Posted on 05/01/2008 4:44:54 PM PDT by Politicalmom
SAN ANTONIO — A judge ordered that the baby boy born to a girl taken from a polygamist sect's ranch in West Texas be placed in state custody, according to documents released Thursday.
Texas District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Wednesday giving the state custody of the 1-day-old infant born to a teen believed to be 15 or 16 years old.
The girl has claimed to be 18, according to an affidavit signed by Ruby Gutierrez, a Child Protective Services caseworker, but officials believe she is younger and placed her in foster care with other children taken from the ranch.
The newborn is the teen's second child; the first is a 20-month-old boy. The father of both children was identified as Jackson Jessop, 22, but state officials say they don't know his whereabouts.
Child welfare officials now have 464 children in their custody, swept from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado because authorities believe underage girls were forced into marriages and sex with older men. Authorities are also now investigating possible sexual abuse of boys.
Church members have vehemently denied there was any abuse, and civil liberties groups have raised concerns at the sweeping nature of the removals.
Individual custody hearings are set to be completed by June 5.
CPS and law enforcement raided the ranch on April 3 after a girl who was purportedly 16 called a domestic abuse hotline to complain of abuse at the hands her much older husband. Authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.
Regardless, child welfare authorities say 31 of the 53 girls aged 14-17 have children or are pregnant.
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 the girls who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are not believed to have legal marriages.
FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainline Mormon church, which disavowed polygamy a century ago.
Ditto!
http://www.freshfilm.com/damnedtoheaven/
http://bankingonheaven.com/flash/BankingTrailer092006.html
Keep Sweet . . .
I swear, the more I read it’s BDSM with flannel and bloomers.
“One of the side effects of a small gene pool is deformities and infant deaths. Frankly, I’m kind of surprised we haven’t heard of hemophilia in the males.Severe birth defect common in polygamous community”
More than half the world’s cases of a severe birth defect called fumarase deficiency have been found in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, controlled by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints Church.
The towns have a total population of under 10,000, yet Dr. Theodore Tarby has seen twenty children with fumarase deficiency in these towns since 1990. By comparison, only thirteen cases have been reported elsewhere in the entire world.
The actual total in the FLDS may be much higher than twenty since babies may have died before they were diagnosed with the condition by a medical doctor.
None of the FLDS children with fumarase deficiency has an IQ above 25. Many cannot sit up. Some can barely even move their head and eyes. Frequent and powerful seizures are common. Portions of brain matter are replaced by water. An MRI of the brain of one fumarase-deficient child showed that more than half the brain was missing.
Geneticists agree that the high rate of this birth defect is due to the in-breeding in FLDS with most of the population descended from two patriarchs and with a self-proclaimed prophet arranging all the marriages within the group. It is a simple matter of a 25% likelihood of giving birth to a child with fumarase deficiency when two carriers of the recessive gene for it marry.
Tarby believes the number of FLDS children with fumarase deficiency could rise into the hundreds within a couple of generations.
Birth defects irrelevant in divine mandate
Tarby has explained the science at a meeting of about 150 FLDS members and to many parents individually, but they do not appear to care. “They consider these children to be their responsibility from God and their duty is to produce as many children as possible,” he said. “Sister-wives” often help each other care for handicapped children.
Tarby told one father that his child was handicapped because the father and mother were related. The father replied, “Up there, we’re all related.”
Tarby wasn’t sure whether the man meant “up there in Colorado City” or “up there in heaven.”
Prophet can’t use science to arrange marriages
Another physician doubted the current prophet, Warren Jeffs, could find any outsiders who would want to marry into his church even if he looked for them. Furthermore, a former FLDS member said, Jeffs claims to be carrying out God’s orders when he picks marriage partners. If FLDS members found out he was using science to arrange marriages, they might doubt his status as God’s representative on earth.
Arizona gives more than $12 million a year to help indigent residents of Colorado City pay for health-insurance premiums. The Arizona Departments of Health Services and of Economic Security have been providing services for fumarase-deficient victims and their caregivers for fifteen years, but say federal law prohibits them from disclosing the costs.
Taken from The Phoenix New Times, Dec. 29, 2005; Deseret News, Feb. 9, 2006; and Salt Lake City Tribune, Feb. 11, 2006.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2007840/posts
They may only technically, legally have one marriage certificate, knowing the laws in the state so that even if they are *spiritually* married to many women, they have only one legitimate, legally recognizable marriage partner.
I suppose that some of the younger men who have been granted the privilege of staying and being allowed to marry, could be on only their first marriage.
So that would indeed be considered monogamy.
While they may point to some monogamous marriages as *proof* that they practice monogamy, it sure isn’t what they teach. What the group allegedly practices and what they teach are two different things.
But you know darned good and well that none of those women have knowledge of the goings on in this particular group. If they did, or even claimed to, and were willing to sign an affidavit and to testify, the local law would not have waited for a fake phone call from some woman in Colorado to a "crisis line" in San Angelo before acting.
Because even with the laws in place currently, we have sophists making excuses for the FLDS. Making their behavior very clearly illegal makes the prosecution that much easier. If the law had not been changed, rest assured that there would be a legion of Freepers defending their right to marry 14 year olds "spiritually" as they could marry them legally with a marriage certificate and who needs the government anyway? Surely you can agree that that defense that would have been advanced if the law had not been changed. Yes?
In the old Puritan days, before modern revealing fashions were invented, and women wore dresses to their wrists and ankles, folks did not reproduce sexually. They just budded.
In glorious pastel...
George Washington was the first president, executive office of that wicked, evil government. Does that make him wicked and evil, too, because he was part of the system?
You don’t plan on calling the fire department if your house catches on fire, do you?
I am willing to accept that as a proven, and I suggest that the compound should have been investigated upon his conviction. Oh wait it has been. The investigation has been going on for four years that we know about through the sheriff's statements, and only now is getting to the stage of law enforcement searching the compound and the children being safeguarded in protective custody.
Bleeding the (benevolent) beast.
Really,
the women just laid back and thought of England (or Washington, or whatever). Sex wasn’t for them, it was to have a baby.
Like others have said, read the threads before posting.
The Puritans were not sexually repressed. That's a common misconception.
Google "bundling" and "Puritans."
‘Glorious’?
(I mean, control control control)
Thx for the insightful post about the irresponsible, inhumane practices of the flds.
lavender
Actually if I recall correctly in the news reports I heard today there were few if any X-rays (or any other diagnostic measures)taken. The CPS spokesman at the state legislature hearing based his account off of info received from the mothers when asked questions about past injuries to their children. Some 30 or so (whatever the number) reported broken bones in the kids. I have no problem with CPS asking about broken bones makes alot of sense to me (as long as we recognize that the fact that a child has or had a broken bone is not in itself evidence of abuse). I have a problem with someone in CPS tossing the number out as justification for anything given the context. Also lots of posts about the mothers giving false or contradictory info to CPS yet here they give info and in a day or two some bigwig uses it against them in a state hearing. Great way to gain trust.
Can I post videos produced by Muslims, talking about the Christian "cults" that are destroying their civilization and religious beliefs?
Is that not why were are fighting a war, because of their views of our culture and religion?
Your choice, but I would think about it first.
I have saves those links and will study them in much more detail.
the808bass: “When you presuppose it’s a witch hunt, your conclusion will find it’s a witch hunt.”
When you presuppose the cultists are guilty, your conclusion will find they are guilty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.