Posted on 11/25/2008 12:50:34 PM PST by metmom
The 72-year-old presiding elder of a breakaway polygamist Mormon sect and two other church members surrendered to Schleicher County authorities on Monday to face felony charges relating to the underage marriage of girls to older men.
Fredrick Merril Jessop, a leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, faces one count of conducting an unlawful marriage ceremony involving a minor, a felony.
According to authorities, one of his daughters was married to jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs at age 12 and is now the only child from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in foster care after her mother refused to cooperate with child welfare authorities.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
The article is five sentences long.
In the first line only, it says that they “initiated” the removal. It doesn’t say that it occurred.
The rest of the article doesn’t even address that removal except to mention that the age of the mother was in dispute.
Hmmm. Can you think of a case, where the TX CPS took an adult mother into cusody, claiming that she was an underage child?
It seems to ring a bell, but you would have to provide a link, of course...
Has it occurred to anyone that these women (girls) either told the authorities nothing or simply lied?
They were programed to view the outside world as evil. (Infidels)
How else do you examine someone for sexual abuse? Or are you claiming that they didn't examine them for sexual abuse?
The women provided documentation, a drivers license and the CPS ignored it and classified her as a child. The State kidnapped adult women.
The Texas Supreme Court found that the Women was telling the truth. What do you think the case was all about?
I might actually agree with you on that except for the fact that the women of their own free will wanted to return.
I think that the CPS thought that you were correct, that the women and children were being held against their wills, you and they were wrong. The facts of the matter are that they are willing participants, however odious that may be to you and me. Inserting our prejudices into the situation does not create reality.
Yes as an atheist, perhaps I see things a little more clearly. There is precious little difference between the Baptists, Born Againers, Catholics, FLDS, Muslims, etc. regarding their attitudes.
They all accept authority and being told what to do. You can't believe in an Omniscient God and Free will at the same time, unless of course you are schizophrenic.
“You can’t believe in an Omniscient God and Free will at the same time, unless of course you are schizophrenic.”
I do. I don’t belong to any particular donomination and still have the *free will* to call myself a Christian.
“They all accept authority and being told what to do.”
Again, this statement doesn’t apply to me. I have *skerted* authority most of my life but, I have tasted the inside of a jailcell and don’t wish to see it again.
Sure you can. Just because God is all knowing doesn't mean that He's all controlling.
I know how my kids are going to react about some things, but that doesn't mean that I make them react. I just know them well enough.
The problem is, no matter WHAT situation exists, if there’s a crime committed, someone’s *rights* are going to be *trampled* during the course of the investigation. People need to be interviewed, evidence needs to be collected from the crime scene, which is not going to be on police property, but individual private property.
The Constitution prohibits UNREASONABLE searches and seizures, not ANY. If a government is going to maintain order, at some point people are going to be inconvenienced. If the government is hogtied to the point of being incapable of keeping order, then people will take matters into their own hands and vigilanteism and anarchy will result.
I’d rather have a restrained government deal with wrongdoing according to the laws and guidelines it must abide by, that any old deranged psychotic anarchist who goes around doing whatever he feels like without any restraint.
When the police are called for help, they are expected to answer. When they don't, they are smeared with comments like "When minutes count, the police are hours away."
Then, when they do respond to a call for help and get a search warrant to do it, they are criticized for acting too quickly and not investigating the call more thoroughly before acting.
If they respond "too quickly", they get sued if they make a mistake, or if they don't. If they don't respond quickly enough and someone gets hurt or dies, they're sued for negligence.
They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
All those who don't like the procedures followed, ought to take it upon themselves to get the laws changed. Sure, make it mandatory that police somehow magically thoroughly investigate every call that comes in to determine if it's legitimate before responding without becoming involved with the party making the call or anyone associated with them.
The people at this ranch have no one to blame but themselves for this becoming an out of hand mess. They lied to investigators, hid children, gave wrong names, the kids couldn't even tell who their parents were. And what? They were supposed to just walk away? And if some child died because authorities didn't take action when they saw something amiss, then they'd be damned, too.
I know how my kids are going to react about some things, but that doesn't mean that I make them react. I just know them well enough.
You just think that you know what your kids are going to do : ) Comparing your guesses to an omniscient god is ludicrous. The only way you can know the outcome is to control the outcome. Hence freewill goes out the window.
None of what I am saying should be construed as an admission of belief in an omniscient being. The idea of an omniscient being is logically absurd.
Who was programmed to do so? The FLDS or the CPS? Both? So neither had free will?
I do. I don’t belong to any particular donomination and still have the *free will* to call myself a Christian.
Ahh So the other Christians have been programmed, you are immune to the programming : ) LOL this is really funny stuff. I bet you believe that if you do something wrong the devil made you do it and you aren't responsible because you are Born Again and going to heaven no matter what : )
You obviously have some personal grievance against CPS or others and I respect that.
No, I simply try and do what I can to convince people that it is important that our constitutional rights are upheld.
However, something had to be done to keep those children from harm.
So you condone the breaking of our constitutional rights, because it was for the 'children'. You and people like you make me sick, I think I need to clean off my screen : (
I am claiming that I never read a statement, article, or anything else claiming that all the minor females were examined for sexual abuse. If you have, please direct me to the source.
DNA samples were taken from all the children.
The soft-spoken woman from Nevada asked everyone in the Medaille College lecture hall to stand up.That's about how many people are in her family, Sara Hammon said Wednesday afternoon.
"There are 95 people in my family. Seventy-five children and 19 mothers and my father," said the woman who ran away from a polygamist sect when she was 14. "We were nothing like the normal, average family."
Not at all.
In this family, girls were abused from the time they were infants and forced into arranged marriages, sometimes with men 50 years older, and some boys were forced to leave when they were teenagers so they would not compete for the women and girls with the older men who ran the community.
Her father, a respected elder, was a known pedophile, she said. When he was dying at age 82, all his children were forced to go to his room individually to say goodbye to him. She took his hand in hers, and he moved his hand down her leg to reach under her skirt.
"On his deathbed, my dad tried to sexually abuse me," she said.
95 bodies to shelter and mouths to feed. "Dad" must have had a great income . . . or maybe we the taxpayers were supporting their twisted lifestyle.
And the beat goes on . . .
November 26, 2008
Attorneys reached an agreement Tuesday over a teen girl’s refusal to divulge the whereabouts of her 5-month-old baby to the state’s Child Protective Services agency.
The agreement, which is under seal, headed off what could have been a messy conflict between the girl, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, who had ordered her to answer questions about the location of her child.
“There was an agreement reached,” CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said, “but on the direction of the judge, we can’t talk about it.”
The girl’s refusal to divulge the whereabouts of her infant set in motion a chain of events in which Walther essentially forced the attorneys to reach an agreement to avoid a scenario in which the girl could have been jailed for contempt of court.
Walther unexpectedly left the Tom Green County Courthouse while the sides were negotiating, surprising observers and attorneys alike, telling an attorney on her way out of the building, “I trust you’ll get it resolved.”
Just after 5 p.m., CPS attorneys left the courthouse, followed soon after by attorneys for the girl and her mother.
All attorneys declined to comment.
“I really can’t say anything,” said Kelly J. Ellis, the girl’s attorney.
The hearing had been delayed from last week after the girl did not appear in court.
Walther ordered the girl to bring her child to court Tuesday for the hearing, which was to decide whether the state should be allowed to observe the girl’s interaction with the baby and do a DNA test.
The girl showed up; her infant did not.
“The baby is not here, so they have defied the court’s order,” CPS attorney John Dolezal told the judge, asking to put the 17-year-old on the stand to testify about where the infant was.
The girl initially pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked whether the baby stayed with her at her given address in San Antonio.
But after consultation with Ellis, she answered that the child at one time did stay with her at that location but was not there anymore.
The girl told Dolezal the baby is out of state.
“I don’t know right now” the exact whereabouts of the child, she said. “She is traveling.”
When Dolezal asked where the infant was being taken, the girl shut down.
“I refuse to answer that question,” she said, and when pressed on why she refused, she said: “I just don’t want anyone to know where she is.”
Ellis then consulted with the girl again.
The attorney quietly told Walther the girl knew the potential repercussions of refusing to answer a question when instructed to by the court.
“Ma’am, the court instructs you to answer the question,” Walther said.
“I refuse to answer,” the girl replied.
Walther recessed the court and called the attorneys into her chambers, where - as she has been known to do, especially during this case - she tersely ordered both sides to reach an agreement.
Soon after, she left the courthouse.
The girl gave birth to her child June 14, just 10 days after CPS returned the last of 439 children taken from the YFZ Ranch northeast of Eldorado in April to their parents.
CPS had alleged a pervasive pattern of sexual abuse and forced “marriages” among members of the sect, which still practices a form of polygamy intended to be acceptable to society. Walther ruled in favor of CPS. Higher courts overruled Walther, requiring the children’s return.
A CPS motion filed this month alleged the girl was married to an older man at age 14.
In a hearing last week, Dolezal told Walther that CPS had received no cooperation from the girl or her mother when making unannounced visits to the given location.
The girl testified Tuesday that while she lives at the address, she spends more than half her time visiting with friends and often does not spend the night there.
After the sides reached the agreement, Texas Ranger Sgt. Nick Hanna and an investigator from the Texas Attorney General’s Office told the girl they needed to serve a search warrant, immediately after which courthouse security cleared the building, telling reporters and observers it was closed.
The warrant was for a DNA sample, said sect spokesman Willie Jessop - a move Jessop criticized, noting that samples were taken of all children by court order in April.
The girl’s defiance is CPS’ own fault, Jessop said, adding that the girl is afraid CPS will take custody of her baby while the child is in San Angelo and accuse her of abuse or neglect.
“There’s been an absolutely tremendous breakdown of trust,” Jessop said.
“That’s what her belief was. Who could change her mind?”
http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy1070.html
First let’s identify what testing for Sexual Abuse entails.
Why don’t you check out the pictures and read the text on
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20010301/883.html
It may be a little too graphic for some,but this and worse is what the CPS did to innocent children.
Now from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services indicating that they performed medical evaluations.
“The HHSC, DFPS, and STAR Health program have been working to provide for all the medical and psychological needs of these children. Arrangements were being made for medical evaluations, counseling, and whatever treatment is appropriate.”
http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/About/News/2008/2008-04-28_chronology.asp
and here
“DFPS had the children examined by health care providers. It had 12 days to produce concrete evidence of specific acts of child molestation.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/post_14.html
The specific reason that the women and children were taken from YFZ was reports of Sexual and physical abuse. Are you trying to claim that the State didn’t examine the Women and Children that they seized for Sexual and Physical abuse? They even X-rayed the boys for broken bones.
I especially liked this statement from the CPS, “On Monday, CPS announced that almost 60 percent of the underage girls living on the Eldorado ranch are pregnant or already have children.”
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/WireStory?id=4753515&page=2
The CPS was obviously lying to try and cover their butts.
“Only three girls were alleged on the record to be presently pregnant, one is turning 18, one refused to take a pregnancy test, so one girl was at issue as to her age at time of conception. Salt Lake Tribune, “FLDS Attorney challenges Texas count of pregnant minors from polygamous sect,” April 26, 2008.”
“A lawyer for the 14-year-old girl alleged to be pregnant has disclosed that the girl has submitted to a pregnancy test confirming that she is not pregnant.”
So much for the truthfulness of your heroes the CPS.
They bring it on themselves.
“I don’t know right now” the exact whereabouts of the child, she said. “She is traveling.”
What a great mom!
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.