What's up with the prairie dresses?

MSNBC ^ | Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:15 AM | By Don Teague, NBC News Correspondent

[UCANSEE2]

"Three weeks into covering the polygamous ranch raid story, I keep hearing from colleagues throughout NBC News who want to know more about how members of the sect live."

--snip--

"Here are some of the things members of the sect told me about life on the YFZ Ranch – which stands for Yearn For Zion – in Eldorado, Texas:"

--snip--

"Much of the above sharply contrasts with the picture of alleged physical and sexual abuse painted by state investigators. The courts will ultimately decide which version of the truth is closer to reality. I can’t say whether what ranch residents tell me is true or not, but I thought you’d be interested in what they said." Source: http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/23/935617.aspx

[UCANSEE2]

One CPS document reviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune lists just three pregnant teenagers.

---

SAN ANGELO, Texas - An attorney for FLDS families in Texas challenged the state’s allegations of a “pervasive pattern” of underage girls having children, saying the state’s own documents show just three teenagers in custody are pregnant.

Of those girls, one will turn 18 in a few months and another merely refused to take a pregnancy test, said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney representing families at the YFZ Ranch. “That leaves us with one,” he said.

---

The count of children in custody rose again Friday after CPS determined that 25 girls who claimed to be adults are actually minors, said spokesman Chris Van Deusen.

That group may overlap with the 20 listed in the court document as pregnant or as mothers, he said.

“The only thing we can say is we’re aware of 20 young girls who became pregnant when they were between the ages of 13 and 16,” Van Deusen said. “That’s not to say that there are 20 now, but at the time they conceived they were 13, 14, 15, or 16. “That establishes that there was some sexual abuse here,” he said.

http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_9056589

[Flo Nightengale]

So, if it was found that in a “traditional” household, the father was molesting his 13-year-old daughter, and the mother encouraged this activity, you are saying that you would have no problem leaving the rest of the children in the home, because it is the father’s practice to only molest 13-year-old girls?

[UCANSEE2]

“Did you know that the actual sect is not set up as a religious entity therefore not taking tax exempt status?”

That’s what I’ve said before.

It was a cult. It wasn’t a religion, didn’t have a church.

It had a temple for worshipping the PROPHET, designed by the PROPHET, built by the PROPHET.

They were all supposed to go there to DIE. Jeff’s had predicted the END OF THE WORLD. (several times, in fact)

[metmom]

The San Antonio Express-News?? You question the reliability of a woman who uses her name and does not hesitate to appear in public, who has lived there and knows how the group operates and has experienced it first hand and you quote a newspaper and expect it to be accepted as a *reliable source*?

You owe me a new keyboard... I asked for reliable sources.

Note the plural....

The source is neither reliable nor plural....

[UCANSEE2]

“I simply asked if the possibility that she was unreliable had been considered.”

As much as we ‘rely’ on our sources of information, it is funny how often they are completely wrong.

YFZ.

Stands for?

---

[SouthTexas]

They were not on a public street or driving a motor vehicle.

[Elsie]

Just think of the money that is saved because of no need for bikini wax!

[nomorelurker]

Where do you get land use, construction permit(s) violations from? In Texas as long as your land in not inside city limits (or for some purposes a city's extraterritorial jurisdiction) then you can pretty much build what you want with no permits needed. Big exception is sewage/septic tank which must be permitted. I heard early on that the flds was building it's own waste treatment plant and was paying large fees to El Dorado City to haul tanks of wastewater to it's treatment plant.

[oldenuff2no]

Anytime you restrict the movements and freedoms of an adult in this country without the precise and exactly true order from a judge that constitutes false imprisonment. Just as a search warrant (a judges order to search) has to be justified and worded exactly right as to each and every number, address, and what you are searching for, an order to maintain custody of any citizen has to be exactly that accurate as well. There was no valid order to maintain custody of any adult females in this situation. These young ladies were never charged, indicted, or convicted of anything. They were never found by any court to be a danger to themselves of others.
As adults that they are, there was never one legal reason or precedent to hold them against their will past the 72 hour time-line.
The attorneys representing these young ladies were refused all comment when the mass CF went before the lady judge. The ladies were then ordered into further confinement without any legal reason for an indefinite period of time. Stop and take a look at what happened to the rest of the adults. Some of the mothers volunteered to accompany their children by none of the other adults were taken into custody and falsely imprisoned.
They were adults and the burden of proof that they aren't lies on the backs of CPS and the state. If the state can't prove it they can not legally just keep them in custody forever until on the hope that a fairy God Mother will come down and enlighten them.... This is one of the most clear example of civil rights violations I have ever seen. This is not an obscure comment or mistaken situation that was taken wrong by someone. This is a willful act by the state of Texas to falsely imprison adult young ladies who have done nothing wrong, have been denied due process, and have no valid order of protective custody or criminal charges against them. The order that was given was for the minors involved and is totally invalid for any single adult! You can not deprive citizens of this country their civil rights because you just believe something may be true. It would surprise me if the Feds aren't involved in this very soon with an order from a federal judge to insure compliance of all citizens civil rights. With that order is going to come one huge investigation which will result in charges. The civil litigation is every ambulance chasers best ever fantasy case. The best part is that this all happened in the public eye. The state can't deny anything. The cameras documented all of it except the court room estrogen power rage and that was witnessed by a couple hundred lawyers. Take a hard look at fact number one. Not a single person has been charged with any crime. Adults have been wrongly deprived of their freedoms and over 400 children ripped from the only life they ever knew and yet not one single charge has been filed. One last question. Has anyone read anything about these kids being allowed to study, follow, or attend the religious services chosen for them by their parents while they are held in captivity? Not one word has been published about this and the parents aren't being told. The only conclusion that one can derive from this is that the state of Texas believes that they have a right to either keep your children from practicing any religion or that they have the right to dictate which religion the children of Texas are allowed to practice. It seems parents choices in this matter do not matter to Texas. Think about it.

[Straight Vermonter]

I am amazed at the parallels between the YFZ case and one in Vermont 24 years ago.

The raid revisited: Island Pond community heals wounds from 1984

From The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, June 18, 2000
By Nancy Bazilchuk

ISLAND POND --

<-snip->

...the Twelve Tribes community, once known as the Northeast Kingdom Community Church, gathered and invited the public to join in remembering the day 16 years ago -- June 22, 1984 -- when the state raided the community. Ninety state troopers and 50 social workers took 112 children into custody amid allegations of child abuse.

<-snip->

The Northeast Kingdom Community Church took root in Island Pond in the summer of 1978. A resident, Andre Masse, had invited church leader Elbert Eugene Spriggs Jr. to the village to help found a religious community. Spriggs came from Tennessee, where he had already founded a church group. Almost immediately, the Island Pond group tripled in size from its 20 original members to 60.

Island Pond is a rural community of about 1,500 people; from the beginning, the relationship between the church's bearded men and kerchiefed women and the rest of the townspeople was uneasy.

Parents watched in horror as their adult children joined the church, handing over their possessions and pledging themselves to the church community. The church group lived in communal housing -- sometimes a little too communal for village residents. Eventually the town of Brighton, which includes the village of Island Pond, told the group they were violating town ordinances against over-occupancy.

Almost from the beginning, there were defectors, and stories about how children were disciplined by being struck with thin wooden rods called balloon sticks. About the discipline there is no dispute. Church leaders believe the Bible's admonition that to spare the rod is to spoil the child.

"We don't believe that spanking is child abuse ... it is reasonable to train a child that way," says Brian Fenster, a church member and spokesman. "But we don't believe that spanking means beating to a bloody pulp."

Others saw it differently.

"They beat their children," said Suzanne Cloutier-Fletcher, 49, who opened her Island Pond home to more than three dozen adults and children who left the church in the years around the raid.

Part of the problem was that church members schooled their children apart from the regular schools. That meant there were no teachers or other authority figures to independently evaluate the children. For some time, church members didn't register births or deaths. Only three births had been registered to church members in the five years after the church moved to Island Pond.

At the same time, news of the sometimes alarming behavior of religious cults frightened residents. For some, the Northeast Kingdom Community Church looked unnervingly like the People's Temple, whose nearly 800 members committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.

By 1984, the chorus of concerns about child abuse, combined with a number of highly publicized complaints filed against church elders, brought the state to a watershed. Then-Gov. Richard Snelling found himself in a fix. After days and days of debate, Snelling approved the raid.

"He was uncomfortable with it," said the late-governor's wife, Barbara Snelling, "but he felt it was extremely important that the state find out if the children were being abused. It is a painful memory, but I think my husband did the right thing."

Armed with a search warrant issued by Judge Joseph J. Wolchik, 140 social workers and state troopers converged on Island Pond early June 22 and took 112 children into custody.

But because the search warrant didn't give the state the subsequent right to detain the children, a second court hearing was necessary, with Judge Frank Mahady presiding. Mahady looked at the state's evidence, including its inability to name individual cases of child abuse, and ruled the raid unconstitutional. The children went home and, eventually, the state's case was dropped.

More at the link.

[lady lawyer]

No. But this is not the typical “molestation,” and it doesn’t occur in the parents’ household. It is a ceremonial marriage, which occurs only sometime after girls reach puberty, and, according to the FLDS, only with the consent of the girl, and the girl leaves the parents’ home and goes to live in the “husband’s” household.

[oldenuff2no]

There are many homes on that ranch, separate homes. The state has chosen to treat this as a single incident, a single case, and not even attempted to hear each separate counsel who represents the individuals. When they continued the custody they did so under a single template. Are you going to try and tell me that the situation was absolutely identical in each of these households?
It has not been found that any girl has been molested and it has certainly not been found that a minor girl has been molested in each and every one of these homes and has identical facts and circumstances.
I don't buy any of that for a single heartbeat and I can't believe that you do either. Some of these homes were single family homes with the traditional one wife family.
The judge made an order that she wanted to fit everyone but the facts for each child are different. The judge refused to hear any of the lawyers representing individual children. Her one size all determination ended up falsely imprisoning free adult citizens. After all the courts get done with the thousands of hearings and suits that will be brought following this matter it will be clear that the original judge not only tossed the baby out with the bath water but all the criminal cases as well.
I believe that this is the same judge who signed the original warrant that was based on a hoax. She is already compromised. Each and every case brought before her that stems from that warrant should demand that she excuse herself from hearing the case.

[lady lawyer]

CPS overreached, then used the mess that resulted from their overreaching as justification for denying the rights of individual parents and children.

[metmom]

Do you have legal documents to support all your contentions?

What jail were they in? Where, exactly, were they held?

IIRC, the children are in protective custody and the women free to go where they wished. What sources do you have that show otherwise?

Paragraphs are your friends, BTW. It makes reading through your posts much easier and more likely to happen.

[metmom]

Show us where, specifically, the CPS over reached please.

And show us where they have denied the individual rights of the women and children?

A large part of this *mess* is due to lying on the part of the cultists.

Being a lawyer, you should know that precision in words and details is critical in supporting your argument.

Perhaps you could enlighten us to procedure that all the lawyers in this case have missed.

[Flo Nightengale]

You said: No. But this is not the typical “molestation,” and it doesn’t occur in the parents’ household. It is a ceremonial marriage, which occurs only sometime after girls reach puberty, and, according to the FLDS, only with the consent of the girl, and the girl leaves the parents’ home and goes to live in the “husband’s” household.

I was trying to address your stated belief---that other children in the household were not in any danger of abuse and therefore shouldn't have been removed from the environment---by pointing out that in what you call a "typical" molestation, it is ludicrous to think that other children in the home would be left in the home with the abuser(s). Ask yourself if you would want YOUR children left in the same environment with a rapist, even if that rapist didn't come after your own offspring.

Your response leaves me shaking my head for many reasons:

You said this is a "ceremonial marriage"----What difference does that make, if, as so many of you who are opposing the CPS/LE in this case say, it's equivalent to shacking up?

Furthermore, you say that it only occurs after the "girls reach puberty", and then "only with the consent of the girl..." Huh? Can we talk about the ability to legally consent to marriage or sexual activity? If the girl has only just reached puberty, she is more than likely under the age of consent. The girls' "consent" in these cases means nothing. It cannot legally be given.

Finally, you really reach in the bottom of the barrel by pulling out the excuse that the acts take place in the "husband's household." I don't care where rape takes place. Rape is rape.

[oldenuff2no]

You get it exactly!!!!!!
When the realized how far they were out there they took off at a dead run trying to get too far into the big picture to be able to back out. All they have done since then is compound their problems with all of the many cases and put themselves in the way of civil rights complaints and investigations.
When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging!!!!!!!
They are still digging..... This is going to take a long time to sort out and there is a good chance that those guilty of real and true molestation and or child rape on that ranch will never be punished.

[oldenuff2no]

You answered your won question. Two of the so called children were truthfully and factually legal adults. Texas admits that now. These two were treated as children. You do not have to hold anyone in prison to be guilty of false imprisonment. These adults had their freedoms restricted and that is a very clear violation of their constitutional rights and completely and fully falls under the false imprisonment definition.
They are not children!!!!!

[bonfire]

unreal. Just UNREAL!

[Tammy8]

I don’t know for certain that I was correct- it just makes more sense. We all have our moments and a lot of this is a new concept to us. I confess I had very little idea how welfare or polygamy- or CPS worked until this story broke. I guess I am lucky that I never needed to know those things before.LOL