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Yearning for Zion: What next for the polygamists?
The Sunday Times ^ | 06/22/2008 | Byran Appleyard

Posted on 06/21/2008 6:17:09 PM PDT by JRochelle

Six-year-old Samuel Jeffs has only one leg. On April 3 he was taken away from his home and his mother by the Texas Child Protective Services (CPS). His father, Warren Jeffs, is in prison, convicted in Utah of being an accomplice to child rape.

On May 19, Samuel’s mother, Sharon Barlow, is sitting in a San Angelo courtroom with her attorney to hear a review of Samuel’s care. She is wearing an ankle-length turquoise dress, cut roughly in the style of a 19th-century prairie housewife’s. She has reddish hair, a pointed nose, sleepy eyes and poor skin. The hair rises in a high wave from her forehead, a thin strand is plaited into a circle on top of her head, and the rest is bundled into a heavy braid. She looks unwell. It is 100F outside, but the courtroom is over-air-conditioned and freezing. Judge Barbara Walther constantly adjusts a thermostat on the wall behind her, but it seems to have no effect.

Samuel is well represented. He has his own attorney, a CPS worker and a court-appointed special advocate. This is a review hearing to check on his progress. He has the judge on his side too. She asks searching questions about his medical care. She sympathises with his handicap. The judge had polio as a child and wears callipers. Daily she hauls herself onto her dais, from which she presides over this monumental, unprecedented case. For Samuel is not the only child involved. There are another 460-plus children, all taken in one night from the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch by the CPS, sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers. The ranch, which belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), is near Eldorado (pronounced locally Eldoraydo), 45 miles south of here. They were being saved

(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News
KEYWORDS: flds; jeffs; mormonbash; polygamy; yfzranch
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To: patton

You wrote of secret rituals in a cave . . .

I provided a likely location.

Untermeyer Park is where David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) went with his group to worship Satan. Dead dogs, with their ears carefully excised, were found. There is a Hispanic presence in the area today and evidence of Santeria ritual sacrifices are found in woods now.

Just having a little fun . . .


41 posted on 06/22/2008 9:58:56 AM PDT by Alice in Wonderland (4-Hshootingsports.org)
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To: TheThirdRuffian
And those evil Shriner/Masons! We AAAALLLL know about the EVILS they commit!


42 posted on 06/22/2008 10:04:10 AM PDT by bannie
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To: Alice in Wonderland

See, last time I was in a cave 500 feet underground, I told the Masons, you know, it is no darn wonder people write those silly books.

What do you reckon they think we are doing down here, I asked?

Unfortunately, I lack your imagination - I never thought of the “son-of-sam” masonry connection.

The cask of Amantillado, now - that definately has to do with masonry.


43 posted on 06/22/2008 10:10:47 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: bannie

no kidding...nice leap here from the usual Mormon bashing to lumping Shriners in the soup too.

geez....

Several judges toss out the Texas adventure and yet Mormon bashing here continues unabated.

Most Mormons I’ve met seem fine enough, what is this Ahabian obsession here by some?


44 posted on 06/22/2008 10:11:06 AM PDT by wardaddy (if I could slap Obama will he fight back like a black man or bitch up like a metero white boy?)
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To: uglybiker

Is masonry a religion?


45 posted on 06/22/2008 10:12:50 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: wardaddy

SHRINERS? THOSE HEATHENS???

Never met one, myself. Bunch of goofballs in clown cars. Never underestimate the creepiness factor.

But I hear their children’s burn hospitals are in danger of closing, for lack of funding.

And that is tragic.


46 posted on 06/22/2008 10:16:45 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: patton

That is sad. I know folks who have been saved by the one in Houston.


47 posted on 06/22/2008 10:25:20 AM PDT by wardaddy (if I could slap Obama will he fight back like a black man or bitch up like a metero white boy?)
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To: wardaddy

Childrens Hospital in DC saved my own sorry tail once, back in the 1960’s.

But I don’t think it is a Shriner Hospital.


48 posted on 06/22/2008 10:32:07 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: wardaddy

Mormons are wonderful people. It’s a different religion...so we gotta’ bash ‘em.

I found it ironic that the same time the gov’t is ripping kids away from loving mothers, they’re toasting the marriages of gays/lesbians.

We need less gov’t...AMEN!


49 posted on 06/22/2008 10:38:47 AM PDT by bannie
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To: patton

The Cask of Amontillado was written by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe lived in the Bronx, just south of Untermeyer Park. I visited Poe Cottage several times when I was a kid. He must have been a very short man, the ceilings were barely six feet high.


50 posted on 06/22/2008 10:44:12 AM PDT by Alice in Wonderland (4-Hshootingsports.org)
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To: Alice in Wonderland

Didn’t he die in a gutter in Boston?

Hmmmmm, I forget. Perhaps it was Baltimore?

Anyway, the reference to masonry was the story line - briking up someone in the basement.

Masons....brick work...

Now, on another topic, Clemmens and Poe are both examples of success, and, at the same time, tragedy.

Mark Twain was the most brilliant author in the US - frankly, he makes Shakespear look like a piker.

And he outlived all his kids.


51 posted on 06/22/2008 10:58:28 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: patton

Samuel Clemens was a mason, too.


52 posted on 06/22/2008 11:08:52 AM PDT by uglybiker (I do not suffer from mental illness. I quite enjoy it, actually.)
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To: patton

Poe Cottage in the Bronx was the last home of Edgar Allan Poe. He died in 1849 during a trip to Baltimore.

53 posted on 06/22/2008 11:12:45 AM PDT by Alice in Wonderland (4-Hshootingsports.org)
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To: uglybiker

No kidding? I did not know that.


54 posted on 06/22/2008 11:12:48 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: Alice in Wonderland

Right, now I got it. He died dead drunk in the gutter in Baltimore.

Or maybe not.

Funny how one can never completely trust what the government reports, huh?

Like, if they said Poe was sleeping with his underage daughter or something, running a religious cult, or beating his sons into submission, would you not look at that, and ask what motivation, the government might have, to say such a thing?


55 posted on 06/22/2008 11:18:18 AM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: patton

“The masons think you are a heathen?”

All of them.


56 posted on 06/22/2008 12:44:37 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (I reserve the right to misinterpret the comments of any and all pesters)
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To: wardaddy

I think what you are noticing is that the jumping from one ‘group’ to another, is just people on both sides of the issue doing a little relaxing, and joking with each other about this case.

Sometimes it is best just to get it all out into the open.

Although I have seen a lot of FLDS bashing, I have only seen a tiny bit of Mormon bashing.

The Mormons are not the FLDS. The FLDS members are more victims than criminals.

The criminal element in their midst, is what the problem is.


57 posted on 06/22/2008 1:02:45 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (I reserve the right to misinterpret the comments of any and all pesters)
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To: patton

“Are you a polythiest?”

No, more like a cotton-T’ist.

I like cotton T-shirts.


58 posted on 06/22/2008 1:20:30 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (I reserve the right to misinterpret the comments of any and all pesters)
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To: patton

Pretty sure that is Scottish Rite.


59 posted on 06/22/2008 1:23:35 PM PDT by TheThirdRuffian (McCain is the best candidate of the Democrat party.)
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To: patton

“Like, if they said Poe was sleeping with his underage daughter or something, running a religious cult, or beating his sons into submission, would you not look at that, and ask what motivation, the government might have, to say such a thing?”

Wouldn’t that be more along the lines of Lewis Carroll?


60 posted on 06/22/2008 1:25:49 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (I reserve the right to misinterpret the comments of any and all pesters)
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