Two snippets from the FLDS "child protection" case in Texas, in which 437 children have been forcibly removed from parental care while the state investigations allegations that adolescent girls were sexually abused by being coerced or "brainwashed" into "marriages" (religiously but not legally recognized) with much older men. (The raid was apparently prompted by a bogus call to CPS): (1) "Children under 12 months will be placed in foster homes with siblings who are under 5, she said, and every attempt will be made to place [other] siblings together. Boys 8 and older are going to Cal Farley's Boys Ranch northwest of Amarillo, where 27 adolescent boys already have been staying." (2)
The Texas judge overseeing the polygamous FLDS sect's case refused Monday to make any ruling that would allow breast-feeding mothers to remain with their children in state custody....Attorneys for the women asked the judge to consider letting nursing mothers remain with their children after negotiations with CPS on the issue stalled. They asked the judge to let the mothers stay until DNA results are in, likely to take up to 40 days. Walther acknowledged the nutritional and bonding benefits of breast-feeding. "But every day in this country, we have mothers who go back to work after six weeks of maternity leave," she said. "The court has made a determination that the environment those children were in was not safe," said Walther, adding that there is a shortage of suitable placements for infants in Texas.
Yep, having your mom go to work 8 hours a day is just like having no maternal contact at all and being placed in a foster home.
It's time for a nationally prominent civil liberties attorney to get involved.
UPDATE: And, courtesy of a VC commenter, a stinging op-ed from the Dallas Morning News:
Judge Barbara Walther, who is overseeing the YFZ Ranch case, yesterday declared: "The court has ruled the conditions those children were in were not safe for the children. I did not make the facts that got this case into the courts."
Excuse me, Judge? You issued a sweeping, house-to-house search warrant based on a highly questionable anonymous call that turned out to be phony. You refused to allow individual hearings for children, grouping them together like cattle. You accepted the testimony of an expert on "cults" who only learned about FLDS from media accounts, rather than an academic who'd studied them professionally for 18 years.
You've ruled the existence of five girls between 16 and 19 who were pregnant or had children was evidence of systematic abuse, even though in Texas 16-year-olds can marry with parental consent. You've ruled young toddlers are in "immediate" danger because of their parents' beliefs or what might happen 15 years from now, not because anyone abuses them.
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If there is a real concern (I'm skeptical) that the mothers will abuse the children, why can't there be some possibility of 24-hour supervision of mother-child couplets while this is going on? Surely it would be better for the youngest children not to undergo this separation while the matter is investigated.
Adding a few horses asses who claim to be civil liberties attorneys will not help this situation at all.
What happens to babies born after the initial raid? Do we continue taking all children born to this group? The law does not cope well with large groups of fanatics.
Once again, the world gets to marvel at the Texas "Justice" system.
However, a couple of points on your more general characterizations. You state that the "marriages" are "religiously but not legally recognized." Have you actually looked at that issue? Texas has common law marriage, which they apparently call "informal marriage." I feel pretty safe assuming that most of these second and third and fourth marriages would constitute legal common law marriages under the Texas criteria.
As for your emphasis on the state's making "every attempt" to keep siblings together, as I understand it part of the difficulty is determining which children are actually siblings to each other, as the children are raised communally, in many ways. Plus, where you have 4 or 5 wives, each with 4 or 5 kids, you may be talking about groups of 20, 30, or even more siblings. It's not quite the same as separating a set of 3, 4, or 5 siblings.
Btw, here are some details re the FLDS welfare bums. Although it does not change the civil rights analysis, it does reduce by a large degree my sympathy for these folks who suckle on the teet of the Republic.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8993551
However, Texas law does make it very difficult to sever the parent-child relationship.
There have been precious few facts revealed in this case, but it's starting to stink very badly. By what logic do they take children away from mothers because of putative marriages? If the mothers were under age to be married or to have sexual relations, how does this affect their role as a parent?
I guess here in Texas, you have to be careful if you're in a church other than baptists or catholics. Either the feds will incinerate your children, or the state will rip them from their mother's breast. Unbelievable.
And once again, no thread is complete without a slam at Texas.
I actually have a little more faith that this situation will get resolved a little better here than if other states or the feds were involved. Remember a similar sect called the Branch Davidians?
Unfortunately, science takes time.
Unfortunately, science takes time.
"I feel pretty safe assuming that most of these second and third and fourth marriages would constitute legal common law marriages under the Texas criteria."
I doubt it -- most modern common law arrangements recognize only two spouses per marriage.
"I believe that this is the process of trying to figure out who to charge with the statutory rape."
How does confiscating children help to figure out whom to charge? Perhaps I could understand arresting all the men, although that's still suspicious in the absence of any specific charges... But separating the entire family?
This is going to cost the state a TON of money.
Fair enough.
But even assuming the general threat to children exists (as nearly as I can tell it is alleged to be indoctrination that underage sex/marriage is desirable, and potentially collusion)--what could possibly the reason to take nursing children away from mothers?
Texas is doing just fine.
I'm not sure, but I am also not sure what the huge deal is either. As far as I know, breastfeeding confers real but very modest health benefits to babies. I doubt that there is any lasting damage done by a short period of formula feeding while the state figures out what the heck to do with all these kids. And if the state's allegations are well-founded, they really do have to do everything possible to ensure that the kids aren't raised in that belief system as that will perpetuate the abuse cycle.
My understanding is that FLDS is a cult whose leaders (a small collection of men) have multiple wives and hordes of children, and apparently they kick almost all the young boys out to preserve the male:female ratio they need to keep the polygamy cult going. This kind of activity is very dangerous and is something that Utah should never have allowed to fester.
But, the LDS church and their proxies in the State of Utah did nothing. Why not? Because they're squeamish about the polygamy issue which, I understand from some mainline LDS friends, is still a touchy (if rarely discussed) subject in the church. That's wrong and I hope they right that wrong.
For great local blogging:
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/
if the teen pregnancy rate on the compound is any higher than the teen pregnancy rate in the nearest major urban school system to where anyone lives?
Actually it is lower, of course.
But, the LDS church and their proxies in the State of Utah did nothing.
Actually, that is false. What they did was the Short Creek raids, and that didn't work, so they switched to prosecuting the provable crimes.
Note to several comments: the monogamous families in the bunch have had their children taken away as well, not to mention families with a year or so age difference between spouses (or are you saying if a 17 year old is married to an 18 year old, the state should intervene?).
It is a mess. I'm conflicted about much of it, so I can't blame others who don't have a clear opinion.
Editorial
some 16 year old girls
Several of those old girls already have children. If a fifteen-year-old is pregnant with her third child, were the first two immaculate conceptions?
The amazing part is while prosecutors were running around putting people in jail on the flimsiest of evidence, there were groups, such as this, actually engaged in organized child abuse under the guise of religion. This is one step removed from sexual slavery.
(Don't get me wrong; I'm actually for legalizing polygamy for fully consenting adults--i.e. men and women 18 or older. If nothing else, it would give women legal recourse if they wish to leave.)
Do these mothers also include the pregnant or recently pregnant 16-year-olds? "Look, little girlie, while we investigate whether or not you were raped as a child, we're going to take your baby away from you."
SHE said!?!?! Last time I checked, women had a maternal instinct or something.... Let's not forget that those babies see their moms at night (sometimes during the day; a fair number of companies have on-site day care), get fed by them (perhaps with expressed milk), recognise their voices better than anyone else's....
Someone claimed that the benefits of breast feeding were sufficiently substantial to outweigh the other reasons to remove the children from their parents.
The judge merely pointed out that not being breast feed is not in and of itself a huge harm to the child. This is correct and true. I suspect some commenters here with great loving were not breast feed very long as children without turning out all messed up.
The judge was not saying here that taking children away from their parents is no big deal only that not being breast feed is not a big deal.
But let's take this out of any religious context. If this were a single family where the children were exposed to the possibility of eventual abuse by their parents, doesn't some order of protection for the children seem appropriate.
Are these mothers capable of providing adequate care?
Spare me the hypocritical demands for ACLU representation or the gratuitous reference to Janet Reno. Is this a blog for person interested in the law or in inflammatory political rhetoric. It's difficult to tell many times, both by the topics chosen and the attitudes exposed.
When it comes to protecting children, caution would appear to be better than dogma or mere politicized ranting.
I suspect you are dead, dead wrong about that, Professor Bernstein, at least when we are talking about infants. Adoptions don't appear to be particularly traumatizing events, for instance.
(And by the way, what's with the snark about waterboarding? I "seem" very exercised about that? Professor, the issue with waterboarding has more to do with binding international treaties and centuries of law on the issue of torture than it has to do with what I get "exercised" about. If you want to forthrightly defend torture, I look forward to it-- but considering the enormity of the issue, treating it with snark seems totally inapporpriate and insensitive.)
As I said, though, the bigger problem is that the Texas officials need to sort this all out to ensure that these kids don't get raised in this abusive lifestyle. Even if we assume that a separation between mother and infant is harmful, it's probably justified in this situation.
Obviously each individual case will have to be examined on each families particular facts, but raising a child in an environment in which young girls are sexually abused is the very definition of an unfit parent.
Actually, they don't. From the 1st linked article: "Walther ordered that mothers who are minors be placed with their babies;"
Did I somehow miss Texas being a frequent target of Volokh threads? Not something I've ever noticed here.
This rationale goes far beyond ordinary and accepted exceptions to First Amendment free speech protections.
If this religion is actually a criminal conspiracy by the "elders" to abuse children, prosecute them for that, which would break up the "belief system" soon enough. But how is it helping under-5 kids to tear them away from their moms in the meantime?
It's amazing how any allegation of "child abuse" makes people lose all sense of proportion. (I remember myself being outraged at the Branch Dividians years ago--until I later learned that the allegations of child abuse were made up retroactively to justify the BATF's irresponsible behavior.)
Kind of like the way some people think that shouting "terrorist" removes all moral boundaries.
First, for an infant, especially one breastfeeding, to be away from his mother for an extended period (i.e. days) is very stressful. A period of bottlefeeding might make it impossible for breastfeeding to resume.
A broader point to consider is that these children are being put in foster care. Foster care does no compare to a mother's attention in terms of the time devoted to the children. Will a foster parent hold a fussy baby for two hours? Drop everything to change a dirty diaper right away? While some foster parents are highly consicientious and some parents abysmal, very young children, who ar the most time instensive to care for, will not be better off.
There are also risks to foster care, including of physical and sexual abuse.
These children are being taken from their parents without any evidence of abuse. The State does not have to demonstrate that a particular child has been abused or is in danger if it remains with the mother, especially since the mothers were willing to stay with their children in a location of the governments choosing and under supervision. It is harder for the government to take away your property than to take away your children.
Eph
Asumming this to be true (and it raises questions I'm not not entirely comfortable with, either way)--I still fail to see what danger a breastfeeding infant has from indoctrination (especially over the relatively short term of 40 days that seems to be at issue).
It's not really the breastfeeding part that gets me (though I think that compounds it), the child could be bottle-fed--its the fact that your taking an infant away from its mother for no good reason, so far as I can tell.
At least the reason that has been explicitly given does not seem to apply to infants--or if so, in only the most insignificant way.
Whereas, taking an infant away from a mother and putting it into foster care for 40 days seems--quite extreme, to say the least.
OK, who's volunteering to waterboard Bernstein?
Stepping away from the snark war for a moment, those familiar with the day-to-day operations of most Children's Protective Services Departments, in most jurisdictions are likely, for better or worse, not overwhelmingly surprised by this. Given the admittedly astonishing burden on the system that this proceeding represents and what I suspect is the level of logistical and financial support available to the local justice system to appoint counsel for even 4, or 40, let alone 400 kids or to arrange for supervised visitation for 400 kids, (and if I'm assuming wrong, someone tell me) this seems to be a no-win for the judge.
I'm inferring that there's (a)at least some evidence that some number of substantially underage girls were impregnated by much older men, who were almost certainly not their legal husbands; (b) some inclination of Tx juvenile dependency/abuse/neglect courts to not leave minor children in the custody of, or subject to access by suspected sex offenders (c) a further inclination to not leave kids in the hands of otherwise innocent parents who expose the children to others (even spouses) whom the innocent parent had some reason to believe was "a child abuser", whether the risk pertained to the specific child in question or not. . .
Does anyone here defending Texas CPS actually have experience with the foster care system? It is AWFUL. A child's home life would have to be truly terrifying indeed for the average foster placement to be an improvement.
We have become more parochial as we has supposedly become more liberal. My ggggmother was married at 14 to my 21 yr old ggggfather. In fact, if one checks, one will probably find a number of instances of very young females marrying during the 18th and 19th centuries and sometimes to much older men. Within the last 2-3 months a research article appeared (I can't recall where at the moment) that studied older man/younger woman marriages throughout the world. And they are quite common, providing a better chance at reaching adulthood because of the wealth of the old guy marrying the young chick, who can make a lot of babies.
Interestly we allow serial polygamy in this country but we violate the religious practices of much of the world by following the Christian practice of 1 man to 1 woman.
Who will stand up, when they come for you?
Isn't it the usual practice for all children to be removed from an abusive home even when just one child has been abused? The only difference here is the number of children.
I mean, how would you like to find out you got this case from the wheel? It must be a logistical nightmare.
The original group "hearing" certainly turned into the chaos you would expect. I read that she is going to have over 400 individual "hearings" by June 2. Assuming she starts at the beginning of May, that is over 20 a day. At that rate, if all the names are spelled correctly on the dockets, it will be a victory. Chances of making well reasoned decisions? Not likely.
"In Eldorado, no one alleges YFZ parents are themselves abusing children. Instead the allegation (in court, at least) is that they're teaching their kids that a woman's highest calling is giving birth and raising children and that it's acceptable to get married at an early age. Even if it were true, and the allegation was disputed, can this really be enough to seize children from their homes?"
The following are common risk factors used by CPS.
1. Home schooling
2. A large number of children (more than 3 or 4)
3. Children born close together
What NOBODY is talking about is the culture-shock that these children will go through. They know next to nothing about Modern culture, especially TEEN culture. And CPS is going to put these children in Foster homes and in PUBLIC schools!!! Talk about Lambs to the slaughter.
Please think about this for a minute. It is bad enough when a child or teen is placed in Foster Care. With these children the culture shock is going to be so much greater that no one can predict what will happen. But whatever happens it almost certainly will be very bad.
Would anyone here care to bet on how many of these 437 children will be abused and/or pregnant after a year of CPS's care??? Even IF the girls are being wed early with parental consent, after a year with CPS it will be proved that the children would have been FAR, FAR better off if CPS had left them alone.
But of course we will NEVER hear a word about what happened to these children after they disappear into CPS limbo. Just like it is impossible to find out what happens now to children in CPS's care. They must protect the children so they can't give out that data. Yea Right!! CPS will protect their asses no matter what happens to children in their care.
Utah lessons applied in raid has
"
Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, the sponsor of the legislation, says his bill gave authorities the legal basis to enter the compound. He argues that the girl whose outcry of abuse resulted in the raid may not have qualified as a victim under previous statutes. Before 2005, Texas law allowed girls as young as 14 to marry with the permission of their parents.
"We know based on some of the cases — the main case — the girl is 16 now, but we know that she wasn't 16 when she was impregnated," Hilderbran said. "This is a good policy change that led to intervention by the state."
Hilderbran's law upgraded the penalties for polygamy from misdemeanor to felony and raised the minimum age that minors with parents' permission can marry from 14 to 16."
Amen to that !!! By the way: Does anybody know if a Legal Defense Fund has been established for these people?
It is just unbelievable to me that this is happening in the United States of America, and nobody (other than a few libertarian bloggers) seems to give a damn. This smells even worse than the satanic child abuse witch-hunts of the 1980's. If the "child protection" Nazis can get away with seizing these children of such a flimsy pretext, then nobody's children are safe from them.
that wouldn't fly where i work that's for sure.
also, fwiw sex with minors by adults may be distasteful to some but it isn't illegal, depending on the state. when i lived in hawaii, the age of consent was 14. 40 with 14 was legal. 40 with 13 would get you serious jail time. arbitrary? sure. but the law has to be sometimes.
1. FLDS has a well-documented history of treating
womengirls as property, sex-slaves, baby-factories, etc. What was going on there in those terms was almost certainly bad (though in many other ways, it was probably better than much of the rest of society...)2. The government has a well-documented history of making stuff up after the fact to justify what they already did.
3. "Does anyone here defending Texas CPS actually have experience with the foster care system? It is AWFUL. A child's home life would have to be truly terrifying indeed for the average foster placement to be an improvement."
So, SO true. I persoanlly wouldn't report someone to CPS unless they were torturing their children, and even then, I would have to think long and hard about it. And yes, this is based on the experiences of several friends of mine, not just spouting off. CPS in this country is a heinous, evil thing.
So, I don't trust either side, I think bad things were going on (which need to be stopped), but the "solution" is also bad (for many different reasons, many of them mentioned in this thread).
Yuck.
It's been that way for years. Glad you noticed.
What do you expect the LDS Church to do? The LDS Church has only a distant historical connection with these groups. Mormons who enter into polygamous marriages are excommunicated, and have been since about 1910. Is there something else the Church could be doing that would not cross the line from the ecclesiastical sphere to the secular?
As for the government of Utah being a proxy for the LDS Church: That turns out not to be the case. As early as the 1930s, Utah voters ignored the pleas of Church leaders and voted to repeal Prohibition. The influence of the Church on the culture in Utah is very significant, but the influence on politics is far less than many non-Utahans seem to believe.
I note that these folks left Utah for Texas. I also note that Colorado City, the main polygamist enclave in Utah, straddles the Arizona border, making enforcement of state law that much more problematic. That is not a historical accident. The idea that mainstream LDS in Utah are colluding with the polygamist groups is, in a word, silly.
Uh, well, yes...when your religion is one of the Big Three and all three have differing interpretations, you automatically find yourself at odds with "much of the world". That's not exactly a novel or helpful observation, however.
The more relevant of your observations is the country's descent into practical polygamy while still trying to maintain face about the importance and sanctity of marriage, which rather makes a joke of both.
The article linked to mentioned "state welfare" but welfare is administered at the county level as far as I know. It does specifically mention food stamps and WIC, but both of those are federal USDA programs. WIC applies only to pregnant women and women who have recently given birth, and to children under five. But I can't picture someone getting pregnant just to get her hands on some WIC food: WIC foods include iron-fortified infant formula and infant cereal, iron-fortified adult cereal, vitamin C-rich fruit or vegetable juice, eggs, milk, cheese, peanut butter, dried beans/peas, tuna fish and carrots.
So much to respond to. First, let me say I, for one of a few times, agree with Professor Bernstein.
Dilan Esper says;
But, it won't be a short period because once they stop breastfeeding, the mother's can't re-start. I suppose in theory the State of Texas could supply all the mothers with breast pumps, but its not going to happen.
Another commenter, I don't remember who, said that people shouldn't be "defending" these people because the system is evil. I agree with you, the system is evil. However, that system does far less damage to our government than the State thinking they can do whatever they want. Unfortunately, this is an example of the lesser of two evils. In this case I would absolutely approve of the State of Texas prosecuting those who have committed crimes...but that's not what they're doing.
I'll be watching Dearborn for you. Check in for half-hourly updates.
In Texas welfare is administered at a regional level by the state. In Texas a lot of counties are sparsely populated with many having less then 10,000 residents and a few having less than 1,000 residents. The state has 254 counties.
Ok, there may be times when the law has to be arbitrary. But the question of when a child -- especially a female -- becomes an adult does not have to be arbitrary. There is a logical, natural criterion for deciding, and it's known as puberty.
The whole idea of regarding 14 to 18 year olds as "children" is absurd, and it's something very recent in human history. I mean, for tens of thousands of years, 14 year old women have been marrying and raising their own families, and they must have been successful at it or else we wouldn't be here to discuss the question.
I've known plenty of 14 year old girls ( NOT necessarily in the Biblical sense, I hasten to add!) and they are not helpless babies; they are perfectly capable of making rational decisions and running their lives, and telling anybody to go to Hell when they want to.
Calling adolescents 'children' just one more example of the government's increasingly successful effort to infantilize everybody.
OK, who's volunteering to waterboard Bernstein?
I'd rather waterboard Bernstein than take his kid away from him. I just can't see a basis for separating newborn infants at no apparent risk from their mothers who haven't even been accused of harming them.
Also, how about these sections taken from classical books:
By the Shores of Silver Lake, a sequel to Little House on the Prairie:
"Yes, Lizzie got married yesterday," Lizzie's mother said proudly. "Her pa says thirteen's pretty young, but she's got her a good man and I say it's better to settle down young. I was married young myself."
Rose Wilder Lane, wrote a book called Old Home Town, based on her experiences growing up in Missouri in the late 19th century. In it she similarly describes several girls married before the age of sixteen, in one case to a much older man.
In Gone With the Wind, based on the experiences of Margaret Mitchell's grandmother, the average age of marriage of the female characters is something slightly under sixteen.
And for the Christians in the audience: If the Virgin Mary was a typical Jewish girl of her era, she was probably about 15 (or 16 at the most) when she gave birth to the Baby Jesus. And Joseph was probably in his late twenties or thirties.
Would that be the beginning of, or the end of? What criteria should we use to measure it?
I have little sympathy for the FLDS, their fanatical leaders, or their bizarre theology. Indeed, I find almost everything about the FLDS repugnant.
However, I am deeply disturbed by this case. Parental autonomy is a cornerstone of our society. The State should interfere only when children are in imminent need of protection--imminent meaning NOW, or at the very least, in the very, very near future.
However much I find the FLDS loathsome, unless there is evidence of imminent abuse, the State should not tear families asunder. Another poster had it exactly right--these children have been raised in a very sheltered society where they have not had much exposure to outside influences. While I think that is undesirable, I also worry about the psychological harm resulting from prolonged removal and the culture shock.
The judge has changed her mind and is allowing infants 12 months and younger to stay with their moms- whether in foster care or at home I can't say.
children 12-24 months are now to be placed in homes within the area so their mothers can visit them- which is also a welcome change. The state's own witness, a psychiatrist who testified that he got his information about FLDS almost entirely from the media and two former members he'd spoken to in the days before the hearing, said that it would be harmful to separate the babies from their mothers and that the younger children were only in danger of being taught 'unhelpful' beliefs, not physical harm. He admitted the children were loved, cared for affectionately, and that their mothers are attentive and not abusive.
The state has presented in court only the records of 10 girls from 16-19 that it says are 'wives.' Only five of them are pregnant or have children. At least one of the attorneys claims that some of the other girls are older cases- some of the 'teen brides' the state alleges are actually no longer teens, but were married before Texas changed the law for the express purpose of regulating FLDS out of the state.
The state also held the hearings each family should have gotten in one large group- treating the entire community as a single household, even though one of the children is the son of a single woman - 56 years old, three are the children of a monogamous couple (married as adults, the wife is an EMT), and one is a Canadian child visiting her grandmother.
Because she treated the entire group as a single unit, CPS did not discover (and so did not assign lawyers to) an extra 21 children in their custody and an extra 13 adult mothers also staying at the refugee camp the state created until after the hearing.
Many people (including CPS) have accused the FLDS of withholding their identity or giving false information. This is probably true in some cases. But in other cases their attorneys testified that the mothers had birth certificates, social security numbers, and even tax returns, but the state was refusing to believe them. The judge ruled that they didn't have to accept the identification offered by these mothers because in these days of identity theft, it might all be forged. So because some people somewhere have been shown to have false identification, she treated these mothers as though they were guilty. That was her basis for ordering the DNA testing (which was begun on the children without notifying anybody, including their lawyers).
I also wonder who they are allegedly so accomplished at bilking the government of welfare dollars without any I.D. that CPS can find. It's ludicrous on teh face of it- either this group is NOT bilking the government of welfare dollars or it is NOT hiding the identity of mothers and children from the state.
Also, while there have been cases of abandoned children in the FLDS communities in Arizona and Utah- nobody, not even the state, has thus far accused any of *these* Texas parents of abandoning any of the 'lost boys.'
Also, the percentage of underaged girls involved with adult men in FLDS is decidedly smaller than that nationwide- or even in half the counties in Texas. In CA 70 percent of ALL teen pregnancies involve adult men, and nationwide it's far more than half of teenaged pregnancies that are legally statutory rape.
Clearly, we have a double standard here.
I think all adult males who beget children on under-aged girls should be charged with their crimes- but the state of Texas has given the guilty parties in FLDS, if there are any, plenty of time to flee the state, and it's not the men who have been held against their will in housing conditions even CPS admits are 'untenable.'
I do not approve of FLDS religious practices or teachings, but this abuse of power by the state of Texas and CPS is horrifying.
http://christianprophecy.blogspot.com/
http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_3673667
I'm seeing the coercion there, but not the consent.
However, for the record, I'm still not sure about the necessity of separating nursing babies from their mothers unless there are facts that suggest that the mothers are likely to take the kids and disappear.
I doubt this is so. For instance, I would assume that the authorities would find a lawful way to remove children from a home in which they were being raised to be Columbine-style school shooters.
Look, this needs to be separated out. To the extent FLDS parents want to read The Book of Mormon to their kids, sure, that's protected. To the extent they are telling their kids that they need to get married at 14 years old as a plural wife of an old man whom they don't know, I don't see how that sort of thing is within the free exercise of religion.
There is a logical, natural criterion for deciding [the age of consent], and it's known as puberty.
Would that be the beginning of, or the end of? What criteria should we use to measure it?
+++++++++++++++++++++++
OK, so there is always going to be a little bit of unavoidable arbitrariness in any binary decision. Fine. But I'm saying that there is a big difference between (a) arbitrariness that tries to stay grounded in reality, vs. (b) arbitrariness that is *totally* arbitrary.
Mother Nature has decreed that girls turn into women somewhere between, what? 12 and 14 years of age, more or less. So it would be perfectly reasonable for the State to pick a legal "age of consent" somewhere within that bracket. And reasonable people could sit around and disagree about whether it should be, say 13 or 14. But where does the figure of 16 or 18 come from? And if the State can arbitrarily decree that 17.99 year olds are still "children," then why not 21 year olds, or even 25 year olds?
And by the way: My objections extend beyond merely sex-related questions. Why in the hell isn't a 15 year old male allowed to go out and get a job driving a tractor, if he wants to? Or become a surveyor like George Washington. The Nanny State is turning us into a nation of helpless infants.
While I completely understand your point, the problem with this analysis, Professor Bernstein, is that the standard is what is in the child's best interest, not yours.
And as far as what the mothers have done, that is too narrow an analysis. If the mothers are operating within a system that systemically harms the children, and the state can prove that, fixing individual culpability seems to me to be rather irrelevant.
(I remember myself being outraged at the Branch Dividians years ago--until I later learned that the allegations of child abuse were made up retroactively to justify the BATF's irresponsible behavior.)
I agree with you about Waco. But I am struck with how different this is-- everything seems to be taking place with full legal process, unlike Janet Reno's extrajudicial killing spree.
Even if that is true, though, the benefits of breastfeeding exist but are on the margins; plenty of formula fed babies grow up just fine. It isn't likely in any individual case to harm a baby substantially by switching to formula. (And if we really want to fix this, I'd be all in favor of Texas adopting a foster wet nurse program.)
And put in legal terms, I doubt the standard for when the state can do this should turn on whether the mother is breastfeeding anyway. Whatever protection breastfeeding mothers should get, formula feeding mothers should get too.
Than why are you so willing to assume everything you hear about the FLDS (spoken by their ideological opponents) is correct?
I'm sure you're not arguing that it's in the best short-term interest of a 10 month old infant, or a two-year old child, to be forcibly separated from his mother because she might later teach her she should get married at 14. If the issue is the long-run best interest of the child, I doubt the First Amendment allows what you teach to a child while you are not physically or emotionally abusing her to be grounds for termination of parental rights. But even if it does, the state could keep the kids with their moms for now, and later, if after due judicial process it's found that the environment is legally abusive, give the moms the choice of leaving the "compound" or giving up their kids. We shouldn't buy into the myth that foster care is somehow a reasonable subsitute for parental care, nor should we take the toll on the mothers, who again don't seem to have done anything illegal, lightly.
Where have you been?
In course every mother who testified offered to leave the ranch and their husbands and live alone with their children. The mother of three who has an EMT license (which she says she pursued over her husband's objections) was not given that option- she's not polygamous, she can support herself, and nobody has claimed she did anything abusive. Her kids are in foster care.
The story I linked to was a summary of grand jury testimony that led to the indictment of Warren Jeffs. As you may know, Mr. Jeffs was later convicted on 2 counts of rape as an accomplice in the forced marriage of a 14 year old girl to her 19 year old first cousin. Of course this was only a "spiritual marriage" because first cousins are not legally allowed to marry in that state. The former child bride testified that she had begged not to be married, but that Jeffs proceeded anyway and she was subsequently raped by her new "husband".
The court decided that the conviction was warranted- it is not a matter of me being swayed by "ideological opponents." Although if you are counting the girls that testified that they were forced into marriage against their will as "ideological opponents" then I suppose you may call me (and the court) swayed.
Are you arguing that Mr. Jeffs was wrongly convicted?
Another commenter replies: If the First Amendment protects anything, it protects the right of a parent to voice opinions and beliefs to his or her child, regardless of how odious anyone, including the government, might find those opinions or beliefs.
And if the parents are pedophiles who are grooming their children to accept sex with adults upon reaching puberty?
We wrap all this up in religion and family, but it is little different from the way pedophiles commonly groom children to accept their depravity as normal and natural. If these children were being raised by NAMBLA, I bet the reaction here would be MUCH different . . . .
Exactly! Who would have a problem with members of the North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes raising children?
This is what you get when you let the government get out of control.
I am not sure this is correct.
First, on the First Amendment point, I am not familiar with a lot of law in this area, but it seems to me that if you have a system in which children are homeschooled or privately schooled and not exposed in some other way to competing ideas, the state has very strong interests, much stronger than when parents present their views in the context of children who are exposed to other views.
I realize this isn't a concession that a libertarian would want to make, but the problem is, groups like the FLDS depend on the fact that they are basically a closed system where children can be indoctrinated into the wicked belief system and it becomes very hard for them to escape. IF that allegation can be proven, it seems to me that it would withstand strict scrutiny because it would be absolutely necessary to override the wishes of the parents and take the kids out of the system, and there would be no less restrictive means of doing this.
As for the more prudential question of when this can occur, what exactly is the great benefit of leaving the children to bond with these mothers and then taking them away later? It seems to me that if you are going to remove the kids from the home, it's actually going to be less traumatic (for the children, whose interests count here) to do it as infants than to do it later on.
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: signed Dec 11, 1948, ratified 25 Nov 1988.
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm
This US Reservation: "(2) That nothing in the Convention requires or authorizes legislation or other action by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States." seems to imply that Medellin v. Texas could hold the convention invalid in this case.
Also, this Understanding: "(1) That the term `intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such' appearing in article II means the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such by the acts specified in article II" might or might not apply.
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/treaty1gen.htm
Awaiting comments.
My opinion is that any of the husbands of underaged wives should be prosecuted for bigamy and statutory rape. Depending on Texas' definition of bigamy, adult wives might be prosecuted for bigamy as well.
The state does have an interest in ensuring that people enter into marriage voluntarily. The state can also enforce the right to leave marriages or religious groups. This will likely make most polygamous groups untenable.
But I see no reason that underaged mothers who are allegedly victims should be punished by being forcibly separated from their children.
1) In point of fact, the link you give is not the link that led to Jeffs' conviction. You cite a witness in an Arizona case. Jeffs was convicted in a Utah case.
2) I wasn't arguing it, but yes--as I read Utah law, and based on what I understand of Utah case law, Jeffs' conviction was based on a legal theory that was both novel, and dangerous for any clergyman who solemnizes a marriage that later goes sour. (I believe the case is on appeal at present; it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.) You might also be interested to know that a) the guy who allegedly committed the rape on the basis of which Jeffs was tried has still not been convicted; b) the victim's mother and sisters--who had more contact with her than Jeffs did, and who encouraged her to go through with the wedding--were never even charged; c) the victim was photographed on her wedding day, in her wedding dress, all smiles; and d) the FLDS wedding ceremony has a specific part where each party to the marriage must express their consent. Jeffs is creepy, and maybe even belongs in jail. But is this really the best the state can do?
3) The victim now has her own book out and is suing the FLDS church, apparently for in excess of one million dollars. Are you SURE you're willing to make broad generalizations about a group of people, and justify tearing their kids away from them, based on the statements of this victim and a few other women who have book deals, Oprah/Dr. Phil appearances, and multimillion dollar legal recoveries depending on their stories being as juicy and outrageous as possible?
I'm deeply uncomfortable with the notion that ideas and practices automatically gain currency when they are asociated with superstitions about supernatural beings or otherwise labeled religion.
If there was a cult that routinely seduced teenage _boys_ and covered it up with religious hoo-ha, I wonder if people would tolerate that under the first amendment the way many posters above apologize for the FDLS.
Oh wait, that's the Catholic Church, whose leader, a major participant in the cover-up, was just feted by our national political leadership.
Maybe religion is a cult WITH political power.
The lesson from VC today: if you want some of that young stuff, go start a "religion."
And yes, our society's attitude towards teenage sexuality is crazy in a historical context, but the psychological development of kids raised in the FDLS throws off all available models. It is a total environment.
the search was legal, whatever the status of the informant.
there are children who have born children, and who are pregnant with children.
there are children that are canadian citizens because there is a sister compound of the FLDS in canada.
the court is afraid of a mass flight to canada if the children are released to their mothers.
the FLDS have obfusticated or forged or destroyed birth certificates. DNA testing is the only way to determine who is a parent, and who is offspring.
this a community of 500 souls.
there are no innocents.... except the children.
the adults are either perps, enablers, or accomplices.
the community was complicit, get it?
are the members of FLDS christians?
why or why not?
"the FLDS have obfusticated or forged or destroyed birth certificates. DNA testing is the only way to determine who is a parent, and who is offspring."
Even the judge did not make this claim. She speculated that because it was possible, she would prefer to have DNA. She never said they *had*. In fact, so far as I know, she didn't even look at any of the identification they offered.
Please, please never enter government service. This is absolutely the most fearful thing on this thread. YOU do not know how to best raise my children. I DO NOT trust you to be able to make a wise decision. What gives you the right to determine what is in my best interest. STAY OUT OF MY FAMILY.
And while I'm at it, you said in a previous comment that adoptive infants have no ill effects from being removed from the mother. This is a naive statement from someone who has no idea of the topic--and yet, you feel you have the right to determine what is in my family's best interest if I'm a home schooler? Arrogance, pure and simple.
The minimum age for marriage in TX is 16. The law is here: http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/fa.toc.htm
Are the remarks in that "scathing" editorial accurate? Getting away from the arguments about alternative lifestyles and slippery slopes, on the law I have some difficulty believing the custody scheme couldn't be squashed like a bug almost instantly if there wasn't pretty clear evidence of criminal activity. Which suggests to me that CPS has indeed found a few pregnant girls below the age of 16. As I understand it, under Texas law a pregnant 15 year old has, by definition, been raped. If those girls' mothers are actively trying to obstruct the investigation into the rape, and were clearly aware that it happened, should CPS nevertheless return their other children?
The big issue is that the adults are each and all under supsicion of child abuse ( statuatory rape ) because they either did it, abetted it, or knew about it and did nothing. In Texas each of these is a Felony.
In most of these kind of cases in Texas, juries hand down 15 years to Life. Let that sink in. DA's will use the LIFE part of previous cases to plea-bargain most parents into terminating their rights and for an easy 15 years.
LET.THAT.SINK.IN.
If the statuatory rape allegations hold, then this so-called cult is really a baby mill for jolly old men to be perverts. Sick and btw, a FELONY.
There are other facts in the case - to wit - children have admitted that both their parents are in other states and they have not been in contact with them for some time. Were these kids forcibly removed from their parents? It appears so in some cases.
If so, then the transportation of the kids is a Federal Kidnapping charge on top off all the state charges.
The Judge in the case is an ELECTED official answerable to the County that has juridiction. So is the DA. They get relected every two years. If they mess up, then the voters can throw them out. Its not the State nor is it the Feds. Its a local matter.
In closing, this is a very serious situation that involves all the adults. Texas is not a lenient place to engage in this stuff.
As much as I deplore having to type this, yes, they are because they believe in Christ. And no, I'm not going to get dragged into a "they believe in a different Christ so they aren't really Christian" debate. Being LDS (note the lack of an F at the beginning) myself I've been in too many of those debates to want to rehash. At best it's a straw man argument that really doesn't deserve a reply.
Are you kidding? The LAST thing we need is anyone who looks like Marlon Brando procreating!
1. The legal justification for holding children who are not teenaged girls. The only argument I have seen, by a spokeswoman for the child protective people, was that the boys would be brought up to be abusers. So far as I can see, that amounts to arguing that a religion may be forcibly suppressed if it teaches people to do illegal things. Thus catholics could have their children taken away if they teach that it is proper to disobey certain laws, all Muslims must have their children taken away since they teach that both polygamy and marriage to women below the Texas age of consent are proper, et. multae caetera. By the same logic, communists can have their children
taken away to keep the children from being taught the desirability of violent revolution.
2. Perhaps I have missed but, I haven't seen in any U.S. mainline media a detailed account of the origin of the original phone call--something that appeared in the London Times online about four days ago. The facts as given there are absolutely clear. The Texas phone call was on March 29. On March 30, several days before the call had been made public, an anti-polygamy activist received a call from
someone who claimed to be an almost-sixteen pregnant FLDS girl named Sara--the same name as in the Texas call. That one was traced down to a 33 year old Colorado woman with a history of making fake phone calls. What I am seeing so far, mostly on the CNN web page, are various hints that it might be a fraud but no actual description of what
happened. One obvious explanation is that the actual descriptions makes the FLDS people the victims and makes it clear that, absent further evidence, the rest of us have no reason to believe the picture of a pregnant 16 year old with a 50 year old abusive husband. The press sees the FLDS people as the villains and so wants to downplay evidence on the other side.
This also explains why the initial evidence that it was a fraud--the fact that the supposed husband hadn't been in Texas for decades and the non-existence of "Sara" among the girls on the ranch--got played down instead of being represented as pretty strong evidence that the call was bogus.
Incidentally, it's asserted online that the Colorado caller is also an Obama delegate--someone has a link to a list of Obama delegates from Colorado with her name on it. I don't know if the story is true, but I would think if true it would be newsworthy.
Jimmy, I did have my states confused. However, I fail to see how the fact that more than one state has decided to prosecute strengthens your case that all participants in these "marriages" have expressed meaningful consent.
Assume for a moment that the call was bogus -- pretty standard in CPS cases. Disgruntled spouses, nosy neighbors, pissed-off grandparents, all manner of people call in reports to CPS. CPS opens a file on each one, and has to investigate.
And if, in the course of investigating what turns out to be a bogus report of child abuse, CPS finds evidence of actual child abuse, they cannot, of course, ignore it.
CPS is not a popular agency -- sometimes they intervene too early or too vigorously and are rightly criticized for "ripping families apart," and other times they intervene too late or ineffectually and are rightly criticized for leaving children in harm's way. We decry CPS's "family reunification" policy that returns children to abusive parents who abuse them again.
Right now, we have no idea what to criticize CPS for; we don't have enough facts yet. And the facts on the ground are changing every minute. This thread started with a DB's post that the judge was separating breastfeeding mothers and children, and now it turns out the court isn't doing that after all -- or at least not right now (who knows what new horror story of abusive parents or abusive government tomorrow will bring!).
Pure unadultered popycock. Pure fabrication. Why? Pure unadulterated hate. Those filthy
Jews/Gypsies/ FLDS need a lesson.Waldo is right. There's a long list of folks posting here who'd flip the switch because they hate all 'those' people. "there are no innocents . . . the community was complicit, get it?"
'No proof needed, just send 'em all to the camps'. And yes, I'm aware Godwin's Law ends [fruitful discussion on] the thread.