I see in your post that the star witness does NOT address the fact that there is no way to verify just who the parents are of each individual child...or do you advocate just taking the word of the adult and washing hands of responsibility for them?
What's to stop these self proclaimed "parents" from immediately taking the children and disappearing behind the walls of another of the cult's communities, to be enmeshed in the same abusive practices?
Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Canada all have these FLDS communities, and the nightmare of trying to end this child-rape is exacerbated by the laxity in addressing it of UT and AZ due to political expediency.
Why not withhold your condemnation of the state until the DNA tests are done, there is a method of placing the children with rightful parents, and THEN see what course is taken by the authorities?
The issue of parentage is the one that is the most logical to be pursued.
But that can be handled by keeping the families under supervision, if that is what it takes. In fact, with the younger kids the families are together under supervision, and can’t “flee”.
And at first, the other mothers who wanted were staying with their children under supervision.
The separation of those mothers from their kids was not necessary in order to determine parentage before releasing the kids. It was done for other reasons.
I am trying not to take part anymore, but you asked a reasonable question and since I find the parentage issue one of legitimate government inquiry I wanted to point that out, so you didn’t think I was opposed to the DNA testing or to the government not simply trusting any person who claims to be a parent without any evidence.
I’m not sure that DNA is the only way to get reasonable evidence for parentage for EVERY case here, but it seems to have been necessary for at least some of the cases.
My main issue has been that of separation. If some families are eventually determined to not have participated in any way, to have done no harm to their children, to just have been in the “wrong place at the wrong time”, we will have in the interim harmed those families, and those kids, in ways that was not necessary, because we could have met the interest of the state without the physical separation and isolation of the kids.
I realise there are those who believe every child needs to be questioned, and be separated from the parents to ensure no coaching takes place. But to address that issue would require me to delve into matters I am no longer discussing, so I’ll leave it at acknowledging my cognisance of that issue.