I know CPS has to do their job and I know these FLDS folks are messed up but...

to put 416 children into protective custody seems a bit harsh especially if the mothers are not the ones causing the abuse. Could they at least setup a halfway house somewhere maybe keep some of the mothers with the children.

I realize that polygamy is NOT a good thing and there is a shitload of abuse going on in these sects - but isn't that abuse mainly being done by the men who are marrying girls at a really young age and forcing boys out of the sect to keep the ratio of girls to men high?

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351272,00.html

Polygamist Sect Mothers Forced to Leave Their Children

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Texas officials who took 416 children from a polygamist retreat into state custody sent many of their mothers away, as a judge and lawyers struggled with a legal and logistical morass in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.

Of the 139 women who voluntarily left the compound with their children since an April 3 raid, only those with children 4 or younger were allowed to continue staying with them Monday, said Marissa Gonzales, spokewoman for the state Children's Protective Services agency. She did not know how many women stayed.

"It is not the normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made," she said.

The women were given a choice: Return to the Eldorado ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon sect, or go to another safe location. Some women chose the latter, Gonzales said.

On Monday night, about three dozen women, many of them mothers, sobbed and held onto each other outside a log cabin on the sect's ranch, recounting the way police officers encircled them in a room and told them that they could not stay.

One woman, Marie, said the women weren't allowed to say goodbye to their crying children.

She said the children at the ranch have not been abused, but she feels like "they are being abused from this experience." She said the children have been "have been so protected and loved."

Its a cult. If these kids stay under the influence of the cult members..they may continue to believe that the abuse they suffered is normal and acceptable. I'm surprised that somebody was able to break out of the brainwashing they undoubtedly suffered.
Do you think the mothers who accept this abusive behavior are better then the men because they don't want to mess with the way things are done? I don't. Its like the mother who knows a stepfather is abusing her child but because she is afraid of losing him, will NOT intervene out of fear of losing them.
I think, for these children to have any sort of chance to be able to be integrated into the outside society that these harsh measures are necessary.

The ones old enough to know better certainly are. Some are making the right choice though: going to the second safe location and not back to the ranch. I bet those moms will be far more likely to a) get their kids back and b) get out of the cult.

By condoning forced underage marriage and abuse, they are most certainly part of it.

I just feel bad for those kids and the hell they are going thru.

would go through in a few years, or less.

Eliminate the disgust that many of us have for this particular religion.....

Does every girl end up married at age 13? Does every man inside the compound engage in abusive acts? That's the mess we're dealing with. I'm not going to pass judgement on their religion - it's something we're free to practice. I realize that polygamy is illegal but I've never questioned what consenting ADULTS wish to do. There's a good chance that abuse was going on in this compound but I highly suspect it was a few people doing it and not all of them. But because of the nature of these compounds and our attitude towards this religion, we have to separate 416 kids away from their families and I'm suspecting what happens with a core group of people. I think you have the Warren Jeffs who are sick fucks that belong behind bars, but I highly doubt they are all like that.

are like these people, that's true. Many of them condem underage marriage, and encourage spouses to be similar ages.

However, from all we know about Jeffs' group, things like marrying 13 yo girls to 50 yo men is standard operating procedure. While not all the men directly abuse their brides (beating, choking), there is the indirect abuse of possibly getting a girl pregnant before she is physically able to safely carry and birth a child.

That's the group in Colorado/Arizona

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/04/texas.ranch/index.html

"Texas authorities are investigating "the safety of children" at a ranch occupied by about 400 followers of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, officials said Friday."

Well, his followers. Not sure if he actually spent any time there.

You say you believe abuse is going on but that it probably doesn't involve everyone. So what should be done? As I understand it, this is sort of a communal living situation so everyone is somewhat entangled. If the kids are left with their parents - or mothers - they may or may not be left with someone who is either committing or condoning the abuse.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to leave things in place while it is sorted out - for one thing, that would make it a lot easier for those who may be guilty to press the others to support some alibi.

The first concern has to be the welfare of the kids and leaving them in a situation that is potentially abusive seems worse than having them undergo what is certainly a confusing and upsetting experience.

I just don't understand what you see as an alternative.

that's all

I just wonder what will happen if they all just go back to the compound and their lives go back to "normal". How many generations of kids will be exposed to abuse and bondage with no awareness of an alternative way of life? I think the cycle has to end somewhere. Unfortunately, of course, it's the kids who suffer.

If people aren't married in churches, but officially with a marriage license, is it still considered illegal to marry off a young daughter to an older man? In some states, girls can get married at a very young age.

and possibly their fathers and this episode will indeed be a major deal to overcome in their life. It sounds to me that the authorities thought they had good reason to believe it was rampant, and not isolated. You doubt they are all like that. I tend to think most of them participated in this. In the end it doesn't matter what we think, and hopefully these cases will be considered rationally, legally, thoughtfully and all that.

Christian "home-schooling" where the kids don't learn actual FACTS or SKILLS, just the Bible?

Homes where two girls are expected to do all the cooking for a family of 20, as in the Dugger household?

Homes where the kids are raised to be screaming, lazy brats, because their parents never tell them "no?"

There are many bad ways to raise kids, and I think this cult was bad in more than one way...

And I think no matter how it was handled, it would be horrible for them. I think we always want things to happen in a way that has a happy ending but I think a lot of times, there isn't really a way to do that.

That woman on the GMA report was concerned about her 6 yr. old son, but how will that concern manifest itself when he's 14 or 15 and is seen as competition to her husband and the other old men in the community?

abuse to continue.

To be able to determine the behavior of a cult member by someone who isn’t a cult member, that is near impossible. Some situations are worse than others, for now, keep the children safe.

I read the post about how the father would hold a baby face up, while the baby was crying, under a running faucet. Held under the running water until the baby stopped crying. This was to break the child.

The women are also victims, but there really aren’t laws about cults, there are laws about abuse. Also, some of the women are culpable. Some may have been scared to leave and they have been purposely kept down, so they don’t believe they can take care of things themselves.

However, some of the older women, they have benefited from using the younger women. There is a cycle of abuse, an outside party is needed. Children want to be with their mothers, even if their mother is a stick of lit dynamite, a child wants their mom. In this case, the children need protection until some more light can be shed on this monstrous situation.

I do understand.
:cry: :hug:

Seems to me there is just cause to take these kids away until they sort it all out. Bottom line, if the children are being abused by one parent and the other parent does not enough to stop it, then they will be safer elsewhere.

the women with children over 5 were given the choice between going back to the compound or going to a women's shelter.

My guess is that those who went to the shelter, will get their kids back at the earliest opportunity. The ones who went back to the compound will have to fight harder to get theirs back, if they ever do, and will be required to leave the compound to do so.

This guess is based on a 21 year career in children's services.

CPS would have put them into the halfway houses and homes usually used in instances when the child is removed from the parents, but the sheer enormity and scale of this (upwards of 400 children) precludes this from happening in this instance.

TX CPS (and probably all states) are not equipped to deal with a sudden influx of hundreds of children needing protective custody, so a lot of quick-fix bandages and seat-of-your-pants solutions are being used. And that includes the temporary locations in San Angelo housing large numbers of children.

I'm friends with three of the caseworkers involved in this, and was a caseworker for CPS myself for a number of years in the nineties, and I guarantee you that the children are not being abused-- emotionally, physically or otherwise. It looks like CPS is the bogey-man in a lot of cases-- that is, until the facts come out in hearings. And those facts will be forthcoming.

The sheer scope of this is rather intimidating. At last count (yesterday mid-morning), over 300 lawyers were assigned to represent individual children on a pro-bono level.

Rest assured that the state workers, the professionals-- everyone involved in this is taking this seriously and making the well-being of the children a priority.

a bed set up by the altar where the marriages could be consummated immediately after the ceremony. Publically. That is, IMHO, almost an admission right there that they knew what they were doing was wrong if they had cimsummate the marriage ASAP.

Sick sick sick.

:shrug: