Posted on 04/23/2008 1:30:49 PM PDT by Between the Lines
Colorado Springs, CO and Eldorado, TX - This is not the first time Rozita Swinton has made up a good story and called authorities. But it’s definitely the first time one of Swinton’s calls produced a mass raid on over 400 people. Swinton, 33, is now facing charges related to the April 3 raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, owned and occupied by members of Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. Rozita Swinton may have set the whole raid off by calling a San Angelo crisis center on March 29, saying she was a young girl named Sarah who was being abused.
Rozita Swinton is a soft-spoken young woman with what police call “a baby voice”. She’s her neighborhood delegate to the Obama campaign. She is single, without children, pays her bills and works for an insurance company. By all accounts, she is a giving person, allowing her roommate to move in after the Eldorado raid had begun. But Swinton has called in false reports before, tying up police and social resources for weeks at a time.
In June 2005, Swinton was arrested in Castle Rock, Colorado after she called an adoption agency posing a teenaged pregnant girl. Swinton told the agency and police that she was young, pregnant, alone and thinking of killing herself after leaving the baby at a fire station. There was no baby. There was no teenager. There was only Rozita Swinton, who had no explanation for what she’d done. Police charged her with filing a false police report, and she is on probation for that case.
In February of this year, a swarm of Colorado Springs police officers went out looking for a thirteen-year-old who said she was locked in a basement. Nope - it was Rozita Swinton again. That case is still pending.
Flora Jessop, a former FLDS member who escaped and now runs a crisis center, says that Swinton repeatedly called her posing as a young abused girl. Jessop said she first got a call March 30 (the day after the San Angelo hotline call) from Swinton, who said she was an abuse victim named Sarah. Swinton had done her research, but missed a few key points over the 30-50 hours of phone conversations Jessop taped. And the man Sarah claimed was her husband is a well-known polygamist FLDS member who doesn’t live at the Eldorado compound at all. That was one of several clues that led authorities to Swinton’s door.
Is Rozita Swinton a wingnut, or a misguided angel of mercy trying to save the abused children of the FLDS? Investigators are still looking for Sarah, on the off-chance that she does exist. But Texas Rangers have already been to Colorado, where they found books and “items of interest” in Swinton’s apartment. The hotline call has been traced and appears to come from Swinton. On the other hand, there is evidence of prolonged and ritualized sexual abuse on the Yearning For Zion compound, even down to a marital bed in the temple itself and many minor children who are pregnant or have had babies by much older relatives. Rozita Swinton may be a nutball. She may also have saved over 400 lives.
Heroine or criminal or both, Swinton remains under investigation by multiple agencies today. She is charged with false reporting in Colorado and may be facing probation violation charges and other charges as well. I don’t know what I think about this one - what do you think?
LIke I said, and got flamed, a nice buncha folks!
By the way, what’s Jeff’s last name?
When CPS removes a possibly abused child they also take all of the children in that household- regardless if they all were abused or not. Since this group has multiple households living under one roof with paternity and maternity in question taking all these kids was their only course of action.
I hope these children do get the attention they need and also the women who were brainwashed.
I also think the authorities could have done this sooner they did say they had a guy in there for four years why hasn't he spoke up?
Swinton needs to be prosecuted to see what her real motives were! She has a history of doing this kind of stuff before.
All this stuff needs to be air out in the courts and on TV Court because this effects enough people all across the nation!
And to think that the big, bad, evil government wants to take those poor children from their little paradise there.
Wrong. It's not an attack on religious freedom. It's going after illegal activity.
Does religious freedom mean I can do anything I want without any fear of reprisals or repercussions if I wrap it in the cloak of *religion*?
Child sacrifice have been part of many religions for many thousands of years. Should that be protected, too?
Can I decide to do whatever I want and claim it's religious activity and avoid prosecution for crimes? After all, I simple have a different set of morals. Who are you to judge? It's my religion to rob banks and murder people. It's my religion to not pay taxes. It's my religion to blow away noisy neighbors who play their music too loud or throw parties after midnight.
The *they're coming after you next* hysteria is getting more than a little old.
I see nobody can answer my question.
How can our society charge somebody with polygamy when we do not charge people with adultery? Polygamist’s do not go down to the county courthouse for 5 marriage certificates. These “marriages” are not legal in any state. Are they not just long lasting/committed adulterous relationships? Therefore, if we as society turn a blind eye to adultery (which I am sure is illegal in Texas) how can we not do the same for polygamy?
Also, how do you clarvoyant types out there seem to know that all of these women are brainwashed? Nobody accuses Elliot Spitzer’s wife of being brainwashed yet she was sharing her husband — worse yet, she was sharing him with a whore (more like a concubine prostitute since we know he liked to do repeats with the same 18/19 year old girl). I have know women who stayed married to nasty gentlemen for all sorts of reasons — however they were far from brainwashed.
It's easy. I've seen an online copy of the search warrant in the Eldorado case. The warrant not only had a reference to a report of sexual abuse; but was secondarily predicated on a "criminal offense" (wording on warrant) of a violation of Texas code 25.01--bigamy.
With most cases of bigamy, deception with neither of the wives--or all (depending on how many there are)--being aware of the others.
In part, your question is not only geared specifically toward the Eldorado matter, but toward the question of why have laws against bigamy and polygamy? There are many reasons. One of them is that at least in regard to bigamy, deception is usually part of the offense. Bigamists leave real victims in their wake.
You're not advocating that the state endorses such cases of bigamy, are you? You're not claiming that bigamy and polygamy are "victimless" crimes, are you?
The heart of these matters is that a bigamist or a polygamist cannot fulfill the promises he is making. If he is already married to a first wife, and extends a marriage proposal to a second, the state will not recognize the marriage. Beyond the obvious problems for such a "second" wife, as far as the state's interest goes, the "add-on wife"--along with her children--is a potential financial loser re: inheritance (if he dies) or if she expects to legally recover her financial investment in a "marriage" that divorce would otherwise bring.
We see this even Biblically. Ishmael was born to a servant girl in Abram's household; he received gifts from his father, but was sent away to another country and had no inheritance rights.
These “marriages” are not legal in any state.
Exactly. So why lock out additional "wives" & their children out of inheritance rights? Why push these women into automatic welfare like the fLDS does?
Are they not just long lasting/committed adulterous relationships?
In the case of underaged girls, minors cannot give "consent." So in those cases, "committed" is not a reality.
Beyond that, you miss one of the most crucial erosions. If any family configuration is "OK" from the state's perspective, then what's wrong with a woman having 10 husbands? What's wrong with 5 men & 5 women engaged in a "group marriage?" What's wrong with such a "family" legally adopting children to come into that "mess."
No. Whenever societies have veered from the intentional efforts to provide a child with both a father & mother, the kids lose.
Therefore, if we as society turn a blind eye to adultery (which I am sure is illegal in Texas) how can we not do the same for polygamy?
Well, society doesn't turn a total blind eye, but I'm not sure if you asking a moral question here as to policy or a legal question. From a socio-political advocacy viewpoint...
1. As mentioned, kids are the losers (stat-wise), when they don't have one mom & one dad. In addition, they don't have a good relationship emulated for them, and so these problems extend generations down the line. We see that already in sub-cultures.
2. Women tend to be the loser of alternatives to monogamy. The biggest predictor of poverty for women, for example, is divorce.
3. Uncle Sam is the loser (shells out more $ welfare-wise for eventual broken families...for example those who live together first have a much higher divorce rate).
LOL
If you are determined that there was a conspiracy to keep that old lefty from being vice-president then believe away.
Arizona, Texas, and Canada, the FBI, and Utah itself are all in a conspiracy against a liberal one term governor of Massachusetts.
On the contrary, if you wanted someone to make a false report, the best way to find someone would be to look for a person that had already done so. My first thought was, how does a person on probation for filing a false report and additional pending charges become a delegate to the Democrat Convention? She works at an Insurance company. Who paid her $20,000.00 bail? She rents an apartment and probably does not have anything of value to put up as collateral against a loan. This just does not pass the smell test to me.
Your last paragraph about illegally paying below minimum wage to underage boys working construction and operating equipment they are not legally allowed to, leaves me cold. If a young man, of his own volition, can do a job well enough to be paid for his effort he should be. Furthermore, the minimum wage is just a Socialist device intended to thwart industry and should be abolished.
Abe's famous response was to compare the polygamous Mormons to a large tree that had fallen in a field. Too tough to chop and too large to move, you would plow around it for a while and let it rot.
After the Civil War, the US government put an end to the illegal LDS theocracy in Utah.
About 40 years passed after the end of the Civil War before the Feds were able to convince the LDS Church (through brute force) to officially end polygamy.
You mean Warren Jeffs the prophet?
Balderdash! I know you are not that obtuse. I am saying the conspiracy would be to attempt to assure a Democrat win by fouling the Republican candidate.
I have no dog in the Romney hunt. I never trusted him and never will but his religious affiliation should not be allowed to be exploited by Democraps to gain the White House.
No. I thought that you were one of the many here that think that this is an anti-Mormon, anti-Romney conspiracy, but that doesn't matter your conspiracy is just as goofy, maybe even a touch more.
I really don't think that Texas, Utah, Arizona and British Columbia, and Bush's FBI are in a grand conspiracy of this magnitude to put Obama into the White House.
Like Freud said, sometimes the law goes after child rapists, just because they are raping children.
LOL. (How Appropo...and insightful on Abe's part. He always was forthright honest Abe). Thanks for sharing.
Ok I am confused, wideawake says LDS allows abortion for deformed babies, you called him a liar then said LDS allow abortions when “A competent physician determines that the fetus has severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.”
Ok so why is wideawake a liar?
I had not heard of that. You mean all of the women at that compound were on Welfare!? /s
Gosh, I never imagined. I always heard that the LDS, and I would assume the fLDS, always take care of their own.
The WHOLE truth.
The clear implication by wideawake was that the LDS abort babies willy nilly if the parents find out the child will be born deformed—meaning what? Down’s syndrome? Cleft palate? Mentally retarded? Severely autistic? Missing limbs? Conjoined twins? If you don’t like what your baby’s going to come out looking like, go ahead and kill him.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As I posted, in medical cases, an abortion MAY be considered:
* IF you have a COMPETENT physician,
* and IF that competent physician determines that the baby WILL NOT SURVIVE BIRTH
That’s a far cry from simply saying, “LDS doctrine allows abortion for deformed babies.” It’s such a gross oversimplification and distortion of our true views and beliefs, that is is false and misleading. Probably only 0.0002% of prenatal children with birth defects would fall into such a category.
It’s as if I said, “Catholic doctrine allows mothers to let their children die in the womb without trying to save them.”
Technically, that is true...but only in such an infinitesimally minute number of circumstances, that I would be rightly accused of lying about the Catholic position if I broadbrushed their beliefs in that way.
Don't conflate the two. Just because one group has certain characteristics does not mean the other group will have the same traits. We are completely separate churches.
What percentage of someone's life and liberties must be stolen before it becomes "a matter of life and death"?
What percentage of your life and liberties are you willing to forfeit before you would consider yourself wronged?
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