Texas Polygamist Compound Moms Speak
You know folks as opinionated a dude as I am this is one of those issues where I can’t get a real grip on what I feel should be done.
On the one hand, having the government raid these folks domain is not something I totally agree with, particularly if you read the little article below where the phone call that precipitated the initial raid is a little shaky.
On the other hand if you watch the interview, these women are mentally retarded. I’m not sure if you were to ask them what year it is they could tell you. The moms have the mindset of a child.
Is mental capacity grounds for taking away someone child? Now these women deny abuse, but we all know it happens, however there is this thing called burden of proof.
There are shit loads of examples of single mothers who seemingly have all of their marbles, but exhibit their own examples of retardation by doing things like smoking or drinking during and after pregnancy, poor relationship choices, exposing the child to physical abuse, mismanaging their own lives ect.
The government simply can’t rescue every child from retarded parents.
So what’s the answer?
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Texas defends separation of polygamist sect kids from moms
Officials say children are doing well away from parents
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Officials can’t make legal mistakes in polygamist case
Sphere: Related Content(link) The recent raid on the polygamist retreat in Texas has many legal implications.Authorities in Texas apparently had been watching the compound for at least four years but had no cause to do anything about the alleged activities going on inside. That changed, they say, when they got a frantic phone call from a girl allegedly inside the compound. The girl told police she had been forced to marry a 50-year-old man and had been raped.
That was the probable cause they needed, authorities say, to go in and raid the compound. What they found was a large group of mostly women and children and several young pregnant girls. The group is reportedly part of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints group.
The first legal question surrounds the alleged call and the true identity of the caller. She has yet to be located. Authorities likely are going to have to prove her existence in order to make any cases against the group stick.
Other legal concerns surround the separation of the young children from their mothers. Some women in the sect have said they were lied to about being separated from their children.
We expect there to be several legal challenges to this case. No matter how much outrage there is regarding polygamy and the idea of young girls being married off to older men, it’s important all aspects of the case follow the proper legal protocol.
FLDS practices polygamy in arranged marriages, sometimes between underage girls and older men. Over history, the group has been swept up in raids because of their lifestyle and their history.
This case will be another test for the age-old question of religious freedom versus exploitation of children.
For the children’s sake, authorities can’t afford for this case to fall apart because of any legal mistakes.
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April 16th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Oh, I don’t think these ladies are retarded. I think they’ve had their free will programmed out of them, and I think they’re scared shitless of saying the wrong thing. They were obviously trying very hard to stick with coached dialogue (’specially that lady there at the end) given them by their lawyer, and I’d bet money that at least two of them were stoned to the gills on benzodiazepam, not to mention the fact that they’ve lived very isolated, sheltered lives, and just speaking with a man not of their church has to be terrifying for them, even without the added pressure of trying to represent their community and lifestyle to a public who, in their eyes, not only doesn’t understand, but doesn’t *want* to understand, wants only to separate them from their children. I doubt I’d be terribly eloquent under those circumstances.
The issue of taking all children from the community, though, is one that is actually *less* complicated, in my mind, because they are CrazyLDS. With these communities, you’re not just dealing with the abuse of marrying off underaged girls to old pervs–there’s the flip side of that, which is the widespread abuse and abandonment of underaged boys. Think about it–you have a small, insular community under the absolute rule and authority of one man, or a very small group of men, a community that revolves around an ideal of family values and submission of the individual to the family. These men, and their cronies, snatch up all the hot young things as soon as they get their first visit from the Cardinal. When the boys come of age and start wanting wives of their own, they’re SOL because Mr. Righteous McHornyPants over there has married everything female under the age of 50 himself. A large population of unmarried, unanchored young men is a recipe for dissension and disaster. So they abuse them, as families and as a community, drive them out, and when they don’t run away of their own accord, drive them outside of town and abandon them. There are towns in Colorado that are overrun with uneducated teenaged boys with no survival skills who have been driven out of their homes and communities.
See, that’s the problem with polygamy–it works great for nomadic folks, but when you settle down and start building communities, numbers start screwing with the model.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
So, when the “compounds” of islam worshipers, like the ones springing up across the country are monitored and found to be in violation of whatever laws, will the authorities react as aggressively against them or will they be held up by the PC bullshit currently in place when we deal with “islam”?