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 ...
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 . . .
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.
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?
Is masonry a religion?
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.
That is sad. I know folks who have been saved by the one in Houston.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Samuel Clemens was a mason, too.
Poe Cottage in the Bronx was the last home of Edgar Allan Poe. He died in 1849 during a trip to Baltimore.
No kidding? I did not know that.
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?
“The masons think you are a heathen?”
All of them.
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.
“Are you a polythiest?”
No, more like a cotton-T’ist.
I like cotton T-shirts.
Pretty sure that is Scottish Rite.
“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?
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