The *official* FLDS thread.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

It's gonna be in the news for a while, so we might as well start a thread on it.

I am wondering what people's thought are on this. Do you think Texas acted correctly? Do you think they overstepped their bounds? What do you think is going to happen to all those kids?

Any non Americans here who do not know what I am talking about, lemme know and I will send you links to the news stories.

Having read numerous books by people who grew up in the FLDS, I think that Texas is doing the right thing. It's going to be very tough on those kids but the FLDS is a classic authoritarian cult, and they need to be deprogrammed. Not only that, but they use the idea of religious freedom to break all sorts of laws (not just underage marriage laws) and get away with it. They defraud government programs for millions. They do not immunize their children. They do not keep their vehicles legally registered nor insured. They keep their kids in federally funded public schools, but all the teachers and administrators are FLDS and they teach them all sorts of crap like that dinosaurs never existed and the moon landing was a hoax. All of this stuff is illegal. And don't even get me started on what they teach about the different races. That's not illegal but it is damn offensive.

I feel sorry for those children. I hope the state of Texas is up to caring for them all.

[Rapscallion]

Um, who? Links be appreciated.

Rapscallion

[Greenday]

Here's the wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundame...ter_Day_Saints

[ThePhoneGoddess]

Greenday beat me to it.

Basically they are a renegade Mormon sect which practices polygamy and shuns contact with outsiders. They are based out of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT, two towns right next to each other on the border of Arizona and Utah. Lately the authorities have been cracking down on them for various offenses, so they bought a huge swath of land in west Texas and have been moving slowly over there.

At the end of March a women's violence shelter in Texas got a series of phone calls from a girl who claimed she was being held prisoner at the ranch, that she had been forced to marry a 50 yo man, she was his seventh wife, she already had an 8 month old and another on the way. She claimed he beat her and forced her to have sex with him and was not permitted to leave.

So Texas sent law enforcement into the compound to investigate. They found there were a lot more people living there than the leaders had told them, and that many of them were children whose parents sent them there from Colorado City/Hildale because they were 'pure'. The ranch is considered their Zion on Earth. The officials found numerous teenage girls who were pregnant or had children, obviously underage, and other such things. So they decided to remove all the children. There were 416 children on the ranch, mostly girls, and around 200 adults.

They are now housing all the children in a stadium on San Angelo Texas, and meanwhile there is a marathon of court proceedings going on to decide what will happen to the children. It is the largest Child Protective Services case in US history.

I am always surprised how much foreigners know about what goes on here in our country, so I never know what you've read about and what you haven't regarding us, so I never know whether to post links, or if they would be redundant. This has been front page news here for weeks now. The sect is battling in court to get their children back and Texas CPS is fighting them, saying they are all at risk of being abused or being groomed to become an abuser.

http://www.canada.com/cityguides/hal...d-a8075b05d8cb

Here's a good link from a Canadaland newspaper.

These children have been raised to believe that all 'outsiders' are evil and want to hurt them, and that they must marry into polygamy and have as many children as possible in order to get to heaven. Their leader, 'the Prophet' as they call him, arranges all marriages; most girls are married off quite young to much older men. Many young boys are cast out of the sect for trivial offenses because they compete with the older men for marriage, basically. These boys are known as 'lost boys' and there are hundreds of them in Utah; most of them have no education and the real world is like another planet to them, so of course they have a lot of trouble coping. It's a big problem in Utah.

[Rapscallion]

Creepy fuckers.

Rapscallion

[DesignFox]

That's my opinion, Raps.

I think the state has done the right thing. Times will be very trying for those children, but I hope things go well for them. Especially those poor little girls...

I'm wondering what they will do with the adults. They've already been fully brainwashed. I don't think there's any undoing their training. What prevents them from going back to the ranch and popping out a new batch of kids and starting over?

They obviously see nothing wrong with they have been doing...

I hadn't read about them casting out the young boys...what the hell is that all about?

EDIT: I read the wiki article...interesting. These people are sick. Kicking out young boys over competition for wives? Re-assigning wives? Women and children are chattle in their community.... I don't think that's something "God" stands for.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

I hadn't read about them casting out the young boys...what the hell is that all about?

http://www.childbrides.org/boys.html


Oh yes...if anyone wants to read a *really* good book about the various Fundamentalist Mormon sects, John Krakauer wrote a book called Under The Banner Of Heaven.

And oh yes, if you want to get a sense of how creepy they really are, go here. These are recordings from their prophet himself.

http://www.freshfilm.com/damnedtoheaven/

[DesignFox]

PhoneGoddess: reading those articles in the first link...I am just astonished.

I am disgusted.

[Sylvia727]

Do you think Texas acted correctly?

Hell yes.

Do you think they overstepped their bounds?

Maybe. It's the difference between moral imperative and legal imperative. There are some legal concerns about finding the girl who actually made the 911 call. I wouldn't be surprised if an older woman pretended to be 16 just to get the cops in, or if the 16-year-old lied under oath to protect herself.

What do you think is going to happen to all those kids?

That's going to be the hardest part of all. These kids have brainwashed since they were born, and I assume most of them believe it out of self-defense. In others, they were told "believe this or be punished" so they did what they had to in order to survive. Some of them are going to cling to the familiar to protect themselves, and others are going to rebel too far in the opposite direction. Add in the legal complications of guardianship - one article mentioned a mother who left the church cult and thus was not allowed to see her children.

The foster system is going to have difficulty keeping siblings together, which is a huge help to them during this difficult transitory period. And what about the girls and their babies? Surely the system can't separate them, but surely the babies need guardians beyond their child-mommas.

I haven't seen this addressed anywhere, but there must be 18-year-old girls (or whatever the legal cut off is for adulthood in Texas) with infants. Were the infants taken away from their mothers? Those women were just as abused and need just as much help as their 17-year-old counterparts. What are the legal ramifications of that? I would suggest letting the women keep their children if they want them; I'm sure many women will opt to give up the babies for adoption and start a new life. However, there should be some sort of network in place for them. Battered women's shelters, food stamps, gov't housing, GED classes...they're basically entering the world for the first time, and they're totally helpless.

Stories like this make me want to scream and cry.

[Soapydog]

Texas gal here.

This stuff is huge news here. This is the largest removal of children from a household in Texas CPS history, and they are also saying in the US.

It's a sad state of affairs, but yeah, these kids are forced into marriages at an extremely young... and illegal age.

Sadly, the state of Texas (despite Mr Hair's --aka Gov Rick Perry public statement stating otherwise) really can't handle this huge undertaking by itself.

As a state of Texas employee and one who works closely with CPS, we really don't have the ability to handle such a task as this. I'm not talking about monetary, I'm talking about actual CPS resources insofar as caseworkers and human intervention in the already less-than-acceptable foster care system.

[rahmota]

Do you think Texas acted correctly

Conditionally maybe. While I do not agree that the FLDS folks are totally right or are acting in a lifestyle or behavior I totally agree with (I see nothign wrong with willing polygamy) I do not like the concept of the government being able to just go in and rip families apart, remove children from parents and other things without proof of guilt. Righ now they are only acting on suspicion and it looks like a witchhunt to me.

Do you think they overstepped their bounds?

Again conditionally maybe. What consenting adults do is nobodys business but those adults. It dont matter if your personal POV disagree 180 degrees from the persons doing the action if they are happy and willingly doing so then you have no right and the government doubly has noright to interefere. If there was abuse or minors being abused then no they did not over step their bounds. This is a very ugly and complex situation with this religious sect. But then again since they are not a standard "normal" whitebread christian faith they are going to be fucked no matter they do in this modern amerika.

What do you think is going to happen to all those kids?

They are going to be screwed up for the rest of their lives no matter what. not only from the background of being raised they have had the us government invade their home, rip them from their parents and most likely go on ahead and send them to fostor homes in the usual child sales that children services do. (Dont think its not child selling. The CPS gets money for ech child they place as well as the foster parents get paid for their new addition so there is a definately market for the right kids from unscrupuous gestapo agencies)

This is an ugly case I will agree. In many different ways. you have overzealous religious leaders, overzealous government agents and the true victims are being victimized by both sides and trapped in the middle. I feel very sorry for them.

[Sylvia727]

I don't think the government agents were being overzealous at all - and I've had personal experience with some true bastards in the CPS. They had a phone claiming abuse, and found the situation there so out of control that they removed everyone. Now that the kids who were being abused are safe, they can sort out who was and wasn't abused/raped.

And I doubt more than a handful of those women, adult or child, were willing to engage in polygamy. When one is trained to be a cow, one keeps mooing long after the punishment stops.

[Amethyst Hunter]

Absolutely. Cults are vile, vile things. Especially when they encourage the rape - yes, what was going on here was nothing less, and why isn't the media saying this?? (Unless I've missed something somewhere?) - of children. I seriously hope they squash the scumbags responsible for this.

[rahmota]

Allow me to point out something here. The United States legal system is based on one simple, elegant and hard phrase for a lot of people to accept :INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.

You may not like these people, you may not agree with these people. Hell you may want to run up and give them a shotgun enema. But until a court of LAW not public opinion and public lynchmobs, declare them to be guilty of a crime they are not criminals or rapists or whatever you amy want to call them.

While I personally do agree that cults and the leader of that "church" was not a good person things in this case are not as cut and dried black and white as the media and the government are saying I am sure. You are not there. you did not talk to each and everyone one of the individual women in that situation. Yeah when all you know is how to be a sheep and follow it may be hard to suddenly growl and be a wolf.

It is similar to phelps and his bunch of loonies. As much disgust as they generate they are legally allowed to exist and perform their acts.

Just a simple reminder here that not everything is as simple as it seems.

[Slytovhand]

Hey all..

This is my first post on Fratching - so

Anyways - I'm gonna play 's advocate here... cos I can and I'm a bastard

I partly go with what Rah is trying to say... firstly - we don't know the full facts of the situation.

Secondly, and becuase I have particular religious beliefs that are now unconventional (I'm a shaman & druid...well - sort of), and those same beliefs took a lot of persecution over various bits of time, I can sort of see where this thing can go.

There unfortunately is no law against stupidity. And you are living in a country that preaches freedom of religion and freedom of speech and freedom of association (well - unless you happen to be Taliban...). The law also reckons that, even though you are an adult and should be held responsible as an adult for doing dumb things, you can still sue people for doing those dumb things..(and that's stupid!).

Many of the 'adult' women would be there 'of their own free choice' - even if it is a form of brainwashing (and let's face it - any religion which a person adheres to becomes a form of brainwashing if it dictates to you about what you should or have to believe). The children - yeah, ok.. that's a bit different..

But only a bit. If I should have kids () I would want them to be brought up with similar beliefs as mine (and since I look around and see how my beliefs fit in with the way the universe seems to work, cool...). I imagine that most parents would want the same for their kids. The parents in that place are doing the same - it just happens that their beliefs are somewhat more...'extreme' than what we normally encounter. But that wasn't always the case - religion has been very heavily modified over the years (Leviticus would have you killing lots and lots of people...).


So... while I DON'T agree with how they choose to live their life, nor their beliefs, the real question is - if you have a particular set of beliefs, and thus choose to live your life according to them (and your family and friends) - do you really want some force just coming in and telling you what you are doing is 'wrong' because it doesn't fit with what the rest of the society around you wants or believes?? Now that's dogma!

How much tolerance should be tolerated?












(for my personal opinion... just shoot the sicko bastards, send the kids to the Native Americans who can teach inner strength, faith, courage and belief...)