Posted on 04/28/2008 7:08:07 PM PDT by ricks_place
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- More than half the teenage girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state officials said Monday.
A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3 1/2 weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Of those girls, 31 either have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. He didn't specify how many are pregnant.
"It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said.
State officials took custody of all 463 children at the ranch controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, saying a pattern of teen girls forced into underage "spiritual" marriages and sex with much older men created an unsafe environment for the sect's children.
Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but none of these girls is believed to have a legal marriage under state law.
State officials said earlier that they had found girls who were pregnant or had children of their own at the ranch, but they had not provided more than rough estimates until Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
ping!
100% of Baltimore city teens have been pregnant.
Can’t wait to see the comments on this.
Basically all the people who’ve been screaming at CPS to stay out of people’s business, for overreaching, etc.. will not provide you with gasoline for this fire.
I hate CPS just as much as the next guy, but when they get it right... boy do they get it right.
...and the other half were gay?
100%...?
FLDS sets up shop in Baltimore!? FLDS men better provide the pampers money.
Please provide proof of that and the link. Sometimes dumb bastards make statements they cannot substantiate. Please give us the proof mister db.
I just know somebody’s gonna say the teen girls were impregnated by the teen boys, so it’s not all that bad.
Idiotic!
A-Men!
It would be nice to have an objective report, not by the state or by the pansy press, or drooling tabloids. But the APE press loves titillating headlines.
The state of Texas’s case is built on the premise of a lie. And religious intolerance is not to be tolerated. The removal of 450 kids is without precedent. And was done lightly with out sufficient preparation and now these kids will be subject to people who do not have their best interests in mind.
The kids are now nothing more than slaves to the state and the whims of state worker that only care about headlines and prosecuting this case in the media. We should ask all of the state workers when they stopped having sex with cows.
There should be no more published on this subject until it is sorted out, anything else is pornography of the most vile and reprehensible sort.
It’s called lashing out.
“There should be no more published on this subject until it is sorted out, anything else is pornography of the most vile and reprehensible sort.”
I agree.
Thanks, I never thought of that. LOL
Yep. Even Free Republic is not immune from people with low reasoning skills.
sorry for the double tap but is reporting 14-17 year olds condition in regards to being pregnant some sort of privacy violation?
Maybe not but this is filth and if the government decided to come and take my kid on flimsy ass evidence like this I would be dead along with a lot of Federal and local “law enforcement” agenets. No doubt in my mind.
Would that be worth these eff-heads time and energy?
“And religious intolerance is not to be tolerated.”
We don’t tolerate human sacrifice.
We don’t tolerate peyote ceremonies.
We don’t tolerate Santeria animal torture.
So I go ahead and take the position that we certainly may be religiously intolerant, particularly when the rights of U.S. citizens are being violated.
The children at the place are U.S. citizens and have a right to protection by law.
If we play “see no evil, hear no evil” every time someone claims a religious exemption, we are going to have to wink at an awful lot of crime.
As for keeping quiet until it is all sorted out, by talking about it, we are sorting it out. That’s how I see it.
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