(CNN) -- It took an extraordinary event -- the state's seizure of more than 400 children -- for the polygamist Mormon sect to open its gates to outsiders after decades of seclusion.
Velvet tells reporters last week how her child was taken from her at the FLDS ranch in Eldorado, Texas.
To parents, it's not a matter of mere custody, an expert explained. Their salvation is on the line.
Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have recently held news conferences, launched a Web site and allowed journalists into their formerly off-limits compound in Eldorado, Texas.
Previously, the Mormon offshoot's distrust for outsiders prompted members to close themselves off so their purity wasn't tainted and so their rituals and religion didn't draw scrutiny, experts say.
"Because of their history of persecution, they have what you'd call a paranoia complex," said Dr. W. John Walsh, a Mormon studies expert who testified on behalf of FLDS parents during the custody battle. "They've never really reached out to outsiders."
FLDS attorney Rod Parker could not be reached for comment, but explained to KSTU-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, that his clients launched a Web site because society is essentially ignorant about the sect.
"Because no one knows anything about them -- they have no face, they have no voice, nothing -- a big part of it is to give a voice to these people," he said.
Texas authorities raided the Yearning for Zion ranch earlier this month after, they said, they received a report of child abuse. The girl who made the report hasn't been found, but child-welfare officials say they found evidence of child and sexual abuse. A judge concurred April 18, ruling to keep the children in state custody, at least temporarily.
The sect's sudden openness appears an attempt to reunite mothers and children. However, the stakes may be higher, said Walsh, who explained that FLDS members believe polygamy and ably caring for many children are essential to reaching the highest tier of heaven.
According to FLDS beliefs, you must be free from sin -- as with most Christian religions -- to get to heaven. Those deemed "wicked" go to hell until they atone for their sins, said Walsh, a mainstream Mormon doing post-doctorate studies at the University of St. Thomas-Houston in Texas.
Those who aren't deemed wicked go to the "spirit world" to await the final judgment that dictates in which of the three levels of heaven they will reside for eternity. Everyone will eventually go to one level of heaven, Walsh explained, but to ascend to the highest tier, you must first learn certain lessons -- how to be a good parent and spouse among them.
"To really enjoy heaven, you have to be married and you have to have your kids with you," Walsh said. "Everything experienced on Earth will be in its more perfected form in heaven."
If you haven't learned the lessons you needed to learn on Earth, "you would have to learn these lessons in the spirit world" before entering heaven, he said.
If your children are taken away, you may have to learn how to be a good parent in the spirit world, thereby postponing your passage to heaven, Walsh said.
In short, the parents are willing to sacrifice their secrecy in exchange for the children -- a level of desperation that Walsh believes Texas authorities could tap to reach an "amenable" compromise.
But don't mistake FLDS openness for candor, said Marci Hamilton, a professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law who has studied polygamist sects for 10 years.
The FLDS is only as open as it needs to be. Everything church members offer -- the news conferences, the interviews, the tours of the YFZ compound, even the Web site's name -- has been scripted to elicit sympathy, she said.
The sect's Web site, http://www.captivefldschildren.org, is rife with photos and videos of crying women and children, one boy looking fearfully into the camera during the raid, declaring, "I don't want to go."
The site also includes a timeline with subject lines such as "officers force their way into homes," "sacred site desecrated," "children's innocence threatened" and "mothers and children torn apart."
Other than a link to a PayPal page where visitors can send donations, there is no way to contact the FLDS. The Web site itself is anonymously registered in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and attempts to reach the owner via e-mail were fruitless.
As for the interviews, "the FLDS has been good at getting hand-picked wives on the airwaves," Hamilton said.
The women, she said, are sending the same message: The church and its compound offer followers a "wonderful lifestyle," and the mothers simply want to bring their children back before they are corrupted by outside influences.
"They always put the women up front because this is a very oppressive patriarchy, and the men are not sympathetic characters," said Hamilton, the author of "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children."
"They want to persuade Americans that they don't need to worry about things and that this is a nice, little religious community and they take care of everyone," Hamilton added. "It's intended to sway the public, and if the public gets swayed, it puts pressure on the prosecutors."
The women also repeatedly say the search warrant served at YFZ ranch was based on a bogus report, which leads Hamilton to believe the church's "legal representatives are using the airwaves as much as they can to put up a very weak case on due process."
Walsh said he believes sect members realize, "If you want the best chance to get your kids back, public opinion will matter."
In his interview with KSTU, attorney Parker described his clients as "terrified." Church members are Internet "savvy" and watch television, so they understand what can happen to a religious group that walls itself off, he said.
"They know about Waco. They thought they were going to be victims of the same kind of thing," Parker said, invoking the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Texas that killed 74 people, many of them children.
Comparisons to the Waco raid -- an event generally ill-received by the American public -- is another tactic to elicit emotion, Hamilton said.
"They are trying to forestall the inevitable argument that there is a conspiracy of abuse that all the women are involved in," she said.
teen girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state officials said Monday. A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3½ weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Of those girls, 31 either have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. Two are pregnant now, CPS officials have said in court; it was unclear whether either of those two already have children.
"It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said.
State officials took custody of all 463 children at the ranch controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, saying a pattern of teen girls forced into underage "spiritual" marriages and sex with much older men created an unsafe environment for the sect's children.
Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but none of these girls is believed to have a legal marriage under state law.
According to this article the women were aware of what was going on and condoning this practice and so are as guilty as the men in abusing the children. Everyday the children are playing more and talking more and the authorities are finding the much needed information that they need to prosecute the offenders of this sect.
Apr 29, 8:19 PM EDT FLDS teen gives birth to boy as state officials stand by By MICHELLE ROBERTS Associated Press Writer
SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) -- One of the hundreds of young polygamist-sect members taken into state custody gave birth Tuesday to a healthy boy while child welfare officials, state troopers and fellow sect members stood watch outside the maternity ward.
"The boy is healthy and the mother is doing well," Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the state Child Protective Services, said of the noontime birth at Central Texas Medical Center.
The mother is "younger than 18," Crimmins said, and will remain with her new son in a nearby foster-care facility until a formal custody hearing will determine the pair's fate sometime before June 5. Crimmins declined to give any other details about the girl or where she and the baby would stay.
The girl's mother was present for the birth, but Crimmins said he didn't know who alerted her that her daughter was in labor.
Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon sect, contends the girl is 18. State officials have the girl on a list of minors taken into state custody.
Two armed state troopers and at least one person wearing the shirt of a Department of Family and Protective Services worker stood outside the maternity ward. A woman wearing the FLDS's trademark pastel prairie dress and upswept braided hair sat calmly in the nearby waiting room. All declined to comment, as did a woman who said she was the girl's attorney.
State officials raided the FLDS's Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado on April 3. They took custody of 463 children on the belief that the sect's practice of underage and polygamous spiritual marriages endangered the children.
A number of girls first listed as adults were reclassified as minors as Child Protective Services, a division of Family and Protective Services, moved the children last week from a mass shelter in San Angelo to foster care facilities around the state, including some near San Marcos, in central Texas.
CPS spokesman Darrell Azar said he was unaware that an FLDS teen had gone into labor, but added that typically, a child born to a ward of the state becomes a ward of the state also.
Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said she was unaware of troopers' involvement at the maternity ward, but said CPS often asks uniformed law enforcement to escort child welfare workers when needed.
On Monday, CPS announced that almost 60 percent of the underage girls living on the Eldorado ranch either have children or are pregnant.
Of the 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who are in state custody, 31 either have given birth or are expecting, Azar said.
Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but none of these girls is believed to have a legal marriage under state law.
Church officials have denied that any children were abused at the ranch and say the state's actions are a form of religious persecution. They also dispute the count of teen mothers, saying at least some are likely adults.
All the children are supposed to get individual hearings before June 5 to help determine if they'll stay in state custody or if their parents may be able to take steps to regain custody. The first hearings have been set for May 19.
No one has been charged since the raid, which was prompted by a series of calls to a domestic abuse hot line, purportedly from a 16-year-old girl forced into a marriage recognized only by the sect with a man three times her age. That girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the call was a hoax.
Of the 463 children, 250 are girls and 213 are boys. Children 13 and younger are about evenly split - 197 girls and 196 boys - but there are only 17 boys aged 14 to 17 compared with the 53 girls in that age range.
The sect, which broke from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more than a century ago, believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is revered as a prophet. Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage with an older cousin and awaits trial on related charges in Arizona.
Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but none of these girls is believed to have a legal marriage under state law.
I bet they could get a job in the strip clubs.....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha......
What would they be called in NYS when having sex at 17 with an 18year old????? NYS doesn't have a legal marriage at 16 except to welfare and DSS......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
April 30, 2008, 12:28AM Teen from polygamist sect gives birth to a boy
By TERRI LANGFORD and LISA SANDBERG Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News
One of the teenage mothers taken from a polygamist group's compound earlier this month gave birth on Tuesday to a boy at a San Marcos hospital while state police stood guard outside the maternity ward.
The girl was taken to Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos, according to Rod Parker, spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Texas Child Protective Services confirmed that the girl gave birth to the boy at about noon.
"The boy is healthy and the mother is doing well," agency spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said. She added that the teen would remain in CPS custody together with her infant.
"In some instances, CPS will place a newborn with the mother in cases in which a pregnant teen is removed during an investigation of alleged sexual abuse. This ensures the safety of both mother and child," Meisner said.
Parker contends the girl is 18, but state officials have her on a list of the 463 minors seized three weeks ago from the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado in West Texas. The children were taken amid allegations that underage girls were being "spiritually" married to older men and sexually abused.
Meanwhile, Parker and attorneys for the some of the parents went on the offensive again Tuesday, disputing the state's contention that they have in custody 31 underage girls who are pregnant, have children or both.
"I don't have any confidence in that number at all," Parker said. "I think CPS is misleading the state to make it appear that the issue of underage mothers is more prevalent than it actually is because it helps them in their PR (public relations) campaign."
Parker said he could not rule out that underage sex occurred at the ranch, but he believed it was not commonplace. He said he knew of numerous instances in which CPS labeled adults minors, blatantly ignoring birth certificates.
"They decided by looking at people that they're minors rather than looking at birth certificates," he said.
On Monday, a spokesman for the state's Department of Family and Protective Services said 31 of the 53 girls taken from the ranch who were ages 14 to 17 had given birth, were pregnant, or both. Spokesman Darrell Azar said agency investigators used a variety of methods to conclude that the 31 females were sexually abused teens: interviews with the girls, information provided by their attorneys, caseworker observation, and documentation.
When birth certificates were provided, investigators could not always take them at face value; few were official, Azar said.
Azar said 26 of the 31 teens originally told authorities they were adults, then acknowledged they were minors.
Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, which is representing 48 of the sect's mothers, said the state gave adult moms a terrible choice: Tell the truth, or lose temporary custody of your children.
"CPS has said if you're a minor and had children, you'll be allowed to remain with them. So there's an incentive to go ahead and say, 'I'm a minor,' even when they're not," she said.
The FLDS is a breakaway Mormon sect which believes polygamy brings heavenly rewards.
On May 19, judges will began hearing the children's individual cases and determine whether CPS will continue to keep them in foster care.
It wasn't clear Tuesday where the new mom and her infant would be placed once they left the hospital. The girl's attorney, Natalie Malonis, said she could not offer any details.
"As far as her health is concerned, I can't comment," Malonis said. The girl has another child who is in CPS custody.
Texas officials looking at possible abuse among FLDS boys By APRIL CASTRO, Associated Press Writer
Texas child welfare authorities are looking at the possibility that young boys were sexually abused at a polygamist sect's ranch, a newly revealed angle of a massive investigation triggered by allegations that girls were forced into underage marriages and sex.
Carey Cockerell, the head of the state's Department of Family and Protective Services, told state lawmakers Wednesday his agency was investigating whether young boys were abused based on "discussions with the boys."
In a written report, the agency said interviews and journal entries suggested young boys may have been sexually abused, but didn't elaborate.
Cockerell also said 41 FLDS children had evidence of broken bones, some of whom are "very young."
He offered no details in his presentation to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. He went to the lieutenant governor's office immediately after his presentation and later sent out an aide to tell reporters he would not comment further.
Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the renegade Mormon sect that runs the ranch, reacted sharply to Cockerell's comments, saying the state was deliberately misleading the public to cover up its own errors in the case. A physician at the ranch who is also an FLDS member said most of the broken bones were from minor falls and that there is no pattern of abuse there.
Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Child Protective Services division, said the state was still investigating and Cockerell's comments were not meant to be an allegation of abuse.
"This is pretty early in this investigation, particularly given the number of children we've been interviewing," he said. "We are just looking into it."
The state took custody of all 463 children living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado after an April 3 raid that was prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hot line. One of those minors gave birth Tuesday to a boy who will remain with his mother in a group foster-care facility.
Before Wednesday's disclosure, the state had argued it should be allowed to keep the boys, not because they were abuse victims, but because they were being groomed to become adult perpetrators in the FLDS sect. Men in the sect take multiple wives, some of whom are allegedly minors.
The sweeping action in the custody case has raised concerns with civil liberties groups. Individual custody hearings are scheduled to be completed by June 5, but in the meantime, all the children are in foster facilities scattered around the state.
Cockerell spoke at a state Senate briefing on foster care that had been planned before the raid, but most of his testimony focused on the sect.
With regard to Cockerell's comments on broken bones, a briefing issued after his testimony said, "We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we'll continue to examine."
FLDS spokesman Rod Parker called Cockerell's testimony "a deliberate effort to mislead the public" and said state officials were "trying to politically inoculate themselves from the consequences of this horrible tragedy."
"This is just an attempt to malign these people," he said.
Lloyd Barlow, the ranch's onsite physician, said he was caring for a number of FLDS children with broken or fractured bones at the time they were removed from the ranch. He said he has referred a number of families to emergency rooms in nearby San Angelo and to orthopedic specialists.
"Probably over 90 percent of the injuries are forearm fractures from ground-level or low level falls," Barlow told The Associated Press from his office at the Eldorado ranch. "I can also tell you that we don't live in a community where there is a pattern of abuse."
Barlow said he is an FLDS member but also a licensed physician in Texas and Utah and is required by law to report suspected abuse.
"What they are saying is that in the history of the lives of 400 some-odd children, there have been injuries. They are not saying they have 41 fractures," he said.
No reports of abuse were made to authorities in Schleicher County before the abuse hot line calls in late March that led to the raid. Those calls were purportedly made by a 16-year-old girl, but authorities are investigating whether they were a hoax.
Another FLDS member, Willie Jessop, said a 7-year-old girl broke her arm while staying in protective services custody at the San Angelo Coliseum in the days after the raid.
"We don't know how it happened. She was taken to the hospital and last we knew it was still in a splint waiting to be set," he told the AP from the ranch.
Cockerell told lawmakers the investigation has been difficult because members of the church have refused to cooperate. Parents coached children not to answer questions and children — even breast-feeding infants — were switched around to different mothers in what Cockerell called a coordinated effort to deceive.
The state has said that nearly 60 percent of the 14- to 17-year-old girls in custody from the ranch are pregnant or already have children. Many refused to take pregnancy tests, the agency said Wednesday.
Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but the sect's girls are not believed to have legal marriages.
Church officials have denied any children were abused at the ranch and say the state's actions are a form of religious persecution. They also dispute the count of teen mothers, saying at least some are likely adults.
Warren Jeffs, the sect's leader who is revered as a prophet, is in prison for a Utah conviction of being an accomplice to rape in arranging a marriage of a 14-year-old follower to her 19-year-old cousin.
___
Roberts reported from San Antonio and Castro reported from Austin. Associated Press Writer Jennifer Dobner contributed from Salt Lake City.
Texas officials check for abuse among sect’s young boys The Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO — Texas child welfare authorities are looking at the possibility that young boys were sexually abused at a polygamist sect’s ranch, a newly revealed angle of a massive investigation triggered by allegations that girls were forced into underage marriages and sex. Carey Cockerell, the head of the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, told state lawmakers Wednesday his agency was investigating whether young boys were abused based on “discussions with the boys.” In a written report, the agency said interviews and journal entries suggested young boys may have been sexually abused, but didn’t elaborate. Cockerell also said 41 FLDS children had evidence of broken bones, some of whom are “very young.” He offered no details in his presentation to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. He went to the lieutenant governor’s office immediately after his presentation and later sent out an aide to tell reporters he would not comment further. Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the renegade Mormon sect that runs the ranch, reacted sharply to Cockerell’s comments, saying the state was deliberately misleading the public to cover up its own errors in the case. A physician at the ranch who is also an FLDS member said most of the broken bones were from minor falls and that there is no pattern of abuse there. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Child Protective Services division, said the state was still investigating and Cockerell’s comments were not meant to be an allegation of abuse. “This is pretty early in this investigation, particularly given the number of children we’ve been interviewing,” he said. “We are just looking into it.” The state took custody of all 463 children living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado after an April 3 raid that was prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hot line. One of those minors gave birth Tuesday to a boy who will remain with his mother in a group fostercare facility. Before Wednesday’s disclosure, the state had argued it should be allowed to keep the boys, not because they were abuse victims, but because they were being groomed to become adult perpetrators in the FLDS sect. Men in the sect take multiple wives, some of whom are allegedly minors. The sweeping action in the custody case has raised concerns with civil liberties groups. Individual custody hearings are scheduled to be completed by June 5, but in the meantime, all the children are in foster facilities scattered around the state. Cockerell spoke at a state Senate briefing on foster care that had been planned before the raid, but most of his testimony focused on the sect. With regard to Cockerell’s comments on broken bones, a briefi ng issued after his testimony said, “We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we’ll continue to examine.” FLDS spokesman Rod Parker called Cockerell’s testimony “a deliberate effort to mislead the public” and said state officials were “trying to politically inoculate themselves from the consequences of this horrible tragedy.” “This is just an attempt to malign these people,” he said. Lloyd Barlow, the ranch’s onsite physician, said he was caring for a number of FLDS children with broken or fractured bones at the time they were removed from the ranch. He said he has referred a number of families to emergency rooms in nearby San Angelo and to orthopedic specialists. “Probably over 90 percent of the injuries are forearm fractures from ground-level or low level falls,” Barlow told The Associated Press from his office at the Eldorado ranch. “I can also tell you that we don’t live in a community where there is a pattern of abuse.” Barlow said he is an FLDS member but also a licensed physician in Texas and Utah and is required by law to report suspected abuse. “What they are saying is that in the history of the lives of 400 some-odd children, there have been injuries. They are not saying they have 41 fractures,” he said. No reports of abuse were made to authorities in Schleicher County before the abuse hot line calls in late March that led to the raid. Those calls were purportedly made by a 16-year-old girl, but authorities are investigating whether they were a hoax. Another FLDS member, Willie Jessop, said a 7-year-old girl broke her arm while staying in protective services custody at the San Angelo Coliseum in the days after the raid. “We don’t know how it happened. She was taken to the hospital and last we knew it was still in a splint waiting to be set,” he told the AP from the ranch. Cockerell told lawmakers the investigation has been difficult because members of the church have refused to cooperate. Parents coached children not to answer questions and children — even breast-feeding infants — were switched around to different mothers in what Cockerell called a coordinated effort to deceive. The state has said that nearly 60 percent of the 14- to 17-year-old girls in custody from the ranch are pregnant or already have children. Many refused to take pregnancy tests, the agency said Wednesday. Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but the sect’s girls are not believed to have legal marriages. Church officials have denied any children were abused at the ranch and say the state’s actions are a form of religious persecution. They also dispute the count of teen mothers, saying at least some are likely adults. Warren Jeffs, the sect’s leader who is revered as a prophet, is in prison for a Utah conviction of being an accomplice to rape in arranging a marriage of a 14-year-old follower to her 19-year-old cousin.
SAN ANTONIO — Handscrawled records taken from a polygamist sect are helping untangle the spider-web network of family relationships at the Yearning For Zion ranch, where some husbands had more than a dozen wives. The church records offer a peek into an intricate culture in which men related to the sect’s prophet, Warren Jeffs, enjoyed favored-husband status in the distribution of wives and all young women were married by 24. An Associated Press analysis of the records, which authorities seized in a raid last month, show that by the time a girl reached 16, she was more likely to be married than to live as a child in her father’s household. The same was not true for boys. Ben Bistline, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who was raised in the sect, said Jeffs or other church leaders decided who got married and when. Jeffs is imprisoned on an accomplice-to-rape charge in Utah. “It’s just at the whim of the leader,” said Bistline, who said successful businessmen who donate heavily to the sect or who are close to the prophet are generally favored. “There’s a lot of nepotism involved.”
“It’s just at the whim of the leader,” said Bistline, who said successful businessmen who donate heavily to the sect or who are close to the prophet are generally favored. “There’s a lot of nepotism involved.”
who will siege the government's compounds???? especially in NYS......the sect should just move up here,,,,,they would be welcomed with open arms....especially by the 'specialized' call girl 'companies'----geez.....the penis strikes again.....
maybe they are the "Friends of the Union Street Bed and Breakfast"??????
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
False child abuse claims must be investigated BY DANIEL T. WEAVER For The Sunday Gazette
The removal of more than 400 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound in Texas made front-page news for several days in April. However, a follow-up Associated Press story revealing that the phone call that initiated the raid was a hoax got short shrift. Rozita Swinton, who has been arrested and charged with misdemeanors more than once for making false phone calls about child abuse, has been questioned by Texas Rangers and may be the person who made the phone call. Few people are ever arrested for filing false child abuse reports, even though it is a crime. In New York state, it is a class A misdemeanor (Penal Code Subdivision 3, subsection 240.50). I am a news junkie, perusing several newspapers and blogs each day as well as monitoring many talk shows, and I have only heard of one person ever getting arrested for making a false report of child abuse. That was a Glens Falls resident, already on probation for another crime. One reason why few people are arrested for making false claims of child abuse is that those in authority just don’t take the problem seriously enough. They don’t even take it seriously when one man has had 12 false reports filed against him, apparently all by the same person. LOCAL CASE A few weeks ago, I listened with incredulity as Al Roney of WGY interviewed Keith Ferguson of Valley Falls in Rensselaer County. Ferguson has been investigated 12 times in the past two years by the county’s Child Protective Services unit following reports that he had sexually abused his children. None of the investigations have turned up any abuse, and it’s quite obvious that the anonymous phone calls to the child abuse hotline are stemming from one individual who, for whatever reason, has a vendetta against Ferguson. The calls and resulting investigations have, as one can imagine, disrupted Ferguson’s life. He has cooperated with Child Protective Services, even though he is not required to, and even took his daughter for a gynecological exam to prove that she had not been sexually abused. My incredulity when listening to Ferguson on the radio was not because someone had made 12 malicious phone calls to the state’s child abuse hotline. I have lived long enough to know that there are people evil enough to do such things. My incredulity was the result of the complacent attitude that the police, the Rensselaer County Department of Social Services and the Rensselaer County DA’s office seem to have taken toward Ferguson’s troubles. Their attitude has been one of “we are sorry for your problems, Mr. Ferguson, but there is nothing we can do to help you because the calls have been anonymous.” I don’t buy it. Twelve crimes have been committed against Mr. Ferguson. He is a crime victim who is not getting the attention he deserves from the prosecutor’s office in Rensselaer County. DA’S RESPONSIBILITY According to New York state law, it is the district attorney’s responsibility to investigate and prosecute cases where false reports of child abuse are made. Claiming that the calls were anonymous is no excuse for failing to investigate. I have no doubt that if 12 anonymous, harassing phone calls were made to Rensselaer County DA Richard McNally or some other county offi cial, all originating from the same person, an investigation would be initiated in a hurry and the culprit found. The 12 crimes committed against Mr. Ferguson are Class A misdemeanors but may also violate other laws, such as aggravated harassment or falsely reporting an incident in the second degree, a Class E Felony, punishable by prison. A person so full of hate and so intent on destroying another person that he or she phones in 12 false reports of child abuse is a menace to society, and in my opinion is capable of other more serious crimes. To not locate, investigate and prosecute such a person is a grave failure on the part of those agencies which are supposed to protect the public from dangerous individuals. The failure to investigate also means that the very agencies which are supposed to protect children from child abuse are themselves abusing children. Do the Rensselaer County Child Protective Services and DA’s office think that the continual investigation of Mr. Ferguson and his children, asking the children questions about sexual abuse, the arrival of police cars at their home (on one occasion three of them) and the unnecessary physical examination of a child have no negative effect on children? WASTE OF MONEY And there is one other reason why these crimes against Mr. Ferguson and his children should be investigated and prosecuted. The anonymous calls are wasting valuable police and social services resources, as well as the taxpayer’s money. While Rozita Swinton has not been arrested yet for the call involving the FLDS raid in Texas, she was arrested on April 16 for another false report she made in Colorado. If the police and prosecutors in other states can track down and prosecute people making false reports of child abuse, then police and prosecutors in New York state can do the same.
My baby's daddy is my sister's baby's daddy too....we was in line and found out that my neighbor also had my baby's daddy's baby.....go figure----I'd like to see the States welfare role and who's who's baby's daddy......
There doesn't need to be a compound built to make it 'legal' or 'ok'--------
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Mystery Surrounds Polygamist Sect's Finances Thursday , May 15, 2008
ELDORADO, Texas —
In just five years, the West Texas polygamist sect transformed 1,700 acres of scrubland purchased for $700,000 into a bustling ranch with a blazing-white limestone temple, sprawling three-story log cabins, woodworking shops and a dairy. Assessed value of the property now: $20.5 million.
How did members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints do it?
Sweat equity was clearly one factor. The men quarried limestone themselves from the hard ground and built the enormous homes with their own hands, using skills learned at construction companies close to the sect's main base of operations, on the Arizona-Utah line.
But as for where they got the money for building materials, dump trucks, rock-cutting equipment and other supplies, that is still something of a mystery.
"Who funded it? We're investigating. That's for dang sure," said Jeff Shields, a court-appointed lawyer studying the sect's finances.
Some suspect the FLDS supplied money to Eldorado from a $114 million trust fund that once included all the homes and land in the side-by-side FLDS towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Money may also have come from construction businesses and other ventures run by sect members, including an aircraft wheel and brake manufacturer in Nevada that holds a $1.2 million Pentagon contract, and an engineering firm that landed $11.3 million in work from Las Vegas water authorities.
Questions about the source of the sect's money have been swirling around the FLDS since Texas authorities raided their Yearning for Zion ranch last month and seized more than 460 youngsters because of evidence that the sect has been marrying off underage girls to older men.
The renegade Mormon splinter group bought the property for $412 an acre in 2003 and rapidly turned it into a self-contained home for roughly 700 people, with rows of planted vegetables and other farming enterprises, a dairy that produces milk and cheese, and shops for cabinetmaking and other woodworking — all to supply the ranch, not to turn a profit on the outside.
Enormous homes went up in a matter of weeks, and when the temple was built, at least 200 men swarmed to the property to cut rock from the soil and assemble the gleaming 80-foot house of worship, said J.D. Doyle, a pilot who has taken hundreds of photos of the ranch's development from his small plane. With the natural clay soil useless for farming, sect members brought in black dirt to grow vegetables.
"They worked around the clock. They can put up a 21,000-square-foot house in 2 1/2 weeks. Move in and have it perfect," Doyle said. "It was amazing to us to watch them do this."
The sect paid $424,000 in property taxes last year, or about 18 percent of Schleicher County's annual revenue. It is the third-biggest taxpayer in the county, behind two pieces of land that produce oil. Although FLDS is a church, it never sought tax-exempt status in Texas or in other Southwest states in which it operates.
Judge Johnny Griffin, the county's chief executive, said that as far as he knows, ranch residents paid their tax bill on time and without complaint.
FLDS spokesman and attorney Rod Parker said he doesn't know how the ranch and equipment were purchased or why the insular group never sought tax-exempt status.
The four men listed on Yearning for Zion corporate documents have no listed phone numbers in Texas, and the numbers for the Utah businesses controlled by David S. Allred, the member who scoped out the property first, have been disconnected.
Court-appointed accountants are trying to figure out if some of the money came from a trust fund now under government control.
The trust, set up in the 1940s, covered essentially everything in Hildale and Colorado City. In 2005, however, a Utah judge appointed an accountant to dissolve the trust after state attorneys argued that the sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, and other leaders were using the assets for their own benefit.
Jeffs was arrested in 2006 and is serving up to life in prison after being convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to an older man.
Shields, an attorney on the trust case, said there has never been a full accounting of the trust assets because church leaders refused to turn over documents or answer questions. Even the identities of the trustees are a mystery; more than half are listed as "unnamed" in court documents.
The court-appointed lawyers overseeing the trust have subpoenaed any financial records state troopers may have seized in the April 3 raid on the Texas ranch.
"We have good cause to believe there's something relevant to what we're doing up here," Shields said.
Parker called such links "fantasies" and denied any trust money was used to fund the ranch.
The sect has other sources of money beyond the trust. Former members and experts on the sect say it encourages members to sign over any earnings from outside jobs to church leaders. In return, the church gives followers housing, clothes and food.
Within FLDS, "nobody owns anything. Everything is owned by the prophet, even your dress. You don't own the dress. You're allowed that article of clothing based on his mercy," said former member Carolyn Jessop, who lived in Hildale.
The outside ventures include New Era Manufacturing, an aircraft parts maker and defense contractor whose chief executive has been identified as an FLDS leader and close associate of Jeffs.
SAN ANTONIO — The more than 400 children, from newborns to teens, forced from a polygamist sect’s sprawling ranch during a raid six weeks ago and into foster care have been treated as a single group of abused and at-risk kids. Starting today, judges will fi lter the unruly, chaotic custody dispute into hundreds of individual cases to determine what the parents must do to get their children back or whether their parental rights will be permanently severed. This is standard operating procedure for family court, but these are hardly standard cases. First, these families are comprised of at least 168 mothers and 69 fathers, reflecting the polygamy in the renegade Mormon sect. And even as the hearings begin, the state hasn’t matched more than 100 of the children with mothers. The first of court-ordered DNA test results won’t be back for two to four weeks. Also, two dozen of the children may actually be adults; authorities are still trying to sort out whether nearly half the teen girls they’ve had in foster care facilities are actually adults. Last week, they conceded two women who gave birth since the raid are actually 18 and 22.
Parents from polygamist sect decry court’s vague custody plans The Associated Press
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Children from a polygamist sect were the only subjects on the docket Monday at a west Texas courthouse where five judges began handling hundreds of hearings that attorneys for the children’s parents decried for their cookie-cutter approach. State child welfare officials gave each of the more than 460 children in state custody the same template plan for parents to follow, and judges made few changes. But parents remained without answers to important questions, including whether a requirement that the children live in a “safe” environment means they can’t return to the Yearning For Zion Ranch. Donna Guion, an attorney for the mother of a 6-year-old son of the sect’s jailed prophet, Warren Jeffs, complained the plans were so vague they would be impossible to satisfy and were contingent on psychological evaluations likely to take weeks more to complete. “This plan is so vague and so broad that my client has no idea what she can do now,” Guion said of the boy’s mother. Dozens of mothers in prairie dresses and fathers in button-down shirts, flanked by pro bono lawyers from the state’s most prestigious firms as well as Legal Aid, arrived at the Tom Green County courthouse hoping to learn what exactly they must to do regain custody of their children. “What the parents are trying to find out here is what they need to do to get their children back, and there’s no clear answer to that,” said Rod Parker, spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which runs the ranch in Eldorado. The hearings in nearby San Angelo are scheduled to run for the next three weeks, and none of the judges would humor any discussion about whether the initial grounds for removing the children in a raid of the ranch last month were valid. It probably will be months before the cases are reviewed again in court. Texas child welfare authorities argued that all the children, ranging from newborns to teenagers, should be removed from the ranch because the sect pushes underage girls into marriage and sex and encourages boys to become future perpetrators. Church members insist there was no abuse. They say the onesize-fits-all action plan devised by the state’s Child Protective Services doesn’t take into account specifi c marriage arrangements or living circumstances. Some members of the renegade Mormon sect lived in a communal setting in large log houses they built themselves. Others lived as traditional nuclear families in their own housing on the YFZ ranch. CPS spokeswoman Shari Pulliam said the plans look similar now but will be customized as officials get more information. “It’s logical they all look the same. All the children were removed from the same address at the same time for the same reason,” she said. But “it’s an evolving plan.” All the plans call for parenting classes, vocational training for the parents and require the parents to prove they can support their children. They also call for safe living environments, though they offer no specifics. The parents will be required to outline their plans for earning a living and to describe for the state their living arrangements. The plan does not require parents to renounce polygamy or guarantee that their daughters won’t be married before the age of consent, which in Texas is 17.
Faith used as excuse for abuse First published: Thursday, May 15, 2008
During the Vietnam War, a phrase came to symbolize the misbegotten adventure: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." It was said at first with sincerity, then repeated with irony and, finally, with despair. I have heard similar thoughts in the weeks since Texas authorities invaded a ranch in Eldorado and rounded up hundreds of children from the polygamous sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Did they traumatize the children to protect them? Did they shatter their lives to rescue them?
The invasion came after a tip from a 16-year-old who called herself a victim of sexual abuse. The tip may turn out to be a hoax, but the practices of the sect are well-known.
In the world of the FLDS, "spiritual marriage" between older men and underage girls -- what the law defines as rape -- is given the stamp of religious approval. Of 53 girls believed to be between 14 and 17, more than 30 have children or are pregnant, including one who gave birth to her second child in custody. Among the boys, too, there is suspicion of widespread physical abuse. Indeed, many teenage boys are routinely banished to preserve the odds of polygamy.
Nevertheless, the story of children taken from parents, of families wrenched apart, has produced enormous concern and worry in the past weeks. Is this a rescue operation? Should the state enforce a set of values or tolerate "alternative lifestyles" and religions?
FACTS:These questions say something about our own cultural moment. Who, after all, doesn't do a double take when hearing that these "endangered children" were never exposed to the Internet or television or processed food? The girls in their prairie dresses who are raised for assigned men have never text-messaged or seen "Hannah Montana." The children's requests for a bread-making machine and prayer time have led to some ironic comments about exactly which culture is protecting children. More to the point is the concern about separating children from parents. Every agency balances the risks of leaving children in a dangerous setting and the trauma of removing them. What's different about the FLDS case is that it was a wholesale roundup of all the children of a community.
This makes many, like Jane Spinak, a Columbia Law professor who has represented children in foster care, uneasy.
"We may not like their lifestyle," she says. "We may not condone the practice of multiple women living together with a man, but it's not for the court to decide lifestyles."
Spinak remembers when children were removed from biracial families, let alone gay families. "Lots of people live lives we don't think are good for their children, but we don't take the children away." Indeed, this citizen of New York archly reminds me that two governors have admitted multiple partners in the last months without having their children removed.
FACTS:Nevertheless, what do we make of an entire sect that has sexual abuse at its very heart? That believes plural "marriages" between older men and underage women are a pathway to heaven? Nobody can prosecute the FLDS for what they believe, says Marci Hamilton, author of "God vs. the Gavel." "They can stay together and believe what they want into eternity. What they can't do is illegal action."
She compares their community to a crack house. "If you go into a drug den in a burnt-out row house and all the adults are drug addicts, how can you leave the children there?" Hamilton calls this sect a "conspiracy of adults to commit systematic child sex abuse."
I understand the ambivalence toward this dramatic story. The uprooting of distraught children from pained parents strikes a primal core. And we are aware that many state foster care systems are flawed enough to amount to a second kind of abuse. But surely the call to understand this sect as just another unique corner of multicultural America is relativism run amok.
Individual hearings will begin next week. I hope the children and mothers will tell the truth. I hope mothers will choose their children over obedience to their patriarchs.
But in the end, what we have on that ranch in Eldorado is not a lifestyle. It's a pedophile ring. If we cannot rescue children from that, we've already destroyed their village.
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
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