going?
I say put the pedophiles on death row or chop their testicles off and rape them with a plunger...but let's make sure they are guilty first. Let's not do a janet reno and just torch the whole lot of people just because they are in a "bad" place.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.