As many of you have been reading in the news, over 400 children were taking from their parents down in Texas. Yes, they were polygamists, and yes there was a (single) phone call reporting sexual abuse. But shouldn't we all be a little concerned over the response to that phone call? The authorities have swooped in and affected the lives of hundreds of families, all because they have the same religious belief.
I am not a supporter of polygamy in any way, shape or form. I am certainly not an advocate of teen age brides, and forced marriages. But now things are really starting to look fishy down in Texas. It looks like the phone call that started this whole mess didn't even come from a member of the community, but from somebody who likes to call the police and report made up crimes
So, as I see it, we have a random trouble maker pose as a young woman and claim to be abused. The authorities swoop in and take hundreds of kids from their parents because there might be sexual abuse in all of these families? Because they live in the same compound?
Isn't that what makes America grand? You're not arrested because you might be doing something wrong, or your neighbor is doing something wrong, rather you're arrested because there is evidence that you've actually committed a crime!
My neighbors and I all live in the same suburb, and most of us attend the same church. So if my neighbor is accused of sexual abuse, will my kids be taken away too? Will I be forced to take a DNA test, to prove that my kids are my own?
And where is the ACLU in all of this? The organization that is supposed to be protecting our civil liberties? They are trying to get the word God taken off the Indiana license plate.
It's all a little frustrating.
3 comments:
Agreed. The world has gone nutty. It's the beginning of the end, my friend. Or maybe the middle of the end. I dunno, the end is somewhere in there. I'm pretty sure.
Officials: 31 of 53 girls from sect ranch have been pregnant
Apr 28 03:45 PM US/Eastern
By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Texas child welfare officials say more than half the teen girls swept into state custody from a polygamist sect's ranch have been pregnant.
Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar says 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 were living on the ranch in Eldorado. Of that group, 31 already have children or are pregnant.
State officials took custody of all 463 children at the Yearning For Zion Ranch more than three weeks ago after a raid prompted by calls to a domestic violence hotline.
Child welfare officials say there was a pattern of underage girls forced into "spiritual marriages" with much older men at the ranch.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/16/polygamist.retreat.ap/index.html
When Texas child welfare authorities released statistics showing nearly 60 percent of the teen girls taken from a polygamist sect's ranch were pregnant or had children, they seemed to prove what was alleged all along: The sect commonly pushed girls into marriage and sex.
But in the past week, the state has twice been forced to admit "girls" who gave birth while in state custody are actually adults. One was 22 and said she showed state officials a Utah birth certificate shortly after she and more than 400 minors were seized from the West Texas ranch in an April raid.
The state has in custody two dozen other young mothers and others whose ages are in dispute. If most of them also turn out to be adults, it would be a severe blow to the state's claim of widespread sexual abuse.
If it turns out the other 24 disputed minors are adults, the number of actual 14- to 17-year-old girls with children could drop to as low as five or six. That would amount to about one-fifth of the girls that age found at the ranch -- substantially higher than the average rate of teen pregnancies in Texas but a far cry from 60 percent.
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