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 ...
ouch. Good thing that $19.95 do it yourself DNA kit has come out.
This is going to require 400 dna tests and be a massive genetic puzzle.
Are any of these mothers claiming specific children?
Thank you.
I'm not protecting anything.
I could ask if you are saying that what is not acceptable for them to do is OK if the government does it, but I know that's not quite what you are saying.
Maybe you don't remember the uproar when Billy Jeff said the following but I do. I don't want the same portrayed as the "official" FR position.
When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.
I insist the government follow the rules in putting these child abusers, away. The next time they use the same tactics it might be you they coming after. Why? Who knows, they are government, they'll make something up if necessary. (I'm not saying they are making stuff up in this case, just that government bureaucrats have been known to do that in other cases).
A child doesn't care much about "biological" parents. They care about Mommy and sometimes Daddy. I have 3 females, none of them biologically related to me although two are my wife's great nieces, and two who are my biological daughters, who call me Dad or Daddy. I can't imagine a finer title thing for a man to be called.
Right now there are a whole bunch of real live children who are wondering where Mommy is. That would be true even if, like some Indian tribes, they called every woman in the community "Mother". To cause all that misery among those innocents, the authorities better have all their duck in a row, their coffee saucered and blown, and all their 'i's dotted and their 't's crossed. Else, sure as can be, they will be returned to the status quo ante, and the taxpayers of Texas, of which I am one, will be out a bunch of bucks. I hear on the news today that the kids have been moved again.
You seem to know much about the case that does not seem to be common knowledge. Were the warrants supported by Oath or Affirmation? If so, whose? Were the place to be searched and/or persons to be seized particularly described?
I hope so, because a faulty warrant could easily get every piece of evidence that flows from it thrown out.
You clearly do not understand the nature of Constitutional rights. They are restraints on *government* action, not private. The one exception, kinda-sorta, would be the right not be held as slave. But even that not really a Constitutional right, in the sense that the Constitution forbids private individuals from holding slaves. What does that is the laws, both common and statute, that forbid holding a person against their will. It's just that if the government is allowed to sanction slavery or enforce involuntary servitude, then those law have what ammounts to a big loophole for the slave class (which aren't always of a minority race as they hisotrically were in the US). The Constitition bans slavery and involuntary servitude, and thus the laws against detaining someone against their will apply regardless of the status of the detainee, except of course if the deprivation of liberty is via government and then only if it was via due process.
Due Process is what some of us are worried about.
That's a nice straw man. But very few, if any, are saying the government should do nothing. It's how they go about it that in dispute. Freedom is about process, and if they can use a process which violates the Constitutions of the US and Texas, if it does, on these people, they will be using on others, sooner or later, and most likely sooner. That is my concern and the concern of many others.
"For the Children" is supposed to be Janet Reno and Hillary's mantra, not FReepers.
AFAIK, only two, one for tampering with physical evidence, the other for interfering with a public servant. See this USA Today Article
Both were men, one age 41 the other age 19.
The point is that people who are "different" don't necessarily have to do anything. The state will find something, even a that of a Democracy. What did the Americans of Japanese ancestry do to justify putting them into camps? Nothing. And that happened only a few years (less than 8) before I was born, not in Dark Ages. What were the Branch Davidians doing? Who did they threaten? Remember that the "child abuse" allegations came after the raid, in that case.
I'm not saying that these people weren't doing something illegal, just wanting the Constitutional processes to be followed. Too many, especially on the left, are willing to throw out those processes "for the children" saying they don't apply to those people or those crimes.
Name them and point to the posts that indicate that. Most seem concerned with due process rights, first amendment rights other than freedom of religion, fifth and particularly fourth amendment rights. Or the equivalent rights protected by the Texas Constitution.
what about when they are ripped from the arms of their ‘mother’, and given to a new ‘mother’, at the whims of Warren Jeffs?
Maybe they were doing exactly what you suggest.
Maybe they were ‘tapping’ the phones, maybe even with the women’s permission.
Maybe they started confiscating the phones, because they got what they wanted.
Maybe the women complaining are just wanting to go back ‘home’. so badly that they will say whatever it takes.
We just don’t know all the facts yet, and they are in ‘protective custody’.
Not under arrest, or pending arrest. They are the victims, and must be protected.
How about when they are when they are ripped from the arms of mother and given to the state of TX.
“How about when they are when they are ripped from the arms of mother and given to the state of TX.”
IIRC, the mothers were brought along, so they could be with their children, who were being taken into protective custody.
Since it was really, really hard to tell the mothers from the children, (some of the children were the mothers), things are taking time.
The facility they have been in is not capable of supporting the needs of that many women and children, for the length of time this is going to take.
So, they are being moved, so that better care can be taken of them.
All of the above. Usually they try to find another family member, but there are guidelines and restrictions that may not allow that. Then the go for foster care, which is another family or individual acting on behalf of the state. In the "old days" the state itself might care for the children, and might still today for a very short period.
My experience in these matters is with the State of Arkansas, and with Texas CPS contract social workers. My wife's great nieces were taken from their mother, properly so, and placed in a foster home for a year. The lady was really nice, and the kids think kindly of her, but they came away speaking a mild version of Eubonics, which after two years, we've almost worked out of them. (It was somewhat incongruous to see a couple of somewhat Hispanic looking (their grandfather) kids sounding like they just stepped out of the Hood, especially when the black kids of the same age in my neighborhood don't talk that way. The mother lived in a "black" part of town, and had a black roommate, so it wasn't just the foster care lady. The kids grandmother, my wife's 7 year younger sister, wanted to take them, but due to her health and some "incidents" in her past, the state would not allow that. So that left us, and we now have permanent custody, although we let our niece, their mother, visit and have fairly frequent telephone contact. She has, AFAWK, stayed clean, and has completed both dental assistant and truck driver schools, and is now "on the road", (don't ask). The Texas CPS was just aiding in an interstate placement, through interviews and an "inspection" of (one of) our houses.
“...but I’ll be surprised if anyone is actually convicted on the charges being tossed around so freely here and in the media.”
You might want to check the status of their prophet, Mr. Jeffs.
They hung him high, as he well deserves. They made a huge strategic mistake thinking this stuff would be overlooked in Texas.
Judging by the tone of their posts, there are more than a few on this forum that believe the same thing.[That the government should not interfere with the rape of female children by 40 and 50 year old men]
Without their children of course. Where would they go? This protective custody is not exactly being under arrest, but it's hardly completely voluntary either. The young women, including both the legal adults and the under age ones, are victims as much as the children, in fact legally the underage ones are children. We can't get so hung up on getting the "bad guys" that we trample the rights of the victims.
Imagine if you will that the cell phones had been taken away from a bunch of Katrina refugees in some shelter for some justifiable sounding reason.
If the complaint was fabricated, we need to know who was behind it and why.
Was it a call for help?
Or was it a power play? Or Political Manuever? Or Mormons wanting to get rid of FLDS?
(all rhetorical. I am not asking you to answer)
Having researched Warren Jeffs and the FLDS 2 nights ago, I would say that regardless to the shenanigans with the current ‘complaint’, there is an unacceptable lifestyle being allowed, and practiced, at that compound, and it needs to stop.
I would say that they should be charged with accessory after the fact when they turn over a 13 or 14 year old girl to a 50 year old man to have his way with.
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