“Yearning For Zion” Raid: Another Case Of Government Hysteria?
Now that 416 children are in the state’s custody, I put the question directly to a friend who is a child sex-abuse psychologist working feverishly on sorting through the mess in San Angelo, where the children and some of their mothers are being held. I asked if indeed there was probable cause for the raid, why did authorities remove all the children and not just pubescent girls in danger of being married, if such was the government’s complaint? She answers:
It is a politcal year. Their life was different but it is destroyed now. Still waiting for someone to explain it to me. If you were to compare the ratio of abused kids there to the rest of the world, you might laugh at the absurdity of our government.
I’m not laughing. Just the opposite. I believe these children are being held by the government because of the unpopularity of their parents. Polygamy, it is true, is illegal. But does it merit a court citation or a full-scale military assault? My bet is that when all comes to light, the State of Texas is going to pay dearly, perhaps not for the raid itself (whose complaintant has not been located, by the way) but for holding parents and children in a concentration camp detention center internment facility 19th-century fort when not one person has been charged with a crime. It looks to me to be plainly unconstitutional, even if it was sanctioned by some Amarillo state judge.
44 Comments to ““Yearning For Zion” Raid: Another Case Of Government Hysteria?”
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easy on the “concentration camp” there wick. you take your message, which is quite logical, and throw a term not in the remotest of remote ways applicable here and lose everything you gained. not to mention just plain making me angry.
If not a concentration camp then at least a gulag maybe? It must be as bad as a gulag, right? Our government is run by Nazis or Stalin’s thugs, right? And still they won’t round up readers of the FrontBurner; they are stupid not to realize that we are the fifth column.
One of the polygamy wives used the identical term last night in a CNN interview, so the charge is coming from the families as well.
Remember Waco!
I thought Polygamy was only part of it. What about the incest and pedophilia? I seriously doubt they are in a “concentration camp”, probably more like a KOA camp. Hey I’m all for less intervention from the government and freedom of religion too, but something has to be done when some greasy old man is marrying a 12 year old and wants to have the marriage consummated. “Big Love”…… this is not.
then they make me angry too. and it is not a “charge” made by the families. it is ignorance. ignorance that i would assume Wick Allison would be above.
I agree Jb, but you go after the greasy old men…not the mothers and kids.
True, but what if the mothers are complacent accessories to the pedophilia? Seems to me taking them all, observing them, maybe counseling the children, and investigating the mothers who allowed and assisted the greasy old man as one whole group would be a better alternative then seperating the children from the mothers. I guess its a damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
What’s frightening is the government “process” these kids are now entagled. Ever had a traffic ticket and dealt with a gov’t employee (…not my job…next window please)? Now imagine a govt employee who doesn’t want to get involved in the game of political hot potato.
from a social worker in the lake tahoe area specializing in children abuse:
“i completely disagree with that person’s opinion. of course they had a reasonable cause to raid - a minor called and described how she was beaten and raped by her 50 something year old husband, while somebody held her child to watch! they definitely should have removed all children, too since they were “grooming” those young boys into believing polygamy is right and they were better than girls and it will be o.k. for them to marry, beat and rape a minor once they come of age. no one deserves to live that way, - ya, it’s not pretty now, but they saved those lives, not destroyed them! that guy sounds like a conspiracy theorist and i have a really hard time believing his credentials.”
I do not agree with what that group in Eldorado believes in but I do believe that their rights have been violated. Namely the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 10th amendments.
It does have a holocaust type undertone to it if you look at it from a distance. Wholesale divison of family gropus based on religion. Take it for what it is worth.
Those children are being “held” because their parents were running a pedophilia factory wherein both the victims and the perpetrators are openly manufactured. Religion has nothing to with this.
Though I do believe she exists, I don’t think they’ll ever find the original complainant. That doesn’t matter much as it’s clear that the Rangers (the law enforcement types, not the little league team in Arlington) were acting in good faith when they obtained the search warrant.
If it were just one “normal” family and there was this type of complaint, isn’t it typical that all minors are removed from the home in question and put in some sort of protective or foster care until an investigation is made?
These people are not being treated any differently than a non-polygymists family, so the outrage at the State of Texas is disgusting. Better to err on the side of the children’s safety and ***** about the government if you ask me. That’s one crackpot child sex-abuse psychologist ya got there Wick. Just amazing.
Are we allowed to call the Refugees, like we did with Katrina?
Travis, George Orwell may have had you in mind when he wrote about government euphemisms. There have been other cases when we’ve tried to avoid the unpleasant associations of the words “concentration camp”: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/ma...../camps.htm
As for my correspondent not knowing what she’s talking about, she’s one of several right now interviewing the children — and has been since they were arrested. J. Paul, your point is well taken, but would they arrest every family in the neighborhood?
Wick made some good points, as did J Paul. I don’t think I would have gone so far as to use the term concentration camp. I think that’s a bit much, at least at this stage.
The more likely scenario from my read is that the gov’t had cause to investigate at least ONE case of possible abuse, figured out it was a ranch of polygamists, which is indeed illegal and let’s face it, unsavory to most, and decided to err on the far side of caution and remove ALL the children.
At the end of the day, I smell a big payout by the State of Texas for some possible trampling of civil rights or at least not wanting to take it on the chin in the media and agreeing to settle.
Why does this crazy crap always happen in Texas? It’s not because there’s lots of land. Must be something else.
Wick
I couldn’t agree with you more. The calls being made to the Governer’s office are 90 percent against this raid. The video of the Mothers is heartbreaking. We are quickly learning the original phone call was a prank.
And if CPS were to raid the home of every teenage girl in Texas that was pregnant, you would need a city to house them in.
There are some amazing legal groups that are pulling lawyers together as well as volunteer helpers. My partner and I are going down on Thursday.
Wick, I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but I appreciate your comments and influence you might have to get these kids back with their own families.
Everything so far is hearsay. Let the system work things out. The fact of the matter is these FLDS folks are certainly liars from the moment the arrived in Texas looking to buy a hunting lodge. Their Leader is in prison for 20 years, as an accessory to rape because he forced an underage girl to marry her cousin and make babies. Do your homework, don’t believe the FLDS hype machine. I have a healthy mistrust of the government, but believe we should use the full force of the state to shut the child rape baby making “gulag” at Eldorado. The mothers that allow this to happen to their children don’t deserve them!
p.s Judge Walther is in San Angelo, miles for Amarillo
Hold on a second here. We seem to all agree that the polygamists — both the men and the women — were practicing polygamy, which is illegal in Texas. Therefore, we were justified in removing the women, and we should have removed and arrested the men, too. The innocents here are the children, and I’m naive enough to believe that the people taking care of the children are acting in good faith and doing the best that they can.
The men and women should be in jails, not concentration camps. The children should be in foster homes.
I believe Wick is undoubtedly correct that this is all about one person’s (the ‘16 yr. old girl’) anonymous call and the hundreds of children are taken from their families because their parents are unpopular and they and the followers’ practices are (yes) suspect.
Déjà vu? Mindless carnage re: children/parents must be in the water in the Panhandle. Remember in the meat packing raids on the alleged illegals, the parents were hauled away to unknown worlds leaving the children waiting to be picked up at school. Children…many of them US citizens, became de facto orphans and I understand the whereabouts of the incarcerated parents remains in question.
Maybe we should relocate the unpopular Guantanamo to the panhandle. If it’s illegal, do anything you can to make the kids wards of the state, making ‘due process’ a conveyor belt to a rubber stamp to human rights violation..
Wick, they were saying that the adult women were taking/shuttling the children from one house to another during the “raid”, so I don’t think your “whole neighborhood” analogy works in this case. These people are a whole lot more than just neighbors. A bunch of “Sister-wives” and children that don’t even know their last name. What else could the State do but take them all in as they were basically at ONE address? Frankly, I think it was very nice of them to allow the adult mothers to go with them. Turns out that was a mistake and has hampered the investigation. Brainwashed vs. Evil Government. I’m rooting for the latter this time.
Concentration Camp? Gulag? Holocaust overtones?
As soon as they start the forced labor, gassing, and shooting them, I’ll start considering your argument. Until then, you are a pathetic, yellow journalist, fearmongerer. I mean that in the most sincere way.
Pedophilia (i.e. child rape) requires governmental intervention. When the crime in question is community wide, as it appears to be in this case, then the intervention must involve the entire community as well. Separating the children from their abusive parents is mandatory, and appropriate, if what we’ve heard so far is accurate.
The state’s system to cope with foster children is to send them to facilities like this until homes can be found, so these children aren’t being treated any differently than other children under similar circumstances would be. There just so happens to be a large group of them this time, so it provides an excuse for poor journalists to invoke Godwin’s Law at will.
If my husband or i were even suspected of abusing only 1 - but not all - of my children, i don’t believe CPS would leave the rest with me, would they?
Also - who was “arrested”? The moms who were sent home? The kids?
Please stop. Consider this. In this lifestyle mothers have no say over their children. The elders make and enforce all rules of conduct. Children have no voices at all. All females live in fear of their male relatives and all elders for they control their every waking moment. We now know of how a victim identifies with a perpetrator as it is all they know, so please stop. Take a little bit of your strength, your courage and your understanding to these women and children who have only the life they have known to act by. Let go of anger and selfrighteous indignation and do all that you can to bring peace to these who have lived in a prison not of their own making. Move so that they can find lives to live in peace and not in constant fear. Remember, no mother anywhere on this earth would consciously choose such a life for her daughter or son if she had the choice. These mothers have had no choice at all.
Jack–you say “We are quickly learning the original phone call was a prank.” What is the basis for this claim? I have seen nothing about a “prank” in any of the coverage.
The state has a duty to protect children from law-breaking (polygamist) men and women whom it suspects of child-rape, incest, and other abuse. The adults have constitutional rights, but so do the children. We have a court system to sort out this mess. Perhaps we should wait until we know the facts of these cases more fully before we make our judgments about what happened, and who is right and who is wrong.
Pam, invariably we trade freedoms for security. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the neighborhood or not. These women have exchanged what the women outside of the cult see as freedom for the security of community.
The men who’ve abused young girls need to be held accountable. This is also true of the women who aided the abuse. But as my wife and myself wondered last night, how many children are going to be in danger because the overtaxed CPS is distracted by this fiasco?
But one has to wonder where we got the right to tell others how to raise their children when it’s obvious the children are well cared for and loved.
Hell, here in north Texas a parent can be pulled over, discovered to operating a vehicle without insurance, given a ticket, and then sent on their way. This is with a carload of kids in the vehicle. If that isn’t irresponsible parenting and policing, heck, puts cultism to shame for ignorance.
Thank you, Pam!!!
We shouldn’t tolerate female oppression in any form: burka, FGM or patriarchal led cult BS like this.
This is misogyny plain and simple.
Let’s stipulate that if there was abuse or violation of statutory laws, any individual guilty of either should be punished.
What’s alarming — or should be anyway, I’m not that surprised — is people cheering the notion of the state busting up people living alternative lifestyles and breaking up religions that are different from the mainstream.
I, for one, am sick and tired of pedophiles and child abusers trying to hide behind the skirt of religion. Trey - the state did not “bust up people living an alternative lifestyle and break up a religion that was different than the mainstream.” The state removed children who were being, had been or were soon to be sexually abused.
The state of Texas says that a 12 or 13 year old girl does not have the mental competence to consent to sexual activites, and yet you seem to think it okay for a 52 year old pedophile to impregnant them and raise their children only to be the next wave of fresh meat for the sick bastards.
Government is not bad all the time, like many commentors seem to think. In this case, I applaud them for removing those children (note I said CHILDREN, because that’s exactly what they are) from a situation where they were being abused sexually, mentally and emotionally. I hope those sick, demented, so called “elders” of this sect are held accountable for their cowardly and ILLEGAL actions.
Alternative lifestyles?
Yeah, right… It’s called child-rape. If it turns out to be as wide spread through that community as it appears, then you will be the first so-called journalist to scream that the state should have done more to protect those kids. You’ll probably wonder, in writing, why it took the state so long to move in to protect those kids.
What you won’t do is apologize and admit that you were completely out of line here.
I just completed a book about a guy who grew up in various foster homes. While in most cases his care was adequate, he misssed that parent/child bond that we all have from birth to death. I am not a parent, however I am a son. It is heartbreaking to me that someone can remove 416 children from their family based on a, as of yet, unsubstaniated phone call.
Someone asked why I think the phone call was a prank. It is because with a case this huge, I would think the state of Texas would be putting every resource they have into finding this girl or the man she accused. The man accused seems to have a solid alibi.
Where is the girl? Where is the recording of these calls?
How easy would it be for any disgruntled person to make a call about your church?
Are we going to raid every home in Texas that has a teenage pregnant child? If your daughter gets pregnant, does that make the parents sexual child abusers?
The Pope admitted and said “I’m sorry” today for all the sexual abuse that has taken place in the Catholic organization. Is that enough for members of this church? A simple I’m sorry? Why aren’t we raiding every Catholic church?
Another issue, why are the teenage boys, who no one has claimed have been victims or predators being separated? Why are they being placed in a home with juvenile delinquents?
Last question, sexual child predators like to be around vulnerable children. Can we really trust the people that the State of Texas is surrounding these children with? What sort of background checks are they doing for the child caretakers? Being a member of The First Baptist Church does not immune one from being a sexual predator.
This is one situation where I really hope I am right because I can not fathom 416 children being sexually abused in one setting. Perhaps I have too much faith in humanity and a massive lack of trust of our government.
Could this all be another version of WMD’s?
Keep trying to defend the indefensible, Jack. I’m sure somebody’s going to listen, but fortunately, it’s not going to be anybody that matters.
“Marriage Beds” in the temple?????
That right there is f’d up enough!
Jack - please remember that Warren Jeffs, the “spiritual leader” of this group, has been convicted in a court of law of being an accomplice to the rape of a minor. Comparing this tiny, secretive, openly polygamous group to the billions of members of the Catholic church is just dumb. Ask any (legitimate) Catholic what they think should happen to a pedophile priest and I guarantee you won’t get the same answer as when you ask an FLDS member what should happen to Warren Jeffs.
Ryan
Ask any legitimate person about ANY rape of a child and they will tell you what should be done to that person. How long did the Catholic Church try to hide it, and why did they work so hard to cover it up? Why is the Pope just apologizing for it?
I think we agree that child sexual predators of any stripe is a horrible crime and should be dealt with in the most astringent manor.
I probably have a different perspective being an atheist. I just have not seen enough evidence yet for the state of Texas to remove 416 children from their Mothers.
The state of Texas has an “informant” within the compound for 4 years and he never informed anyone about a marriage bed, or any sort of sexual abuse until a few weeks ago. If 416 children were sexually abused, did an employee of the state of Texas just stand by and watch this happen?
Would you agree that any member of the Catholic Church who knew about the alter boy situation and didn’t do anything about it would be considered a spiritual leader who was an accomplice to the rape of a minor?
Child predators should live out their years at the Most Astringent Manor. They’ll be dealt with in the Most Astringent Manor — you can count on it, my friend.
I have personally experienced the manipulative, over zealous, save the children exploits of Child Protective Services. I spent several nights in absolute helplessness and agony separated from my children while this so called group of experts took their precious time exploring my families every detail just to have them release my children back to me and say “we believe you are a fit parent and have found no evidence that any of the accusations contained true findings…now get on with your lives and forget this ever happened” All this to say- CPS is in the business of ruining families and leaving emotional scars that will never be seen.
However, if the YFZ has nothing to hide, as did I regarding my abilities to be an AWESOME parent, then they will have their children returned. They will also have months of invasive, random visits from CPS just to make sure they are still proper parents. This is much bigger than just abuse accusations. We need to put a stop to the fact that these girls will become wives at to young an age, to a man who shares her with multiple other wives. The law says it’s wrong, and justice needs to be served by all who are guilty of such crimes.
I know a lady who was charged with “failure to protect” because she was home while her husband spanked his son and did not stop her husband from disciplining his son the way his “religion” said was o.k. These mothers, due to plain ignorance of the law or ignoring of it are failing to protect their children and should be charged with such. Sadly, it takes painful time to separate the truth from false accusations and though I believe these mothers are suffering from a broken heart as I have also endured, if all is found to be right and true according to the evidence to be found, then though they will have emotional scars to deal with, life will get on for them. What we need is help from people who can help these YFZ folks see the error of their beliefs and how to make radical changes in their life for the sake of these kids futures. Experts on Cults and how to help single moms is what the future holds for these people. As for the men, hang them from their ever so populating sacks!(on the same limb with CPS!)
Less than a year ago, Dallas had kids sleeping in the hallways at CPS-Dallas HQ. This system doesn’t have the resources to implement this intervention.
Soooo….I hope each and every person who has expressed compassion for the plight of these children will sign up TODAY to become foster parents.
Quit wringing your hands and DO something…maybe even something which requires personal sacrifice beyond pontification. And writing a check doesn’t cut it.
I believe the correct term here is “Interment Camp.” Interment camps were set up by the U.S government during WWII to hold Japanese Americans citizens, suspecting that all these persons were loyal to Japan. We know now that these actions were based on racial prejudice. Sadly sixty years later Texas is essentially constructing an updated version of an Interment Camp. These polygamists are not like us so lets destroy their community and teach them a lesson. If crimes have been committed then deal with it. If young females have been “married” then find and prosecute the offender. But then again this is the great state of Texas - where everything is bigger - including the trampling of civil rights.
This is a haunting and disturbing situation. Can the judge issue an order that the polygamy will stop from such a day forth. Can the judege remove only those children where there is evidence of abuse documented. Punish the men not the poor women and children. This opens the door for a crazed and misguided CPS staff to enter anyone’s home with a bogus cphone call only and remove children without just cause. Can CPS or another group work with reestablished family groups to teach acceptable and healthy lifestyles of one mother and one dad in a home. Can they have a hotline to allow those to leave who wish. All this would be much better than sending 400 children into a flawed and vicious foster care system. Those kids will be so traumatized. The mothers will be punished without a crime. Can they go to established shelters with their children perhaps. There may be a few cases of abuse - identify those cases. There is abuse in every town. CPS does not remove all the children of the town. There is abuse in every school. CPS does not seize all the children in the school. There is a need for recognition that these mothers were trying to protect their children from society and all the evils inherit in it. They wanted to live a pure life and now there is all this mess too often guided by misunderstanding, poor and faulty logic and a dangerous and unconstitional CPS system. I pray constantly that those who need help will truly be found and the others will be able to retain their children and re retaught in a way that they can have a wholesome and acceptable lifestyle in accordance with our nation’s laws.
Why isn’t there a nation wide manhunt for the guys behind this?
Why is there only a few articles on the news every few days?
How come US citizans like myself are not out in the streets marching for the protectin of these women and children and the arrets of this sick ****?
You make me sick America, I hate you all.
Why isn’t there a nation wide manhunt for the guys behind this?
Why is there only a few articles on the news every few days?
How come US citizans like myself are not out in the streets marching for the protection of these women and children and the arrests of this sick ****?
You make me sick America, I hate you all.
I very much doubt the children ARE well cared for. They do have food, clothes, housing, and space to run around in the sunshine. But a young nursing mother who has a baby every year or two, no husband in residence, and no income is going to be overwhelmed. While the presence of other mothers and older children provides some support, it barely changes the ratio of adults to children. Those kids are either going to grow up free range like domesticated animals or experience a lot of heavy-handed discipline from tired, impatient adults.
Surely some of your readers have had three in diapers at once. Remember that and add five older children who need your help as well.
What parent bathes these children at night, reads to them and tucks them into bed?
I really don’t think those kids get the love and attention (or education!) they require to grow up as good people.