But you do not answer your own question. I assume that it is rhetorical. But you just can't bump it and tickle it and move on. You must respond to it. Were their rights of constitutional due process violated, yes or no?
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
Oh? and exactly do you mean by this?
I defend their rights to be parents and their rights against unlawful search and seizure guaranteed by the US Constitution and I'm a .... what?
It doesn't matter if they knew the call was false or not. They took 1 persons word over hundreds of parents words and should never have taken almost 500 children from their parents custody on the basis of one phone call from an anonymous tipster.
If all they had was circumstantial evidence from one unidentified person, then more discrete investigation was in order, not using the iron-fisted might of the State to bully their way in with APC's and swat teams.
I don't know. That's why I thought it would be interesting.
For some reason, you identify more strongly with a freedoms of a group living in tension (to put it nicely) with the mores of polite society than you do with law enforcement efforts of the state of Texas. I'm not intimating it's inherently wrong or bad. I am intimating that there's something driving all of our personal trains on this until there's more evidence.
State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville whose district includes Eldorado, speculated that law enforcement and CPS probably had a loose plan in place. Hilderbran remembers talking to CPS officials about the ranch in 2005, when he worked to pass a bill targeted at the sect that raised the legal marriage age with parental consent from 14 to 16. The bill passed.
Here's a State Representative admitting that he passed a law superceding one that had been on the books for decades or heck, a century??? that was specifically designed to target these people??
Boy, I don't know what more you want and it's too late to argue with a closed mind any more.
Good night
They have established procedures in these cases. They have a time frame in which they must follow up on the call. In this case, given the priority of the call that was assigned (relatively low, I believe), they had 72 hours to follow up. They did an assessment of the children who were on the property and determined that the children were in an unsafe environment. They did not do that based upon the phone call but based upon the evidence they encountered on site.
I think the takeaway from all of this is don't join a child-molesting cult (allegedly, just for you) and you'll have fewer problems keeping custody of your kids, all things being equal.
Did you smell anything sour when you learned of the alleged practices of the FLDS?
And what is your problem with that? A guy finds out that a group infamous for polygamist tenets is infesting his district, and does what he can to stop it. It's called doing your freaking job.
You seem to forget the last three words of that paragraph you've cut and paste in at least two responses: "The bill passed." So are you now suggesting that Texas doesn't have the right to change its own laws because someone's feelings might get hurt? You sound like liberals talking about the Protection of Marriage Amendment!
I agree. It would have made sense to remove girls at risk, but all of the children from all of the mothers? Not based on what we know so far IMO.
I think gay marriage is far more an abomination then polygamy is, so yes I say if gay marriage is legalized then polygamy should also be legalized.
Until this story came out, I would agree with you, but since polygamy is a front for child molestation I can’t agree with you any longer. Gay marriage so far has not found any widespread abuse. It will be awhile until we see how the children turn out from gay marriage.
But you do not answer your own question. I assume that it is rhetorical. But you just can't bump it and tickle it and move on. You must respond to it. Were their rights of constitutional due process violated, yes or no?
She says that they have been filled with hate.
They are not even raised by their own mothers.
Moreover, all of these women are receiving financial support from the Gov't.
The real question is why was this allowed to continue so long!
Lets see some 'parents' come forward and admit they are parents!
This was pure socialism, no family structure at all.
In the politically correct world look how a prosecutor is chastised in the press for trying to get Planned Parenthood to report abortions for under aged children who might have been raped.
I wish that I could write with your clarity and power. Thank you for a very good comment.
Exactly, just as the LEO are condemned when they don’t respond to a call quickly enough and someone gets injured, dies, or the perp escapes.
They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
No, it is following the Constitution by enforcing the laws.
Polygamy is against the law.
Living off of taxpayer money with fraudulent claims is also against the law.
If anything Texas dragged its feet on this one.
Amen.
Because some of us believe the people who have left there and the history of that cult. Not everyone is a liar about this group just to smear them.
Not everything has to go to trial in order to be determined as truth.
Well, that was a tautological statement!
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