Posted on 04/18/2008 8:38:05 AM PDT by DFG
When Texas authorities seized 416 children in a raid on a compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Americans quickly learned that the religious group encourages polygamy and the marriage of young girls to older men. Escape, a memoir published last fall, offers a more detailed portrait of life with the FLDS. In the book, Carolyn Jessop, a sixth-generation polygamist describes her life as the fourth wife of Merril Jessop, who ran the recently raided Texas compound. Carolyn left Merril in 2003, before he moved to Texas, but her memoir sheds light on the man and on the beliefs and practices common within the insular community. Below, Slate flags Carolyn's most intriguing, strange, and heartbreaking allegations.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Ah, the “irony” of your statement! (“Bountiful” is a Canadian community established in Canada across the Idaho border by Mormons to keep its polygamy operations alive)
On the other hand the authorities should bring charges if there are valid reasons to extricate the kids from the farm …Do you see any grounds to wonder why they haven’t?
Yes. What’s it been since authorities began sifting “firsthand” through the homes & temple @ Eldorado? (Less than 2 wks, right?)
Just as a cop pulling over somebody for a vehicle violation may find evidence of narcotics & somebody’s blood in the trunk, I don’t think we would be finger-pointing at the law enforcement officials just because they haven’t found the person or body that goes with said blood.
Now. Multiply that by 416 kids with less than forthright family cooperation & typical limited law enforcement capabilities for a very small Texas county. (What? You think fLDS picked this area out at random? Isolation. Limited law enforcement staffing. All these things work in their favor).
Add on top of this the media element. If they rush somebody to charges & try a case & lose it, not only will this look bad all the way around but it jeopardizes other cases.
Well, shoot! Thanks for the post.
The secrets and the hidden lives of these children are shocking. While this is indeed traumatic, so is that lifestyle. I say we give them the time they need to sort this mess out.
that is a sick comment. just sick. the girl was a CHILD, not an adult....(shaking head in disgust)
Amazing article here with lots of info about the UT/AZ group, even though it’s several years old:
http://www.childbrides.org/laura.html
“As a little girl, Laura Chapman taped the words “Keep Sweet” on her bathroom mirror to remind herself how to get by in this remote, polygamous community.
Keeping sweet, Chapman says, meant staying silent as her father molested her starting at age 3. It meant hiding her secret from her 30 brothers and sisters. It meant being lashed with a yardstick by one of her father’s four wives. It meant having to quit school at age 11, then work without pay in a store owned by her church’s prophet.
Keeping sweet meant being forced into marriage at age 18 to a man she didn’t know, let alone love. It meant having a baby every year. It meant walking 10 paces behind her husband. And, above all, it meant smiling, sweetly through her pain.”
And more articles here:
And here I thought the thread was winding down. ;-)
Some people would rather believe the fantasies of their own making than give any credibility to the tremendous weight of evidence against the group.
While I fear you’re wasting your time with that poster, I appreciate the information.
Thanks for the post. I’m going to add it to my list.
ping, another thread with some fReepers more concerned about process rather than the over 20 children they found this week under 16 who had children or are now pregnant
by one of the old guys in this cult.
Many women, many children living under the same roof with some guy knocking them up. Their records are switched around so they don’t know who they really belong to.
Rigid beliefs with no freedom to believe in any other religion, what occupation they will do in life, no freedom to wear clothes other than what the cult leaders decide.
Children not protected from being forced to have sex with some old guy.
Call me conservative, I love freedom.
I hope some of these FReepers obsessed with the process,
thinking this cult should have its freedom never finds their young daughter under 16 raped by some old coot
I’ll be glad to address your broader verse and Old Testament “contextual” claims. But, first let’s put a little context to my initial comments and the comment of yours I was responding to.
You initially said: Personally, I WONT call polygamy a sin because I can not find a single statement in the Bible that does so.
Do you still stand by this statement? You gave all kinds of “qualified” “contextual” statements in response…which, if we were having just a normal wide-open convo about polygamy, I would expect that (I mean I make qualifications, too). The problem is, tho, that you went from making an absolute statement to a qualified statement. And then you had the nerve to pretend you weren’t backing off your original statement, thereby weaseling out of a Biblical passage that clearly calls at least some forms of polygamy a “sin.” (Or, would you now have the audacity to claim that something that turns your heart away from God is not a “sin?”)
So, before we move away from Deuteronomy & Leviticus to 2 Samuel, you need to ‘fess up that you were “wrong” in making such a wide open statement about carte blanche polygamy. By your own admission, you now say Dt. 17:17 concludes: What it says is that the King shall not have a LOT of wives. No number of wives is given.
So, I think all of us can see that you would agree, based upon Dt. 17:17, that some form of polygamy is “sinful.” Now that doesn’t mean you think that all forms of polygamy are sinful; but you’ve now gone from claiming I WONT call polygamy a sin because I can not find a single statement in the Bible that does so earlier in the thread to I WONT call ALL FORMS of polygamy a sin because I ACTUALLY HAVE NOW BEEN GIVEN a single statement in the Bible that does CONDEMN SOME FORMS OF POLYGAMY—THAT BEING ‘MANY-WIVES’ POLYGAMY (on this latter part, since I don't want to be accused of putting exact words in your mouth, do you now agree with this latter phrase?)
We also know from the prophet Nathan, that the first six of King David's wives were given to him by God.
Hey, Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was a prostitute. Yes or no, did God intentionally give Gomer to Hosea? (And since the answer is “yes,” does that make God out to be some divine pimp?) If you had a daughter, and if she became a prostitute, would you suddenly claim that God wasn’t the source of the gift of your daughter to your family?
The God I worship is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. If God calls multiple wives a blessing, I will not go against the word of God.
Ah, a question here: Solomon had 700 wives (1 Kings 11:3). Are you consistent here? Were these 700 wives “a blessing” from God? (And if your answer is “no,” where do you draw the line? Are 10 “wives” a “blessing” and the ensuing 690 are not? Pray tell, draw us a nice “legal-moral” line here)
Certainly you realize that in David & Solomon’s day, it was rather common for treaties to be established with people groups by either an exchange of a wife or a concubine, or the “gift” of a wife or concubine? (How else do you think Solomon acquired 700 wives and 300 concubines?). You can find numerous OT references to how God hated the fact that Israel's leaders were relying upon man-made pacts & alliances for security instead of trusting in Him. What special implication does that have re: our convo?
(1) Not every “concubine” was a wife (note that 1 Kings 11:3 makes a distinction between the two);
(2) not all the women inhabiting their households were sexual bed-partners.
As for David, the women referenced in 2 Sam. 12:8 are later referenced as “concubines” whom David’s son, Absalom, slept with in broad daylight (2 Sam. 16:21-22). The Hebrew word for “wife” in 2 Sam. 12:8 is “issah” or “ishshah” which is translated as “wife,” “woman,” and even “bride.” For example, it’s translated as “woman” in Judges 19 in describing a concubine. It’s also translated as “mate” in Gen. 7:2 in describing female animals boarding the ark (you’re not going to tell us that those male animals automatically had more than one “mate” are you?). So “issah” or “ishshah” can also be translated as a mate…and indeed, the women of 2 Sam. 12 are clearly identified as “concubines” (2 Sam. 16:21-22).
Read “Under the Banner of Heaven”. A great book an the abuses of FLDS.
My question is...we have dozens & dozens of threads over the last several years of educators accused of inappropriate sexual behavior/rape/molestation with students. Where are all these process-obsessed FReepers hiding on these threads? (They don't come out to try & protect educator-perps) Why not?
Or how about the threads that have mentioned an abortion clinic phone counselor telling a caller who is saying she is pregnant by way of incest/rape? Where are the process-obsessed FReepers there to stand up for the abortion clinic folks rather than just have all these pro-life "accusations" flying in the media?
Thank you for the reference. I appreciate it.
How many times have some of these people you are railing aginst, said that they want justice to be meeted out to every person guilty of an infraction at Eldorado?
Due process is very important. Advocating for it does not imply that anyone doing so wants criminals to get off scott free.
Why do you not seem to understand this?
The very important point here is that if we allow due process to be violated in this case, who stops it in the next case when our side may have an axe to grind?
I don’t want someone making a phone call regarding things that go on in your home, and that to precipitate you losing your children or freedom while things get sorted out.
This does happen from time to time, to innocent people. It happens a lot easier, when there is a wink and a nod agreement that certain cases are so important that the rules don’t matter.
You don’t want “due process”. You want instant gratification, and a big public announcement. Due process takes TIME, especially when they have to do reams of DNA testing in this case.
Excellent!
Excellent!
Where are your credentials to make all your assertions? Do you have 1st hand knowledge of any of this, or are you just buying what the media is putting out? I don’t know what is going on down there, but Ellian Gonzales, Waco, and Ruby Ridge are my harbingers when this stuff surfaces.
If what you say is true, removing the men and letting the women and children stay put while everything is sorted out seems prudent. If you think the government cares about the children, remember how many children died in Waco to save them from the same thing that’s alleged in Eldorado. None of this is the children’s making. Why terrorize them?
These people are not going anywhere. I propose letting the children stay in familiar surroundings with familiar people and execute an orderly process to sort it all out. The men are the perps. Have you heard about any of them? Have we seen photos of them? Have any been interrogated?
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