Posted on 04/09/2008 8:05:24 PM PDT by metmom
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Teenage girls, often younger than 16, were required to have sex in the soaring white temple after they were married in sect-recognized unions at a polygamist compound in West Texas, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.
The temple "contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of 17," said an affidavit quoting a confidential informant who left the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Heck, even without bringing in the issue of statutory rape and bigamy, what we have had collected over at least the last 2 decades is repeated interviews with women who escaped the FLDS and stated that neither their marriages or the subsequent sex was consensual. When “brides” are crying at their “wedding” and begging not to have to go through with it, something is terribly wrong. I won’t even mention how the girls described their “wedding night”.
While people may (and in these threads have) argue that the laws against polygamy and the age of consent laws are arbitrary, nobody can rationally argue that actual consent is arbitrary.
I am giving people the benefit of the doubt that they just aren’t as familiar with the FLDS as many of us are.
Not as uncomfortable as a sunburn from working outside all day. Just saying. I've done both, I'll take the long sleeves over the burn any day.
They’re little girls in bodies that are growing up on them.
At that age, some of them still even play with dolls, although generally, they are starting to grow out of it.
They’re just entering the most hormone laden time in their lives and just about lose all sanity to begin with. They don’t start pulling out of it until about 16.
They don’t know who they are, what they’re about, and what they want. They are NOT capable of making almost any kind of mature, rational, well thought out decision. Just isn’t part of the package at that age.
Absolutely...it becomes ‘all that they know’ and the cycle cannot be broken.
Are people under the age of 18 equally protected by the Constitution of the United States as other citizens?
As an example of the age qualification, I simply asked what was the legal drinking age in your State.
If every person born in America is legally equal under our Constitution, how could these laws be allowed?
Civilization. We don't swing in trees like monkeys anymore.
That doesn’t change the physiological facts. It may have happened but it still doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful.
Did it ever occur to you that the age of 18 wasn’t picked arbitrarily? That maybe people saw this and did it to protect girls from disgusting, opportunistic rapists?
I must say that, as a San Angelo resident, it's upsetting that the only national media attention West-Central Texas gets is when something like this comes along and makes people think bad things about us.
I'll say on that note that the activities supported by these criminals is not at all representative of the values and moral standards of the overwhelming majority of Texans.
There is evidence. They found 13 and 14 year old girls pregnant. The law calls that rape.
I am not sure, but perhaps Romeo and Juliet could help me understand a little about history.
A story. How cute.
*roll eyes*
Let's see; saying offensive things vs. rape and polygamy. Ever heard of the 1st Amendment?
After the shooting at the Amish schoolhouse, the parents and families of those who died reached out in the spirit of Christian forgiveness to the widow of the shooter. It was well documented. The Amish live a G-d centered, faith inspired life. They are on another planet compared to what those who have escaped FLDS have described.
I know that back in the fronteer days, women grew up and had children at an earlier age than we would think appropriate today...Their mortallity rate during child-birth would also shock most of us today. Their life expectancy was in the middle 40’s and their total sacrifice was enormous. I want to protect our girls from this, as I would expect any father to. What do you want for your daughters/grand-daughters?
“I gotta admit this country is fouled up when this gets the kind of reaction it does, but 38 yr old female teachers doing the same sort of thing to 14 year old males is a slap on the wrist.”
You guys really need to look at the scale of this, now, international cult, it would explain why everyone is assuming that the raid was probably justified.
“The Short Creek raid is the name given to Arizona state police and U.S. National Guard action against Mormon fundamentalists that took place on the morning of July 26, 1953 at Short Creek, Arizona. The Short Creek raid was the largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history. At the time, it was described as “the largest mass arrest of men and women in modern American history”.[1]”
“The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church) is one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist denominations[1][2] and one of America’s largest practitioners of plural marriage.[3] The FLDS Church emerged in the 1930s as an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church); the split occurred largely because of the LDS Church’s continued renunciation of polygamy”
“As of 2007, the church was being led by Warren Jeffs, who succeeded his father Rulon Jeffs in 2002. For nearly two years, Warren Jeffs had been wanted on sex-crimes charges; and from May 2006 until his arrest in August 2006 he was on the FBI’s Ten Most-Wanted List.[5] On September 25, 2007, Jeffs was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape[6][7] and was sentenced to ten years to life in prison”
“The exact number of members of the FLDS Church is unknown due to the relatively closed nature of the organization; however, their population has been estimated at between 6000 to 10,000 in the twin communities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah.[10][11] After purchasing land now called the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, there appears to be a shift in the headquarters of the church along with a large exodus of the “most faithful” church members. The church also has a colony in Bountiful, British Columbia. In the British Columbia town, the church is the primary influence and reason for being.[12]”
“On January 10, 2004, the church suffered major upheaval when Dan Barlow, the mayor of Colorado City, and about 20 men were excommunicated from the church and stripped of their wives and children (who would be reassigned to other men), and the right to live in the town. As a result, a few teenage women reportedly fled the towns with the aid of activists who advocate the escape of plural wives from polygamy”
“In 2003, the church received increased attention from the state of Utah when police officer Rodney Holm, a member of the church, was convicted of unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old and one count of bigamy for his marriage to and impregnation of plural wife Ruth Stubbs. The conviction was the first legal action against a member of the FLDS Church since the Short Creek raid (in 1953).
“On January 10, 2004, the church suffered major upheaval when Dan Barlow, the mayor of Colorado City, and about 20 men were excommunicated from the church and stripped of their wives and children (who would be reassigned to other men), and the right to live in the town. As a result, a few teenage women reportedly fled the towns with the aid of activists who advocate the escape of plural wives from polygamy.”
etc.etc.etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLDS
Again, historically, a woman was eligible for marriage after her first menstrual cycle.
You know it, and I know it.
That is how it has been for thousands of years.
Maybe some. But it's also about pedophilia and rape.
Its a two way street, young men are taken advantage of all the time by slick women.
Not forced in isolated compounds where they are forced to endure it and be beaten and threatened with their eternal damnation for not co-operating.
That then makes the point totally irrelevant.
The only similarity is the clothing, sort of. These in the compound did not choose to live a lifestyle of yesteryear. They were forced into a life of slavery.
The Amish only chose not to have modern conveniences. This is not the same as what’s happening in this group.
In America, while there were girls who were married in their mid teens, it has never been the norm to be married before age 14, whether a girl had started her cycle or not.
It is right to take them out and give them a hope for a new life, not lived in this evil perversity.
I once was instrumental in saving a certain baby from being aborted by his fifteen year old mom, but she kept the baby and I and watched some horrible things happen to him in his childhood, because of a very bad stepfather, and some really bad things his mother did. I and his grandmother reported his stepdad and his mom to the authorities, but nothing was done, until his five year old stepsister was beaten unconcious and stopped breathing, and 911 was called by the boys’ mom, who was too panic stricken to follow instructions so boy was intructed over the phone how to breathe into the girls mouth, while the ambulance was on the way.
The girl lived, the stepmom went to prison for some years, and the boy went to live with his grandparents, and had a loving home after that, growing up ‘normal’. -His mother actually truly repented, later, and married a man she met in prison [the first husband and she divorced while she was in prison], and she and her second husband live normal lives, and both are professing Christians, and really are sorry for the things they did [people can change], and, she did her time in prison.
No matter how horrid it got for some time in that boy’s life, that would have never been a justification for him having been aborted.
Two wrongs never make a right, as the saying goes.
At least these children can be given an opportunity to grow up and make their own decisions, instead of being raised in a religious brothel, to support the temple’s wicked deity, that they were born under.
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