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
The right to molest, rape, abuse, torture? I didn't know those things were protected by the Constitution.
What unlawful search and seizure happened? Please provide documentation to back up that the state was wrong and what it did was unlawful. How were their procedures flawed?
You don’t suppose Warren Jeffs being in jail on child abuse and rape type charges has anything to do with this?
Or do you just ignore the facts that don’t fit in with what you believe?
How are you connected with this group that you are defending them so much?
Have there been any arrests on charges of rape, incest, or abuse yet? I haven't heard.
Warren Jeffs
Dang, my hair is short. I had no idea that was a "signal". I don't think my husband would agree with this sure fire diagnosis! LOL
Well, are you now saying that these people should not have lawyers to defend them in court?
Warren Jeffs was arrested almost two years ago. What does that have to do with this situation in Texas?
I can't believe you just said that! We're talking about doing this to your own baby not a terrorist!
You're going to compare ages from 100 years ago? Wasn't the life expectancy something like 40-45 years old 100 years ago? Might make a tad bit of difference, eh?
bookmark for later
No, polygamy is much greater threat. If practiced widely, it causes a serious imbalance in the ratio of marriagible single females to males. At birth, there are about 105 males born per 100 females. By the time they reach reproductive age, there is about a 100 to 100 ratio due to the higher death rates of males. If 3% of men have 4 wives, That means there are 88 females for the remaining 97 males. It creates a very volitile situation where there is a large population of males with no possiblility of being able to get married and have a family. There's a reason western culture got rid of polygamous marriage; monogamous marriage makes marriage available to most men and cuts down the potential for violence from unattached males. Why do you think Islamic cultures are so violent?
no matter how much of a common sense case you present about how the government clearly overstepped its bounds, you will never convince those that have already judged and convicted these people.. all the evidence they need comes from the MSM.. doesn’t matter if the original call was a hoax, it doesn’t matter that there was no evidence of any crimes other than pregnant teens (which you will find en masse in every American city), it doesn’t matter that there is more documented abuse in “normal” monogamous relationships with children.. the FLDS haters will have their witchhunt and you’d better not stand in their way or you’re clearly advocating raping babies..
This reminds me alot of DU. Liberals don’t care about facts either.
Check out the Salt Lake Tribune (26 Apr 08)...”One woman, now 30, listed as having given birth to her first child in 1993 when she was 14”. The numbers that the media and the state are using are in varying numbers. So we aren’t getting factual data from the state, the rangers, the county, the church, or the media....we are merely getting a piece here and there.
What bothers me about this is we are spreading this data over at least fifteen years. Where was the state in the 1990s? Why wait while all these events were supposedly going on? Why won’t the state go after the non-sect teenage girls who are pregnant by a 25-year old or older guy (I’ll bet well over 1,000 Texan guys are guilty of this per year).
Are you trying to justify one evil religious belief with another evil religious belief. I say we hang them all in due course.
When they step forward like real men ad say who their wife is and provide proof that the kids are his and hers with DNA. Then they should become state witnesses against the real perverts.
The first time you run across a good news story about the stupid life alternating mistakes young girls make forcing them into a life of poverty post it. However, they made their mistake of their own free will,except in cases where it was forced. You do understand the concept of free will. That means they were not brained washed by some old married pervert, child molester.
The difference between civil law and criminal is a very hard concept for the less fortunate to grasp. Keep working on it. And the refusal of the supreme court to hear a case means that the law stands a written period. A federal court decisions affect it’s jurisdiction, a supreme courts decision are president for the whole country. You have that a little backward.
You keep spelling "cult" wrong.
It's CULT. See-yoo-ell-tee CULT.
YUK! Hip boots and rubber gloves.
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