The Thought Police

The state of Texas is placing 416 children in foster care for their family's religious beliefs. That's what the state testimony amounts to, as the state witnesses acknowledge the children are loved, tenderly cared for by attentive mothers, and are healthy and lovely children- they just have warped beliefs. Scroll through the summary of the testimony over the two day hearing and count how many times the state's witnesses complain about, not what FLDS members at YfZ do, but what they think.

The only children even the state claims are at risk for physical or sexual abuse are adolescent girls (I know you keep reading about pedophilia, but that is a term that refers to an inappropriate interest in prepubescent children, and not even the state makes this claim about any of the FLDS members or their children. I'm not trying to dismiss this as a concern, but it's not accurate to call what FLDS is guilty accused of pedophilia)[edited for accuracy]. One third of these children are four years old and younger- and they are not at risk of being married off any time soon. So they are removed because ten years from now, some of their parents might force, encourage, or allow them to marry at 16 (which last item state law also permits). The state's own witness says traditional foster care will be devastating for them.

Via Day of Praise blog comes this look at the foster care system:
Are all 416 children truly better off in foster care than at their homes?

As Brooke Adams notes, during her testimony, CPS investigator Voss:

could come up with no proposals for what parents might do to be reunited with their children."

Changing their beliefs? Not good enough, even though it is their beliefs that are on trial here. Leaving the ranch? Nope. Promising never to let their children marry before 18 (making them more stringent than the state of Texas)? Not acceptable.

The mothers... said they would do anything to be reunited with their children: move off the ranch, agree to temporary restraining orders prohibiting contact with their husbands, counseling.

They agreed, you could say, to become single mothers and cut themselves off from their friends, family and faith.

Now, Texas Child Protective Services is apparently arranging to send their 416 children all over the state and even across the country.

It took the judge a five minute recess to decide this- making it pretty clear she'd made up her mind sometime previously.
One of the FLDS women to testify has an EMT license- which she says she studied for over her husband's objections. Apparently this cult is not always quite so controlling as we've been told. Brooke Adams was sitting where she could see this woman and her husband:

Lori Jessop, 25, is staying in the shelter at the Wells Fargo Pavilion with her three children. She was brought to court today to testify about her marriage and willingness to protect her children.

Her husband is 27. When she arrived at court, she found him among the crowd and slipped into the bench beside him. I realized they had not seen each other in two weeks.

He put his arm around her, held her close through hours of testimony. Her rubbed her back at one point. They whispered back and forth. She is an EMT and told the judge that she would take their children -- ages 4 to 11 months -- and move off the ranch and go to work if she could stay with them.

After the judge issued her ruling, the Steeds stood and stared at one another, a look of shock on their faces.

One of the children is a Canadian who was visiting her grandmother who lives on the ranch. One of them is the 13 year old son of his 56 year old mother- she is divorced and was away staying with her sick adult daughter, in hospital on dialysis. She's only lived at the ranch less than a year, and she, too, would leave to keep her son. Doesn't matter. There is no evidence or accusation of child abuse against her or against the Steeds, other than that they have a warped belief system or they wouldn't be at FLDS ranch. Are their children really better off in foster care? Are yours? A judge might say so.


As I keep saying, I am not claiming the members of FLDS are all pure as the driven snow. Their current prophet is in jail, after all, for forcing a 14 year old member to marry a 19 year old, and I hope he spends the rest of his life there. But all FLDS communities do not seem to be the same, nor do all FLDS members.

Here's the testimony and work of one former member. Abused by her father, she later fled a forced marriage as a teen, lived a very rough life on the streets for several years, and now has a foundation to rescue girls from polygamy. Somebody asks me what I think of the state kidnapping of 416 children in light of this information. Well, Flora wasn't at this ranch. And she was abused by her father some fifteen years ago. I do not see how this justifies removing these 416 children from their homes today. I believe that before these children are separated from their parents and placed in foster care, the state should actually prove they have good reason to believe these parents are guilty of abusing these children. That has not happened. Even the state claims their concern is for 'potential' abuse arising out of a belief system the state does not like.
I've already linked to this rather different view of Flora Jessop's work. And you should note her tactics here as well.
Here are some letters to the editor from people who say they grew up with Flora. I read these a few days ago, and I wasn't going to link because it's just a case of they say/she says, and after all, most of the letters are anonymous. Honestly, I don't put much store in them. But then I realized- the same can be said of the original phone calls that prompted the raid on the ranch as well as many accusations against the members of the YfZ community.

Here's the report of her cousin, Carolyn Jessop- (I linked to this before, and also this, both links were posted in a previous FLDS post of mine) a college educated schoolteacher while in the cult, she was married at 18 to a man much older than she. He is currently in charge of the YfZ ranch. She escaped a few years ago(not from the ranch) with her 8 children. One of them chose to return to FLDS when she was 18. Carolyn's accounts are a bit more measured and temperate than Flora's- which may be the result of different upbringings. Though they both were brought up in FLDS sects, Carolyn was not sexually abused by her father as Flora was. Incidentally, Carolyn took two of her daughters to Eldorado to help out, as did other former FLDS members and Shannon Price, of The Diversity Foundation.. Here's what she was saying, ironically just a few days before the state confiscated the women's cell phones and then took the children from their families:

"At the moment, Jessop said, the women and children are probably terrified because of the sect's teachings that mainstream society is evil and is intent on taking children from their parents.[they weren't wrong, were they?]
Jessop and Price argue that the Texas action is unlike a 1953 raid on FLDS families in Arizona, when officials "were ripping families apart." [are they not ripped apart now?]Texas authorities are giving ranch residents "numerous options" and making sure they have everything they need, the women said.[we now these options were false choices]
Jessop said she initially feared the Texas investigation would backfire and that the FLDS would use it to portray themselves as martyrs. Now, she said, she is confident the raid will reveal the truth about the group's abusive practices.
Price said she was in Texas to educate law officers and social workers "how to be appropriate" in the FLDS culture, such as "verbage that would be appropriate to use with these young ladies" in interviews about whether they've been sexually abused.
She said many of the young women taken from the ranch have cell phones and have been able to contact family members who remain there. They also were able to bring out some belongings. " [their cell phones were confiscated and they were forced to leave behind belongings, including medications, a few days later]

Over at the Mormon Blog Hieing to Kolob, there is a letter from a former FLDS member. She says:

You should also note, half of the children raised within the FLDS, end up leaving on their own free will and choice. 95% of them you will never hear from again. 5% seem to spread rumor and false accusations everywhere they turn either because they are lonely and need someone or something to blame, or because they really were hurt or abused and somehow think it's the church's fault.

Still, I am not impressed with much of what I read of FLDS. But then, I am not impressed with the state of Texas right now, either.

Grits for Breakfast went to a conference on DNA evidence and he reports:

Jim McLaughlin of the Texas Police Chiefs Association told the crowd that in an ideal world, he'd like to see every infant DNA swabbed at birth. (Why not just tag our ears like cattle, Jim, or inject a RFID chip under our skin and be done with it?)

It also interested me that it is legal for the state to lie to you to get DNA samples, since much has been made of the testimony of the FLDS witness that, since previously children would name their parents and then the parents would be arrested for bigamy, the sect teaches its children to be chary of telling officials who their parents are.
And in Houston, says Grits,

"frequently requires destruction of DNA evidence as part of a plea bargain, which avoids anyone going back to check old cases."

Here are two other troubling cases from the state of Texas.

But back to FLDS.
Somebody has shared a link to a page about the 'Lost Boys.' It's a tragic, horrible story. But this isn't about those boys, who were kicked out of FLDS sects in Arizona and Utah. This is about 416 children removed from their families in the YfZ ranch in Texas. Yes, the YfZ ranch is about three or four years new, and most of the members came from the other FLDS communities- they are fluid and members seem to travel between them (and also Bountiful, in Canada). However, nobody is accusing these parents of these 416 children of being responsible for any of the Lost Boys, so unless and until that happens, is it fair to suggest it's acceptable for them to lose their kids because of abusive practices in the community in Arizona? Do you stand at risk to lose your children because another church in your denomination has behaved reprehensibly- even if the two churches share close ties? Shouldn't the state have to prove that *you* are abusive before it takes your kids?

CPS spokeswoman Meisner said ...phone calls to a domestic violence hot line from a teenage girl named Sarah, which triggered the raid, became immaterial when investigators found evidence of sexual and physical abuse. CPS has not identified the girl, and authorities are looking for a Colorado woman who may have made the call.
But Meisner essentially described Sarah as a metaphor.
"I do believe that Sarah exists," she said. "If you listen to the testimony, there were many Sarahs. We received information who were young Sarahs who were pregnant, Sarahs who were mothers. Just because perhaps someone else phoned that in really doesn't change the investigation because we believe what we found was systematic abuse."

Emphasis mine. Do you think it's right to lose your kids for a metaphor? And should whether or not you get to keep your kids be so dependent on the goodwill of Ms. Meisner? How reliable can she be? Note the times and dates of these stories:
04/19/2008 03:50:48 AM MDT
Texas Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said late Friday she believes the 16-year-old Sarah exists and that the raid on the ranch was warranted.


04/19/2008 04:45:38 AM MDT

Meisner essentially described Sarah as a metaphor.
"I do believe that Sarah exists," she said. "If you listen to the testimony, there were many Sarahs. We received information who were young Sarahs who were pregnant, Sarahs who were mothers. Just because perhaps someone else phoned that in really doesn't change the investigation

About face, much?

The state is only supposed to remove children who are in imminent danger of abuse. But let's grant the possible danger of the teen girls, just for the sake of the argument- so remove all the adolescent or soon to be adolescent girls, and the rest of these kids are in imminent danger of a belief.

Attorneys from around the state, volunteering their time to represent the children and their parents, left the Tom Green County Courthouse grim-faced. For two days, they had pressed the state to prove that all 416 were at risk of abuse.
"I heard no imminent danger to the 2-year-old boys I represent," one said during the hearing Friday. If the men marrying teenagers are generally in their 40s, he said, his clients won't be "perpetrators" for four more decades

.

No matter what can be said of Warren Jeffs (the sect prophet who is in jail), or the terrible stories of the Lost Boys, or the heartbreaking stories of Flora and Carolyn Jessop, and I honestly do not wish to discount or minimize them at all, we can't declare these people guilty based on what Warren Jeffs has done, or the abuse the Jessops experienced, or even a principled dislike of polygamy and other FLDS beliefs.

Let me repeat Cicero:

..just because we think a group is distasteful does not mean that all methods should be tolerated in the suppression of that group. We must ever be wary of arming the government with tools and weapons that might someday be turned on us. We can not always assume we or reasonable people will always be in control of the government. I think that this warning should be remembered when considering events in connection with the raid on the FLDS ranch in Texas.

Concern with the behavior of the state should not be mistaken for friendship to the FLDS sect.

Although, I confess, I grow less and less convinced that there is widespread abuse at the Yearning for Zion ranch. Even Texas CPS acknowledges that they only suspect a few, specific men of engaging in 'marriages' with girls under 18 (and the state has presented evidence of only 10 such girls, all of whom are over 16)

Still, the more concerned we are with any genuine abuse here, the more we should be concerned with the state's tactics here, as The Local Crank says:

Unsurprisingly, several aspects of the story that were conveniently linked to the media (such as accusation of wide-spread "child bride" arrangements) are coming up short of supporting evidence. The tragedy here is that the State's ham-handedness, and the flagrant scramble for publicity (by, among others, Greg Abbott, who really needs to stay off television until he learns at least the basics of the Texas Family Code) is liable to torpedo any criminal prosecutions of child abusers in this case.

I am also concerned about the double standard and hypocrisy involved here. The state's witness claimed that all the children were at risk because the culture of the ranch is 'authoritarian,' all authority figures are male (which simply can't be completely true of mothers ever discipline their children at all), and that the women and girls have no genuine choices, no freedom to make their own decisions without fear of unpleasant social consequences- that there is coercion. The women are too compliant to leadership and this makes them unfit mothers. Doesn't that sound terrible? Appalling:

More than two dozen women of a polygamous sect told reporters they were surrounded by troopers and forced to leave their children in state custody Monday.[how's that for authoritarian?]
...the women met with reporters at the YFZ Ranch hours after leaving their children and accused the Texas Child Protective Services of lies and trickery.
After a week's stay at two makeshift shelters - described by one woman as a
"concentration camp" - state authorities moved women and children to the San Angelo Coliseum on Monday, promising them they were being taken to a "bigger, better" place. They were told they would be reunited with other family members, the women said.
Once at the coliseum, the women were separated according to the ages of their children.
Mothers of those age 6 or older were herded into a room, each one flanked by a CPS worker. More than 50 troopers, according to the women, lined the room. The women were given a choice: return to the ranch or go to a domestic violence shelter. [they were ordered, you see, to be compliant. CPS doesn't object to compliance. They just wish to reserve that compliance and obedience to themselves]
Their children, they were told, were no longer theirs. "They told us the state is in charge of them now," said Donna.
"They wouldn't even let us go back and say goodbye to our children," said Sarah, who now has five children, ages 8 to 16, in state custody.[in other words, they were authoritarian, and required obedience]

Marissa Gonzales, spokeswoman for CPS, ... said 51 women returned home and six chose to go to a "safe location." [note: at the hearing, CPS investigator Voss testified, somewhat bitterly, I thought, that these six women left the shelter 'promptly']

...One woman said that CPS workers pressed the women to go to the shelter, assuring them they would see their children more often if they did. [coercion is good if CPS does it, I guess. It would surely be abusive if it were anybody else. So CPS workers urged the women to be compliant- to them, and punished them by keeping their kids if they are not compliant]
Donna said she didn't believe it. "We have not been able to trust anybody."

Coercion, false choices, authoritarian demands for compliance all prompted by an anonymous phone call we now know was a tissue of lies? There is no 'Sarah,' yet

Another girl with a name similar to that of the girl in the search warrant was grilled for hours by investigators, Janet said. They kept telling her " 'You are this girl. Why don't you want our help?' " she said.[authoritarian, coercive, denying her the right to make her own choices as to whether or not she wanted their help, refusing even to accept her own self-identifcation, demanding compliance ]

Medical tests against their will or consent:

One mother said she was asked if her two daughters, 15 and 16, were married or pregnant. She said no. The girls were given pregnancy tests, she said, and the results proved she was truthful.
Asked if any teenage girls were pregnant, the women refused to answer.

Frankly, I would refuse to answer, too. A 19 year old is a teen, but she is legally of age to marry without anybody else's consent. If they say no and there turns out to be one (whom they may or may not have known about), they'll be guilty regardless. If they say yes, that will be proving the state's case for them. And, in the words of Obama, it would be a distraction. Regardless of whether or not there are pregnant teens, the state has nothing to be proud of in how it is handling this case.

Who are the real authoritarians demanding compliance here? Possibly both CPS and FLDS. I know which one is a bigger threat to the rest of us.
FLDS can't come and take my kids and yours.

Updated to add this link to an article on the connection between Waco and FLDS