Posted on 04/29/2008 7:34:43 AM PDT by greyfoxx39
One phase of FLDS work is complete SAN ANGELO, Texas — The last of the extra Texas state troopers, child welfare investigators and others involved in the massive effort of caring for Fundamentalist LDS Church children in custody have rolled out of town. "The demobilization of resources in San Angelo was completed only (Monday)," said Gov. Rick Perry's spokeswoman Krista Piferrer. "It was a large scale effort with a tremendous law enforcement presence, nonprofit presence and (Child Protective Services) workers from all around the state. We basically transformed a coliseum into a shelter.
-SNIP-
Boys located
Attorneys identified Monday the location of an 11-year-old boy whose name had not been included in a master list of the children and the foster care facilities where they were taken.
We're not exactly sure about what happened. His name was just removed from the list for some reason," said Cynthia Martinez, communications director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. The group represents the boy's mother and nearly 50 other FLDS mothers. The mother called looking for information about the boy and his 16-month-old brother but their names weren't listed and no one could provide her answers.
The toddler is believed to be at one of the facilities, but authorities still aren't sure where. There are three children in custody with the same or similar names.
CPS workers insist the two boys have always been safe, but because of confusion with many of the children's names and birth dates, it's been difficult to properly identify all of them. Many of the mothers and children provided false or different information at various times, they say.
"The placement list we have might not agree with the mothers, but that's the information we were given by them," said CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins. "It's certainly understandable and probably frustrating, but I don't think you can consider those children were ever unaccounted for or missing."
-SNIP-
Crimmins said as of Monday afternoon, six FLDS children removed from the YFZ Ranch were in hospitals. None has serious health issues. One child has an ear infection, another has respiratory issues. Crimmins said he did not know specifics about the other four.
"In all of these cases but one, the mother is either with the child or is being kept up to date on the child's condition," he said. "I don't know about visitation of the children but that will be arranged if we can do it."
Of those 463 children, 250 are girls and 213 are boys. Children 13 and younger are about evenly split -- 197 girls and 196 boys -- but there are only 17 boys aged 14 to 17 compared with the 53 girls in that age range.
REMINDER...
WE Polygamy Special Tonight
(If you have Dishwork, WE is on Channel 128 and the show on at 9pm central time and again at 12am central Wednesday)
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/04/flds-polygamy-s.html
This week’s episode of the WE documentary series “The Secret Lives of Women,” which airs at 9 p.m. Tuesday on the cable channel, examines the world of the breakaway polygamist cult. And this documentary does make the case that the FLDS group is a cult, complete with a prophet who has made doom-laden pronouncements about the necessity of “blood sacrifice” by his followers.
The chaos created by Texas authorities, who recently stepped in and removed hundreds of children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch after an abuse complaint was called in to the state’s child protective services hotline, is unfortunate, but the documentary also makes the case that the children of this secretive, controlling sect especially the young girls, are and were at risk for many different kinds of abuse.
The hourlong film features in-depth interviews with Flora Jessop, who ran away from an FLDS settlement at age 16 and for decades has been an activist helping women and children leave the group. Her relative, Carolyn Jessop, is also interviewed; Carolyn is the author of the current bestseller “Escape,” which tells the story of how she just barely managed to leave a violent, loveless FLDS marriage with her eight children in tow.
Thanks for the reminder...I kept looking for it LAST night...duh!
Sect doctor silent on abuse question
Mon, 04/28/2008
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Here’s what’s known about Dr. Lloyd H. Barlow:
— He’s licensed to practice medicine in Utah, in Arizona and — since June 2005 — in Texas.
— He has no disciplinary actions against him in the states in which he’s licensed to practice.
— He operates a medical clinic at the YFZ Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamist compound raided by Texas authorities beginning April 3.
~SNIP~ (more at...)
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/32701
I suppose I could understand a doctor holding his toungue about certain things if he figured that in reporting abuse the FLDS people simply would cease seeking treatment for children's ailments.
He'll probably lose his license to practice medicine because of this, and he should, but I can understand if his reluctance to report problems was due to an ethical decision.
A poster here said they are thrown out when the grow body or facial hair.
We don’t see eye-to-eye on this entire topic, but I must acknowledge you’ve done an excellent job composing all of this information on the subject - thank you.
New developments in the FLDS case
12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, April 29, 2008
From staff reports
No hearing today: A hearing by the 3rd Court of Appeals that had been scheduled for today has been canceled. Appellate judges gave the state until Friday to respond to a claim by 48 mothers that there wasn’t enough evidence for state District Judge Barbara Walther to rule April 18 that the children should remain in state care.
Cases to be assigned: Each of the 463 children will be assigned to a Child Protective Services caseworker. Each caseworker will work with no more than 15 of the sect’s children. They won’t have any other children assigned to them, for the time being.
Sick children: CPS confirmed that nine of the sect’s children have been hospitalized while in the state’s care and six are currently in a hospital. The ailments have included dehydration, ear infections and respiratory problems.
Woman recalls life in polygamist sect
By David Perlmutt
McClatchy Newspapers
Published on: 04/29/08
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — She was raised by her father and his three wives, surrounded by 12 siblings.
There was no TV, no radio. At school, she was taught that man never landed on the moon. She and other girls in the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were required to “keep sweet,” free of jealousy or anger, or risk beatings or humiliation.
And by the time Kathy Jo Nicholson turned 14, she was sewing her wedding dress, knowing that any day she could be thrown into marriage with a man three times her age.
Nicholson never finished that dress. Instead, she began to question her faith and, at 18, walked out on it.
~SNIP~ (more at link)
http://www.ajc.com/cobb/content/news/stories/2008/04/29/POLYGAMISTSECT_ESCAPE.html
Sect kids’ diet simple
Ark asks public for cash to meet menu requests
Pure vanilla. Pure honey. Real maple syrup and whole milk. Fresh fruit. Large black or white hair scrunchies and all white bed linen.
The emergency shelter caring for children in state custody from a polygamist Mormon splinter sect asked for residents’ help Monday in providing these items and more that fit with the children’s dietary and living preferences.
Ark Assessment Center and Emergency Shelter for Youth Executive Director Delma Trejo would not confirm Monday how many of the sect’s children were among the 25 youths at the center on Monday. Nor could she give other specific information about their identities, citing state privacy guidelines. But court documents indicate the center was to receive nine of the more than 400 children removed from the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado after allegations of abuse.
~SNIP~ (more at link)
http://www.caller.com/news/2008/apr/29/cps_sect_kids/
You may expect that number to change from time to time as the pregnant little girls start having their own babies.
April 29, 2008, 1:11AM
Donations overflowing for polygamist sect children
Diapers and baby food fill a City Hall
By RICHARD STEWART and CINDY HORSWELL
Instead of sending out water bills or notices for municipal court Monday, the two-person City Hall staff of the tiny Brazoria County town of Liverpool were putting together tricycles Monday.
The two-room City Hall filled up with bags of diapers, boxes of baby food and other goods destined for the Jim H. Green Kidz Harbor two miles from town. The facility is now the temporary home of about three dozen children taken into state custody from a polygamist sect’s West Texas retreat.
~SNIP~ (more at link)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5737900.html
Sect Children At Methodist Home Think They’re All Siblings
(April 29, 2008)—
The 49 children who arrived at Waco’s Methodist Children’s Home Friday, three weeks after they were removed from the West Texas compound of a polygamous sect, think they’re all siblings, Methodist Home President Bobby Gilliam said Tuesday.
Gilliam described the age range of the children as wide, but said none of the girls is old enough to have become pregnant.
On Monday, Texas Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar said 31 of the 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 removed from the compound have been or are now pregnant.
The children at the Methodist Home were scared when they first arrived, Gilliam said, but over the past couple of days have settled into a routine.
Staff members are receiving special training in how best to deal with the children, who are being kept separate from other residents of the home.
~SNIP~ (more at link)
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/18366814.html
“A Diabolical, High Pressure Marriage”
By: Kevin Barney - April 27, 2008
Prior to the 1940s, fundamentalist plural marriage looked a lot like 19th-century Mormon plural marriage, in that participants chose their own partners, based on personal attraction, principles of faith and in general the same sorts of considerations that lead anyone to choose a marriage partner. While this open market style continues to obtain among most polygamous groups, it does not among the FLDS, which practices what they call placement marriage, in which marriages are arranged, and wives and children are sometimes reassigned to other men, as a sign of absolute submission to priesthood authority. Originally when a young girl in the FLDS tradition felt ready for marriage, usually between 16 and 25, she would discuss the matter with her father, who would let the priesthood council know and they would assign her to a male to marry, which would take place either immediately or within a week or so. But under Warren Jeffs this has evolved to coercing younger and younger girls into marriages without their first presenting themselves voluntarily.
It is helpful in understanding the development of FLDS placement marriage to consider the secret 1948 marriage of Louis Barlow, a tale which Marianne Watson recounts based on the journals of her grandfather, Joseph Lyman Jessop (she has changed the names of most people still living, except for public figures like Warren Jeffs.)
In September 1948, Lyman, a polygamist himself with three wives, was shocked when his 15-year old daughter Christine told him she had secretly been married the previous weekend to Louis Barlow. Barlow was then 24 and already a practicing polygamist, with two other wives and three or four children. He was the son of the presiding fundamentalist leader John Y. Barlow, and also a nephew of Lyman’s, making him Christine’s first cousin. Lyman was deeply disturbed at such a marriage being performed without his knowledge and consent. On the way back to Salt Lake the new groom flagged Lyman down along the road, and they talked about the marriage for a tense hour. Barlow said he had been commanded to do it, but refused to say by whom. But he maintained he did exactly right. Lyman responded “No person on earth has a right to tell you to take my daughter without my knowledge or consent, and this you have done.”
Lyman suspected that this “divine command,” if one were given at all, must have come from Barlow’s father. He did not think it right, as it violated the agency of others, namely Christine herself, his and her mother’s. Barlow then came to see Lyman in SLC and tried to talk about the marriage some more, and then resorted to threats against their salvation. (”Pretty cocky, I call it” Lyman recounted in his journal.) Lyman soon learned that his own brother, recently called to the Priesthood Council, had performed the wedding.
Lyman sought advice from Joseph Musser, then second in authority on the council. The elderly Musser agreed with Lyman that he was right in this matter. He advised Lyman that no action was needed to annul the marriage, and to simply ignore it. This was almost the last straw, he mused, wondering “what will they do next?” But it was impossible to simply ignore, as Louis Barlow continued to press his claim on Christine. Once, when Lyman was away, Louis came to the home and took Christine 12 miles away to the ranch of a polygamist friend, telling both Christine and her mother Winnie that Lyman had consented. Winnie was furious that Lyman would have done so without discussing the matter with her, but when he returned at the end of the week, he assured her he had given no consent whatsoever.
The next morning, to their surprise Louis and a couple of other men brought Christine home, stating his intention to take Christine as his wife to Short Creek. Lyman appealed directly to Christine, saying he would rather she didn’t go. Realizing from this that Lyman had not given consent and that she had a choice in the matter, Christine said “no.” Louis continued to press his case for more than three hours, but eventually he and the two others left without Christine. But Louis didn’t give up, and the tense situation continued. Winnie fretted almost to the point of a nervous breakdown. (It was in the course of trying to reassure her that Lyman referred to this as a “diabolical, high pressure marriage,” which is the source for the title to this post.)
Lyman was heartened that his own father, Joseph Smith Jessop, said he agreed with him (although he refused to blame his other son Richard for performing the marriage.) The elder Jessop called a family meeting to resolve the matter. Lyman said the marriage was invalid because Louis pressured Christine into it and had done so without his knowledge or consent. He was especially adamant because Christine “says she don’t want Louis at all and felt all the time that He was not the one for her, tho she yielded to his stubborn will and persuasions.” Louis, his father and Lyman’s brother argued for the other side, that the marriage was valid, arguing that when an authorized man used that ceremony, it was binding, no matter what the conditions were. Of the six men present, four were in favor of seeing the marriage as binding, Lyman’s father remained neutral, leaving only Lyman arguing against it. The meeting lasted 2-1/2 hours without resolution. (Lyman was amazed that Louis still wanted Christine after she had made it clear how much she didn’t want him.) The matter remained in limbo for another year, with Lyman refusing to budge. It was the death of John Barlow that opened the door for a resolution.
By this time Christine was now 17, and still adamant that she did not belong to Louis and his family. Lyman went to see Joseph Musser, who was now first in seniority on the priesthood council. Musser asked him to bring Christine in for an interview and talked with her. He agreed to release her from her obligation to Louis, but said it would be best to do so with the support of the full council.
The council convened on 25 February 1950. Lyman said he considered the marriage void under priesthood law because “I didn’t know anything about the marriage until it was all done….I am not trying to say that the girl has no blame in this, but the hurry and rush was urged by Louis; and tho [Christine] said ‘I do’ to the marriage covenant, there was undue pressure put upon her and it was not done of her own free will and choice.” He said he would yet give his consent if Christine wanted him, “but she does not.” Lyman related that he had been present when Lorin C. Woolley advocated the necessity for getting consent and approval from the parents of girls entering into plural marriage, and that he had emphasized the point with a fist pounded on the table.
Louis argued that his father had supported him at every step of the process, and that if he had it to do over again he would do the same. He said that since he hadn’t had a chance to live with Christine as husband and wife, he should be given that chance. Several on the council related precedent where girls had been released from marriage covenants where it was felt they had been pressured into them and the girl had not had a chance to express her own views on the subject. Musser became sick and the meeting ended early, but sometime within the next six months the council released Christine from her marriage to Louis, and in 1950 she married a man clearly of her own choice, whom Lyman described as “one of the great characters” of their day.
Less than a year after Christine’s marriage, the fundamentalist community fractured over various issues of doctrine and practice, protocols for entering into plural marriage being one of the main ones. Men like Musser and Lyman, who insisted on the old ways of agency and consent for a girl entering into polygamy, were increasingly becoming a minority voice.
http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/04/a-diabolical-high-pressure-marriage/
Thank you for posting the article, and doing the work to get it there.
Congressional hearings sought on FLDS government contracts
Published: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 9:08 a.m. MDT
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695274843,00.html
I see deport already posted some numbers.
Here is another source of info from another thread.
On Monday, CPS also revised its total count of children in state custody to 463, up one from Friday. Azar said the change resulted from finally getting the children out of temporary housing in the San Angelo Coliseum and into foster facilities around the state where they could get a more accurate count.
Of the 463 children, 250 are girls and 213 are boys. Children 13 and younger are about evenly split — 197 girls and 196 boys — but there are only 17 boys aged 14 to 17 compared with the 53 girls in that age range.
From here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080429/ap_on_re_us/polygamist_retreat
If these old decrepit men fathered all these children are as bad as implied, why would they stick around or even offer their DNA for a comparison?
This is not CSI where there is an endless database that encompasses the whole country to work with.
blah blah blah
FLDS dispute number of teen mothers, threaten lawsuit
April 29th, 2008 @ 8:00am
Nicole Gonzales and Mary Richards reporting
Attorneys for mothers who are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) today are disputing new figures by Texas authorities claiming an abundance of pregnant teens from the YFZ Ranch.
Also, the polygamists have a warning for the state of Texas: Be sure to keep all of your paperwork. FLDS attorneys have told Texas officials, “Get ready; we’ll see you in court.”
~SNIP~ (more at link)
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3188955
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