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 ...
I felt the same way. I have a bunch of links that will take me months to read. Jeff’s cult isn’t the only one who are doing this. Shaking my head!
If they don’t know who the mothers actually are, how can a state agency turn any children over to anyone? Right now, they don’t know, and the mothers won’t say. They’re going to need dna tests to sort them all out.
I agree with you.
All the rantings on FR of how horrible this raid was, that we’re losing our constitutional rights, blah, blah.
What about the rights of these children? Aren’t they citizens too? Do they have to be condemned into the horrid slavery this evil sect demands and enforces? No one with legal authority should be allowed to check out the compound for criminal activity, which has been well documented in the history of this cult?
I’m sure all the men on this forum would love to have thier ex-wives write tell-all books. Ex-wives never exagerate or make things up.
Yep, if this woman wrote it, it HAS to be true. No doubt about it. You can take that to the bank... /s
I’m wainting for the intimate account by the mailman of what type of mail he saw going into the compound, the trashman to tell what he accidently saw in the trash and the local vet to know what was going on with the animals...
Yikes.
Since you care so much about the children, can you tell us why the adult males remain at the ranch, and the only ones to be arrested have been the children?
Separation anxiety for young kids is serious. It can amount to abuse in it’s own right. It can haunt kids for decades even into adult-hood.
Why weren’t the men removed from the farm, and the kids left to continue with education and other activities out there?
This whole think stinks to high heavens. The men abuse the kids and then the government abuses them to fix it.
No, he doesn’t believe it because his two ex-wives were women.
Can someone explain to me why all threads on this issue are trolled by a ping list that accuses anyone who has questions whatsoever about the government’s actions as a polygamist supporters and other ad hominum attacks.
It’s the same group here as on other threads.
I am Southern Baptist by birth and very culturally White Southern US and I make no pretense about it.
But I don’t know much about these polygamy groups today and know little about it’s relationship with Mormonism either.
But it should not be a crime on FR to question government raids en masse on religious groups. All the same salacious claims were made about the Branch Davidians as well and all were later proved made up.
Now we’ve gone and taken 400 and something kids from their moms just like that. That’s problematic to me especially if the moms were victimized by the men too.
I would simply like to know more about the truths in this situation. We do have a history lately of inevitably seeing government force on fringe religious groups....especially white ones but also even minority ones as in Philadelphia in the late 70s.
Some of you here act like you know it all and believe everything the cops say because maybe some of you don’t like Mormons either by extension (I observed a Romney is linked to this comment two days ago)
Maybe some of you were abused by polygamy.
Does anyone here have first hand knowledge of polygamy and these groups.
The two things that stand out to me as quite wrong with these groups are:
turning out boys.....I believe this to be true
forced sex on women/girls
Where did you read (or hear) that the men were left at the ranch? The sources I’ve seen so far said they were “out of state.”
I don’t know how much to believe. Is it 100% correct? Is it 25% correct? Who knows?
As for the ‘women’ standard, how many women on this forum would like their ex-husbands to write tell all books? Would it be any better? There are axes to grind, custody battles to be won, it’s just a can of worms IMO.
There are no men at the farm now? LOL, then why the abduction of the children? Jeez Louise...
Boy, the cult defenders are really jumping the gun on this!
I found a link to a story on this:
Springs woman arrested for false reporting in raid
A Colorado Springs woman was arrested on charges of false reporting to authorities and is being investigated for her alleged involvement in the call that tipped authorities off to possible abuse at the Texas polygamist compound.
Police say they arrested 33-year-old Rozita Swinton at her home on Wednesday. The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs apparently as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas.
They left and have not filed any charges on Swinton and the Colorado Springs Police spokesman said he could not discuss any aspects of the Texas case.
Our sister station KMGH in Denver found out that this is not the first time Swinton has been arrested on charges of making false reports to authorities. According to records the charge against Swinton was made in connection to calls received by police in February indicating she was 13 years old and trapped in a basement-- all a lie.
It appears the cult defenders are counting chickens before they hatch.
“Why have the victims been dislocated, separated, and ground through the legal system? It seems to me the obvious decision would have been to leave the mother/child bond in place at the ranch and remove the perps.”
There were not families, there were not mother/child bonds.
There are not just some “perps” that can be removed, the child rape process is a basic reason for the cults very existence.
The women and the men are all engaged in a religious practice of breeding new girls for child rape, you cannot send the children back to that rape farm.
The people there were assigned their roles as individuals, a “mother” could be reassigned to be a mother to kids besides her own, while her own biological production could be assigned to other women, permanently, and in other states.
A husband and father could be replaced by another man, who then became “father” and “husband”
“”””Many children won’t say who their parents are or even who they are. It’s possible some have Canadian connections or may even be Canadian since the surnames on the court documents match some of those in Bountiful - Johnson, Barlow, Steed, Jessop and Jeffs.
Part of the confusion, according to people with close connections to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is that last summer, the jailed prophet Warren Jeffs ordered dozens of children to be taken from their homes in Utah and Arizona and reassigned to new parents in the Texas compound.
As FLDS members, the children are taught that since the outsiders are evil, it’s okay to lie to them to protect the Lord, their prophet and their fathers.
Only the most devout FLDS are at the Yearning for Zion ranch, which was built only after Jeffs became a fugitive, charged in both Utah and Arizona for sex crimes involving the marriages of young girls in the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City.””””
But, DO, if you’d seen the interviews on television, you’d realize that bitterness doesn’t really seem to be part of their makeup. The ONLY way we’ll ever know what occurred in these places will be what the witnesses say. We can’t dismiss them all as “bitter ex-wives.” (These women from this group are quite different from the b*tchy ex on You Tube.)
Ok, once more. They need to separate them from their mothers to at least TRY to get a straight story about what was going on. The kids are NOT going to say anything against the adults as long as they are present. That’s standard for child abuse investigations. I’m shocked that so many here don’t realize this.
mark
Lions and other animals that form groups with one alpha male with multiple females exhibit the same behavior. When the adolescent male cub gets too old the alpha male drives him out of the pride to live or die on his own. His adolescent female sisters and cousins become additional sexual partners to the alpha male.
After all, humans produce male and female offspring in approximately equal amounts, so for a few males to have multiple wives some males have to do without any. Having these males with little chance of ever procuring mates in the community is dangerous to the stability of said community, so you have to get rid of them somehow.
Translated to nads in the rest of the country. ;o)
When I was growing up in central Florida, I did have experience with a small group of polygamist (They called themselves Mormon as opposed to LDS). I knew their kids, hung out with one of their boys, and went over to their house on more than one occasion. True be told, I saw them as quite normal people. I did find the fact that they did not drink tea a bit odd but otherwise, fine people.
So my personal experience is a bit different from what is being painted in the news. Personally, I WONT call polygamy a sin because I can not find a single statement in the Bible that does so. So I believe I adopt an attitude similar to Martin Luther. Unwise, ill advised, wrought with financial, spiritual, and time requirements that are far above a traditional marriage .... but I'm not willing to go beyond what the scripture says.
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