"I was concerned," Voss said of her visit to the ranch. "It was a scary and intimidating environment. I was afraid. I saw men all over."
Posted on 04/26/2008 9:19:01 PM PDT by Howdy there
Sunday, April 27, 2008
After a long night interviewing children inside a polygamist ranch near Eldorado, Child Protective Services caseworkers made a crucial decision as the police-backed raid entered its second day.
They took 18 girls, from 6 months to 17 years old, into emergency custody on April 4, a Friday, because they felt their living conditions were unsafe — initiating a sequence of events that led to the removal of all 462 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch and headlines around the globe.
Did Texas go too far? That question will probably be debated for decades, and not only because of its implications for religious freedom and the limits of government power.
Families were ripped apart. Children, including some who had to be pried from a parent's leg, were scattered into foster care across Texas — though state District Judge Barbara Walther relented last week and allowed children younger than 1 year to remain with their mothers in shelters.
The law allows Texas to take emergency custody when a child's health or safety is in immediate danger — but to balance that power, CPS must seek approval from a district judge by the next business day. In the Eldorado case, that was Monday, April 7.
That day, CPS investigators reported to Walther that they had found several pregnant and apparently underage girls at the isolated West Texas ranch where girls are groomed to become "wives" to older men. The underage marriages were condoned by the girls' parents, CPS officials said.In Texas, sex with someone younger than 17, when the partner is more than three years older than the victim, is considered sexual abuse.
Walther not only approved the emergency removal of the 18 girls, she also agreed that CPS needed to take custody of every child at the Eldorado ranch, which is run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Mormon splinter group also known as the FLDS.
Robert Doggett of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represents about four dozen of the mothers in the sect, questioned the wisdom of separating all the young children from their parents.
A 6-month-old boy, he said, is not in immediate danger of indoctrination into what CPS has characterized as a widespread practice of forcing underage girls to have sex with older men in "celestial," or spiritual, marriages.
For such children, "how in the world could the judge have found imminent risk of physical harm?" Doggett asked. "Courts are supposed to be a check on the government. That system has totally broken down."
SNIP
May Jesus protect each of these precious children.
The intended deception in the headline, makes the rest of the article meaningless.
"I was concerned," Voss said of her visit to the ranch. "It was a scary and intimidating environment. I was afraid. I saw men all over."
Well done, and accurate.
You think the news media is on the side of this cult????
“May Jesus protect each of these precious children.”
Best comment I have seen in a while.
Children rescued from FLDS at play.
“You think the news media is on the side of this cult????”
No. I think they will do anything necessary to sell laundry detergent.
Until VERY recently, the legal age for marriage in Texas was 14, with parental consent. Might not a defense here be that these were Common-Law marriages, with parental consent?
Why do you question her sexual preference? Because she wears her hair short? Or because she did her job?
Is she a les?
I would like to point out that EVERY ONE of those babies is being carried face forward.
When I mentioned that was one of the ways they desensitize the babies, I was ridiculed.
I had his same question. YES, partly because her hair is short, but mostly because of her irrelevant remark...”There are men all over.” So?
"But I can understand the flip side. Most of these children, like the young babies, there is no evidence whatsoever they were under any threat of being physically or sexually abused," Grigg said. "You're removing children because 12 or 14 years down the line, they are going to be sexually molested?"
When she we remove the kids? When the girls begin to show evidence of becoming women? Or is it just better to get kids out of the homes of child molesters? I'm gonna go with the latter.
As those who left this cult attest, the FLDS is not limited in its molestation. Many of the girls attested to being molested before they were married. Sometimes the molestation was the cause for the marriage. It seemed as if the girls were viewed as "damaged goods" or "unclean" after a molestation and were then forced to marry to gain some sort of holiness back.
You almsot have to wonder if all accepted child rearing knowledge was just ‘reversed’ to get the optimum, negative bonding experience. These people are sick.
I don't support child abuse or raising girls to be breeders for dirty old men. (I'm neutral on polygamy). Yet guilt by association smacks of the Salem witch trial and McCarthyism. How is it that EVERY mother knew of the danger and every child was in danger. A pox on both their houses.
What do you mean, carried “Face downward”? By whom? And for what purpose?
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