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
Excuse me? Children are hospitalized and you call that crap?
People signed up for the ping list to be informed of articles. If you don’t like that, then give up running the ping list.
Great post and thank you so much.
50% of the families living at the ranch were monogamous. There were several single parent households.
Their children were taken as well.
Stop pinging me to your personal opinion CRAP. I don’t care if you think human beings shouldn’t be allowed to smile. You would fit right into the cult. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.
You don’t get to tell me how to run my ping list, it’s MY ping list. I don’t need your input. I’ll find the articles myself.
And I suggest if you stick around here, you learn how to tell which post of yours is being replied to.
News flash, I have posted way more articles than you have from the beginning of this situation. Also, I have been here over a year.
If you want to run a ping list about the issue at least be honest and go ahead and let people know that you believe YOU are the one who should judge which stories are important and which are not.
Not very many people would be interested in your “ideal” of YOU being the ping list police.
Wow what a stretch. Why are you accusing people of things they didn’t say? Is that the only way you can deflect the argument and take the pressure off yourself?
curious.........
What state or country do you reside in?...... You fly the US flag so I guess it’s the US but you apparently are ashamed of your state?.....
I believe it is obscene for a woman to be gleeful about taking almost 500 children from their mothers. She testified that she was so afraid because there were men around, yet when she gets the call from the judge top take all the kids, she starts laughing and grinning and like Step & Fetch It.
That is just sick.
So clueless.
His group under his orders.
Nothing has changed, or if it has, it’s only gotten worse.
But if you don’t want to believe anything is wrong with them, you’ll find any excuse to discredit anyone opposed to them.
Why on earth would you want to come down on the side of the cultists? Are you one of them?
You are ridiculous. You don’t even know which post I was replying to.
I told you not to ping me to your stupid “CPS is evil” crap. It had nothing to do with any other post.
You apparently have no idea how FR works.
YOUR OPINION MEANS NOTHING TO ME. STOP ADDRESSING POSTS TO ME.
And, i am jumping in yet again because I so enjoy being called all types of things for questioning the State's actions here.
So, lets see. They took all of the kids even those not at risk of immediate abuse because:
“But several child advocates and experts in family law are sympathetic to Walther, who determined that the environment at the ranch was not safe for anyone younger than 18 because children were groomed to become either potential victims or abusers.”
“because children were groomed to become either potential victims or abusers.”
Allow for a translation...... “because children were [raised] [to possibly become] victims or abusers”
You do well to fear the government when its standard for the taking of children is no more than their condemnation of the manner of your raising of the child coupled with the mere allegation that said raising may possibly sometime in the future cause the child to be a rapist or rapee.
How about this? Go down to the projects over at the local ghetto and take all the nursing infants from the teats of their single mothers because we all know that children raised in such environments and by such mothers have an 89% chance of committing a felony.
What's that got to do with the number of pregnant teens they found NOW.
"I am here today to release disturbing information found during my investigation about the deaths, poisonings, rapes and pregnancies of children in our state's foster care system.
"I found, from information provided by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, in Fiscal 2003, 30 foster children died in our state's care; in Fiscal 2004, 38 foster children died; and in Fiscal 2005, 48 foster children died.
"Data shows that while the number of foster children in our state's care increased 24 percent from 26,133 in Fiscal 2003 to 32,474 in Fiscal 2005, the number of deaths increased 60 percent.
"If you compare the number of deaths of children in our state's population to the number of deaths in our state's foster care system, a child is four times more likely to die in our state's foster care system.
"Based on Fiscal 2004 data provided by the Health and Human Services Commission, about 100 children received treatment for poisoning from medications; 63 foster children received medical treatment for rape that occurred while in the foster care system; and 142 children gave birth while in the state foster care system.
"As alarming as these cases are, we can only imagine how much worse the Fiscal 2005 data is because Gov. Perry's Health and Human Services Commission has refused to provide the data needed to complete my investigation.
"When I called on Gov. Perry in October 2004 to create a Crisis Management Team, I said the crisis was minute-by-minute and child-by-child.
"In Fiscal 2004, four-year old twin boys living in the same foster home received medical treatment in the hospital for rape.
"A five-year old boy in the same foster home received medical treatment in the hospital for rape two days later.
"A 15-year old girl who was not pregnant when she entered our state's foster care system in May 2002 gave birth in February 2004.
"The state is supposed to be protecting our forgotten children, but in all too many cases these children are taken from one abusive situation and placed in another abusive situation. Many children are in more abusive situations now than they were before the state intervened. Children are being neglected and abused and are dying.
"As reported by the media, a 12-year-old boy died in December 2005, while in our state's care at a facility that treats children with learning disabilities and emotional problems. The boy suffocated while being restrained from behind by an employee of the facility.
"Another boy in our state's care at the same facility died May 30, after drowning in a creek during a May 6 bicycle outing.
"A three-year old was treated for poisoning from an atypical, mind-altering antipsychotic drug. These drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children under the age of 18 years old.
"Gov. Perry's failure to create a Crisis Management Team is unconscionable. The crisis is minute-by-minute and child-by-child. I renew my call. He must act now to save children's lives.
I pinged an article about the children being placed in the hospital.
I also included her in a reply in which she was pined by someone else, not me.
Strange, isn’t?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2007728/posts?page=1
No. Don’t tell me those poor innocent cultists would actually LIE to people, now would they?
Say it ain’t so.....
....and in our age of instant demand for “proof” of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, we would be wise and prudent to just hold off all our conclusions for the trial and the evidence to be fully laid out (which will take more than at least one year!).
There is no way that even a small fraction of the evidence is known to the public. These CPS cases have privacy restrictions all over them, even as sensational a case as this one is.
I adopted four siblings from foster care — I know a thing or two about social workers, the system, and the courts.
Heads will roll — people will lose jobs — and others will be prosecuted — once the whole story is told. Disgraceful...
Can you read her mind?
Did she tell you?
Or did you ass-u-me it?
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