Posted on 08/05/2008 4:25:27 PM PDT by UCANSEE2
Texas child welfare officials on Tuesday asked a court to order foster care for eight children at a polygamous compound, saying their mothers have refused to limit the children's contact with men suspected of being involved in underage marriages.
...
"In the cases of the eight children listed in today's court filing, the mothers have refused to sign the safety plans," according to the statement, which said the cases include six girls and two boys who range in age from 5 to 17 years old.
A hearing to determine whether to put the eight children in foster care was scheduled for September 25.
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State officials said the agency has reviewed thousands of documents seized from the ranch, including marriage records, that show "a pervasive pattern of spiritual marriages between older men and girls 17 and younger."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
“Also, whether or not any underage marriages may have occurred in the past, the FLDS have pledged themselves for the future not to engage in any marriage with a “woman under the age of legal consent in the jurisdiction where the marriage takes place.””
And of course these people have earned trust, by their track record of following civil laws, telling the truth about family members, protecting their children until age 18, etc?
I say they are not to be trusted.
Do you dispute Texas’ legally established age of consent? I suppose you’d allow 17 year olds to enter into just about any other contract, or is it only sex that you want to carve out?
Thanks for posting this version of the story. The San Antonio Express News ran the same one.
I believe that the statute of limitations for these crimes is 10 years.
In another case, Ellen Grace Young, the mother of a 9-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl living at the ranch, told investigators she lives in San Antonio, that she had not seen her children for three years, and that "she really did not know who all lived in the home with her children on the ranch," according to an affidavit filed by investigator Kerrie Blair.
The children were living with Young's sister, a wife of ranch leader and sect bishop Merril Jessop, the affidavit states.
In an interview with Blair, according to the affidavit, the girl said "she misses her mother very much, and when she asked her uncle Merril Jessop about where her mother is living, he has told her it was none of her business so she has just gotten to the point that she had stopped asking."
Later, Blair quotes the girl as saying, "Her uncle Merril would make the decision as to when she would get married, at what age, and who she would marry."
Farther down, there's the report about the "marriages" of men in their thirties to children, essentially swaps of daughters and grand daughters of Jeffs and Merril Jessop.
They include the previously released details of an alleged triple marriage performed July 27, 2006 - in which Jeffs married Jessop's 12-year-old daughter; Jeffs' 15-year-old daughter married Jessop's adult son, Raymond; and another 15-year-old girl married Merril LeRoy Jessop, another of Jessop's adult sons.
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The affidavits also describe six other marriages, all involving Jessop's children or grandchildren, including a second 12-year-old girl - a granddaughter of Jessop's - alleged to have married Jeffs in a ceremony at the YFZ Ranch in April 2005.
The women are adults. They are as responsible for their actions as the men are.
How long do women get a pass on following the law because of the way they are trained or abused as children? (Perhaps the original CPS charge was right - there’s a real danger in that the boys and girls are being trained to abuse other boys and girls - their own children - down the line.)
(Personally, there’s no doubt in my mind that by 30 years old or so, men and women should be functional, even if they can’t “get over” abuse as a child.)
They’ve had months to consider their actions. They aren’t being locked up. The children are being removed from their custody.
Hocndoc, there’s simply no reason for me to participate on your thread. I don’t buy the CPS/LE party line down there. And that’s sad to say. I agree things need to be done, but at each step of the way, it has seemed to me that the focus was on the wrong people.
One fix sees all kids pulled out, separated from parents or the adults they were used to.
The next fix deals with removing the kids again, because the men had access.
Now, if I address what I see as problematic and suggest the men be removed, I’m the focus.
It’s pointless for me to come to this thread and explain why I believe what I do. What I say is mostly ignored.
I spent literally hours the other day discussing the issue of removing the men from the ranch. The person I was talking to fought me every step of the way on that issue. And yet after hours of discussion he finally admitted he thought it was a good idea too.
Yes, it was a good idea from the get go, but trying to get folks on this thread to agree with that was next to impossible. Instead we had to argue about it for hours.
All the while, I’m considered to be fronting for the FLDS adults.
I appreciate the information you have posted. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you were trying to communicate with the best of intentions. I’m not going to participate any more on this thread.
As a general rule, nobody on these threads wants to hear anything that might be different than what CPS or LE has determined to do. And that’s just not an environment I want to try to converse in.
I agree that something needs to be done. I don’t like the situation at all. I’m not convinced CPS, LE, or the local court has a lick of sense down there. And whether that is true or not, folks are real willing to discuss the matter honestly, at least from what I have experienced on the thread.
Take care.
...folks are NOT real willing to discuss the matter honestly...
Thank you for presenting the ‘other side’.
I remember the comments made by FLDS members to the effect:
“We will do anything to get our children back”
Apparently, that doesn’t include signing court orders, or actually telling the truth about what went on at the YFZ Ranch.
I don’t blame them. They have a lot to lose by telling the truth.
It’s amazing how one man’s greed and lust can ruin so many lives.
“H there’s simply no reason for me to participate on your thread.”
Yes there is. You might have other good ideas to contribute.
You mean the men. The CPS returning the children while requiring the women keep the children away from the men, is technically the same thing as your ‘blanket TRO’.
You said the responsibility for that should have been on CPS and not the women, and that is a good point. After all, it did lead to this problem with the women refusing to sign.
Because the women refused to sign the agreement. No one knows if the men had access, or whether the women planned to allow access. According to the post by Alice, the women state they planned to follow the agreement, but just didn’t want to sign it.
Your idea was the focus, not you. You wanted to turn it personal, because your idea wasn’t fully accepted.
It wasn’t ignored. But, just because you said it, doesn’t mean everyone is bound to agree with it.
A GOOD IDEA, yes. But practical and legal implementation of the idea? That is the hard part. When CPS goes to a home to investigate claims of child abuse, they almost always remove the child, or children, and rarely remove the adults.
They have legal standing and authority to remove the children. If you want to argue about the blanket TRO, then you should address the Judge, not CPS.
Again, good idea, but lacking in practical implementation.
Your answer was, “they just should have done it”.
Should they have removed the men who lived in monogamous families, and didn’t have underaged wives?
Only in your own mind. I never saw anyone make a remark to that effect.
That’s a shame. I still think you had a good idea, and would like to know exactly how it could have been done.
Just because everyone wouldn’t agree with the one idea you came up with, you judge the whole of FR posters on the FLDS threads in a negative light, including others who might even agree with you.
To use your own words, “you are acting like a baby.”
“And whether that is true or not, folks are (not) real willing to discuss the matter honestly, at least from what I have experienced on the thread.”
People pointed out the problems involved with your idea, even though they may have thought it had merit, and therefore were just being honest with you. You don’t seem to be happy with that. Instead you want everyone to just blindly agree with your ideas.
So, where does the blame for all this really lie?
No thanks.
That’s Ok.
Thank you for the debate we did have.
Perhaps some one else can take up your idea of just removing the men, and come up with some actual legal and practical way it could have been done, and prove how it would have worked out better.
Well, I wish them luck doing that with you folks.
All they have to do is come up with facts, instead of fantasy.
I’m sure that’s how you see it.
You consider it fantasy to propose a judge has the power to issue a restraining order to keep men away from the children they are thought be abusing.
Well, okay....
Nope. Just saying CPS doesn’t have the power to issue a TRO.
They could have asked for one.
Let me know when you find the post where I said they could.
You didn’t.
I thought the focus of your comments was the CPS, and how some posters defended the CPS ‘blindly’.
While it may have been my perception that CPS was the focus of your comments, you have included LE and the courts, in some of your statements, so I’ll concede it was a moot point.
Work beckons.
Here is what I would suggest we talk about.
Should the Judge have issued some kind of blanket TRO, according to the statutes of Texas law concerning child abuse, (because those statutes for removal of the abuser, not the abused do exist. I’ve seen ‘em.) forcing all the men to leave the compound?
If so, how does that protect the children from FLDS men who had gone into hiding before the raid?
If so, how does that protect the children from the continuance of practices by the women, that allowed the abuse?
How is removing the children from only the men, and not the women who participated, following the child custody concerns towards ensuring temporary safety of the children, until the abuser is correctly identified?
See, I like your idea, I just think it has some problems.
The alternative, which they decided to use, probably has just as many problems, as well. But, I think it was the better one.
The focus of my comment in that post was not CPS or LE.
It was the men.
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