I'm sure you've seen the stories about the big raid by the Texas authorities (initiated by the Child Protective Services, on the sole authority of a single state district judge) which resulted in the kidnapping of 401 minors from a religious compound near El Dorado, Texas.
The "Yearn for Zion" ranch is operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a rump Mormon outfit which still adheres to the outlawed doctrine of multiple wives. Church leader Warren Jeffs was convicted of child rape charges last year for assisting in marriages of underage church females to older men.
About 200 women were allowed to leave with the children, who were forcibly bussed to San Angelo about 50 miles away. The children are being kept under armed guard at a local community center facility. El Dorado is smack in the middle of Texas in a largely empty hardscrabble area. The women are permitted to return to the church property but news reports indicate that the adult men in the compound are being "detained" by police, though there is no report of arrest warrants or other legal pretense for this imprisonment. There is no public access in or out, for the past several days.
The entire affair, government authorities say, resulted from a single phone call by an as yet unidentified 16-year-old woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted and being forced to marry a much older adult man (50 years old). A Texas arrest warrant was issued for this guy and he has been located in Arizona at another church property and interrogated by local authorities there, but not arrested as yet. So far the object of the raid, the single 16-year-old female, supposedly has not been located.
What kind of warrant based on a single complaint, involves arresting/kidnapping hundreds of other people, when the object of the warrant is not located on the premises? And the complainant in the warrant can't be located to verify her allegations?
While I have no sympathy for religious groups which brainwash young girls into relationships with adult men, in a cult-like setting, this entire matter raises many troubling questions, none of which have yet been mentioned by the propaganda-like "news" reporting, all of which is coming from state law enforcement and none of which has reported a single comment by church members or the families of the kidnapped children.
Swarms of social workers are interrogating these children (presumably without parental supervision) to build cases against other church members for various crimes. News reports claim that attorneys will be appointed "for the children" in a few days.
There was some mention of lawyers for the church filing motions to keep police out of their sacred temple, but police already entered that building, amounting to permanent desecration, according to longstanding (and mainstream) Mormon doctrine. When is the last time defense attorneys failed to speak out publicly for their clients to the news media? One can't help but think that church members are being denied access to legal assistance.
On the basis of one alleged telephone call from a person who may or may not exist, we see the mass roundup of children by the state done at gunpoint (one adult at the site was arrested for "interfering" with the cops). One supposed complainant, one judge's warrant and hundreds are rounded up while hundreds more are held at gunpoint, awaiting what, exactly?
This appears to be an extreme over reaction if not outright fabricated pretext for shutting down this church. How can this wholesale Nazi-style roundup be legal? (Okay, if you think "Nazi" is overreaction, just substitute "ultra Orthodox Jewish church" for "Mormon" and do a reality check…)
While LRC has previously reported on the outrageous civil liberties violations done by various government children's welfare groups, this seems to be both that and also a legally sanctioned "hit" on an unpopular religious group, based on speculation and dislike for their beliefs.
What I find interesting is that hundreds of female students in the Houston public school system drop out every year because of pregnancy at ages of 12 and up, yet there is never any report of arrests for child molestation or "child rape," much less any raids on any of the schools where these pregnant young girls are supposedly being educated, held by state law for 7 hours a day. We know for certain many young, unmarried girls are having illegal sex, yet Texas CPS has undertaken no raids or mass roundups digging for other cases of underage sex occurring in these institutional settings.
Even more outrageous, the entire Texas children's "correctional" institutional organization is now under court supervision for the numerous cases of inmate child rape and abuse and other forms of mistreatment and corruption, and much of that leadership was fired (though not arrested nor even indicted for crimes).
So we can conclude that if the government is involved (in HISD or children's prisons) no action is taken. But if an unpopular religious group is accused by one person (who might not even exist, or may not have made any phone call) then mass arrests and kidnappings are immediately instigated by government authorities.
Is every group in an institutional setting (summer camp, religious community, cruise ship, school), where a single telephoned complaint is received alleging sexual abuse by one person, now subject to mass kidnapping by CPS and police, where the adults are forcibly separated from every child (not simply the one in the complaint) and held hostage until their lawyers can spring them?
Again, I hold no brief for child sexual abuse or cult-driven forced marriage of any kind in any context.
But we are supposed to be living under state and federal constitutions which guarantee innocence being recognized before trial and conviction.
We can applaud the fact that unlike in the Branch Davidian raids at Waco in the 1990s (also sparked in part because of never proven allegations of child abuse) that these FCJSLDS church members weren't burned alive or shot to pieces by government storm troopers. In the current case the cops are local and state, not federal, which explains the low body count.
What isn't being reported by the compliant news media (which has merely parroted government proclamations, and thus far has failed to report any comments by parents or church leaders) is deafening. Where is the due process? Was this a fabricated hoax designed to bring down this church? Since when is "collective guilt" been part of our "rule of law"? How can state gangsters steal children and put them in government relocation camps without any trials or indictments, much less convictions?
There is a well-worn notion that the test of a society's true nature is how the law is applied to its least liked members.
If this fascist style raid and roundup, complete with what amounts to guarded concentration camps for the kidnapped children and the forced ghetto confinement of male church member adults, then who among us is really protected by the figment of legal constitutional rights?
And thus far, I have yet to read a single word anywhere questioning this entire effort. Where are the breast-beating civil libertarians (and true children's advocates) when they are most needed? Where is the supposed journalistic "Fifth Estate" in all of this? My guess is that they are still recovering from the Pulitzer Prize parties, congratulating themselves on the wonderful things they do to protect society…
April 10, 2008
