Posted on 04/13/2008 8:57:18 PM PDT by claudiustg
SAN ANGELO — A Texas judge on Sunday ordered law enforcement officials to immediately confiscate all cell phones in the possession of FLDS women and children now housed in temporary quarters here. "I just called to say, hi. They are about to collect the phones, I think," one soft-spoken FLDS woman said during a telephone call to another member of the Fundamentalist LDS Church who was outside of the shelter. "I don't like what they're doing."
Several of the women inside the shelters spoke by cell phone to the Deseret News on Saturday to describe the living conditions there. Children could be heard crying in the background of each conversation. The News published an article on Sunday, quoting the women who complained there was no privacy and that their children were getting sick.
FLDS faithful outside the shelter are convinced Sunday's court order is a direct result of the women speaking to the newspaper.
"This is nothing more than retaliation of Child Protective Services to punish those who were disclosing what is really happening behind the walls of this concentration camp," said Don, an FLDS member who asked that his last name not be used. "These are my family members."
(Excerpt) Read more at deseretnews.com ...
Correct that this is a unique case if nothing more than by the number of the people involved. Don’t forget the Feds have now entered the picture but I don’t know the details of their involvement.
OK,
What would you have done differently? And understand, you’re dealing with a tight knit, very mobile, super-brainwashed group that has been doing this for a generation or so.....and sees nothing wrong with it.
OK, your turn....what would you do?
My understanding in cases of alleged abuse,(actually, I saw it in a family down the street) is that this is pretty typical.
What happened there was that the little girl (6 years old) one day told someone that her mother’s boyfriend had his hands down her pants. DSS was called and the kids were immediately put in foster care, taken out of school, IIRC. Turns out I knew the foster parents so know for sure this is where they ended up.
The boyfriend was arrested, genetic testing was done, charges were filed, he was put in jail.
There was rumor that the mother was pregnant by her son and genetic testing was done to verify that. The reason I believe that it was proved to be the case, was that they didn’t let her take the baby home with her from the hospital, something they always do.
The kids have all remained in foster care to the best of my knowledge and the baby put up for adoption. The mother was declared to be incompetent, which she most certainly was-she could clothe and feed herself but how those older kids survived is a total mystery to me, and her parental rights terminated.
I don’t see that the authorities are doing anything different in this case. Children are in protective custody. Mothers left of their own free will. Evidence is being gathered.
I have no doubt that the authorities know that if they screw up, they have screwed up big time and miss their chance to prosecute known criminals.
Don't you mean in her filmiest G-string with most of her cleavage bursting out from around the edges of the string. That's more like "normal clothes", isn't it?!
I will correct you on one point...on many threads, there were those posting that they saw nothing wrong with the teen brides and that they were real and consenting wives.
I saw these posts repeatedly...here. Now, we may be picking nits between the ages of 12 and 16 or so, but the only error in your post to me is that there has been a high percentage (at least in the beginning) who defended all this group stood for.
So yeah, on FR, there are those who don’t have issues with the basics of this ‘sect’.
That is the lady who now makes a living writing about these people and running a place for those who want to leave to come to which is paid for by donations.
Wonder how much money she has made off of this publicity.
And who are the accused? Those likely to be accused and charged are mostly the men but they need evidence.
The women and children are in PROTECTIVE custody, something very typical for cases like this, just the magnitude of this is what's unusaul. They have not been accused or charged with anything.
I give them the benefit of the doubt and say that with few exceptions, the women are blameless in this mess. They have been so totally brainwashed and manipulated that I find it hard to believe that there could be any justification for charging them.
The right to freedom of religion is not the right being violated here...
Well, you may think that but certainly most of the other posters screaming against the government's actions are making that their rallying cry.
the right to be properly charged and tried by a jury of peers is what I see lacking.
Tell me then, how is it lacking? They haven't had time to have a jury by their peers yet. The government is allowed a certain amount of time to pull together and formally press charges, do they not? Has that time expired?
Say what! That may have been true at one time. Ask any businessman who has to deal with reams of government paperwork if that is true. It is illegal to do any of a number of things that were once taken for granted: smoking in most public places and businesses, riding without helmets on bicycles and motorcycles or seatbelts in cars, burning your trash in rural areas, etc. Limits to governmental power on local, state, and Federal levels are ignored; to most politicians, the state and Federal constitutions are only pieces of paper.
The prosecution of those who sexually abuse minors is a necessary role of government. However, the proper way to do so is to arrest the suspects after probable cause is established and try them fairly in a court of law. The specific victims should be protected through a witness protection program. A mass expulsion and forcible relocation of an entire population of FLDS members is going beyond the scope of proper governmental authority.
we all need to be logical about this.
The government has infinit time to investigate and bring charges. The law does not allow fishing expeditions. It also has speedy trial rules for the accused.
Are these women going to be charged?
The state is not going to charge the 18year olds so what is going to happen to them? are they going to toss them on the street? ruin their lives or worse?
We can’t burn the village to rescue it.
Does anyone know if anyone is ACTUALLY under arrest?
(BTW you have to actually want protective custody to get protective custody outside of child care services. Oh and keeping a mother’s child and telling the mother she is free to go is still subject to false arrest/imprisonment. We just have to be congnizant of all legal pitfalls.)
My sympathy is growing thin. I agree. Arrest the moms and the dads if proof the kids were abused. The judge /jury can judge them individually.
Arrest the suspects, try them fairly in a court of law, and punish them to the full extent of the law if found guilty by a jury. Protect the specific victims through a witness protection program. Leave the remainder to stay at the compound if they chose to do so. The arrest and conviction of the few scoundrels and perverts who are guilty of sexual crimes would break the cycle of abuse in any case without massive social engineering.
OK,
Again-— how would YOU have done it differently-— dealing with a very mobile, very brainwashed, incredibly tight cult that would and could vanish pretty quickly (to sister sects) overnight?
The adult women are free to leave at any time.
Her 3 B’s are covered. If she’s comfortable, leave her alone about how she is dressed .
Erm,
few scoundrels and perverts?
All the males are complicit in this— this is the basis of the religion! That’s why they’re there! That’s why they get male converts over from the outside but never any female (think about it).
This isn’t a one family and a few people. This is a lot of people organized to sexually abuse a lot of children.
OK, what would you do?
no and who was that?
a spelling police member?
Here they needed to just develop some independent indication that underage girls were pregnant. Not just the third party relayed phone call. Notice I said indication, not even real proof or evidence.
How so? You don't think that new ones wouldn't just step in and fill their shoes, as has happened before? You don't think that they wouldn't conclude that they would be left alone now that the government thinks it got the bad guys and so could go back to the business at hand?
Assuming that the problem would be solved with the arrest and conviction of a few would be pretty naive thinking.
For a law school student, or an attorney, (whichever you professed to be in a previous post) you writing style is surprisingly like another of our FR posters’s.
It’s just curious. I misspell and mis-type all the time, so I’m not basing my opinion simply upon your mistakes.
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.