photo © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlikeAnd maybe clarify a little, now that it's scrolled off the first page of ThatMom's blog.
Speaking of ThatMom's blog and podcasts, her The Patriarchy & Patriocentricity Series, "The Book We Wish Someone Would Write" with Corrie Marnett and Spiritual Abuse with Dr. Cindy Kunsman, all **Excellent** listening. I highly recommend both her sites and those series most of all. Granted she's Evangelical and a Complimentarian, I believe, and I'm an Egalitarian Catholic/UU, so I don't agree with everything, but good is good even when you disagree.
Now, on to my comment about the FLDS raid down in Texas
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I read on CNN that they had found 31 underage girls who were pregnant or who had give birth since the raid.
In Texas law, as I understand it, if an underage girl has a baby who was fathered by an overage man, it’s an automatic rape. Period.
Now, back when I worked for CPS, granted a good decade or more ago, you took all the children from an abusive home because of the risk that without the oldest child there to abuse, the abuser would start on another one.
So, in this case, problem #1, if they choose girls 13 and above in “Spiritual Marriage”, and CPS takes all the girls 13-18, what is to stop them from declaring that the Lord wants them to now marry girls over age 10? Or 8? Or 6? I don’t know what their cut off point would be, no one does. You can say you’re making an assumption that they would go after younger girls, and you would be right. But what if you decided the other way, left the younger girls behind, and were wrong? Would you honestly leave a 12 year old in a house where a 13 year old was raped, with the rapist?
And if you say “Well, they wouldn’t marry a toddler, the ones under, say, 6 are all right”, fine. Do you come back and take that child on their 6th birthday, or 8th, or 10th, or 13th? Do you take the risk that the whole cult will move to another state or even another country, where you can’t stop them from raping those children as soon as they are deemed old enough? You know the odds are high, there’s a pregnant 13 year old in front of you and no boys anywhere close to her age range in sight.
Problem #2, you can say it’s just a few families, say the families of those 31 girls. The other families might well be fine. But those children are LYING about which family they belong to. They might not even know for certain which family they belong to. So how do you know which to take and which to leave behind?
Problem #3, in a large, communal living situation like that, how can you separate out the good families from the perverts? From what I was seeing in the videos on CNN they’ve been living almost in dormitories, not in separate family homes. So how do you know a child left behind is going to stay in a safe situation?
No, you do exactly what Texas has done. You take all the children, so no one can be raped or hurt while you’re investigating. You run DNA tests to find out who the criminals are (again, overage father/underage mother = rape) and who belongs to which family. Then when you can break it into family units, you go to each and figure out what to do from there.
If you don’t and another child gets raped, then you are as much at fault as the criminal, because you didn’t protect a child at risk.
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I want to add, in response to some people asking "Why didn't they take the fathers, the criminals, and leave the children with their mother's. The answer is, for a few reasons.
1) Habeas Corpus
Habeas corpus (IPA: /ˈheɪbiəs ˈkɔɹpəs/) (Latin: [We command] that you have the body) [1] is the name of a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek reliefunlawful detention fromof himself or another person. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.
Also known as "The Great Writ," a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum is a summons with the force of a court order addressed to the custodian (such as a prison official) demanding that a prisoner be brought before the court, together with proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether that custodian has lawful authority to hold that person, or, if not, the person should be released from custody. The prisoner, or another person on his behalf (for example, where the prisoner is being held incommunicado), may petition the court or an individual judge for a writ of habeas corpus.
From Wikipedia
Which means, I believe, in practice, that you have 48 hours to state that you have proof that that person committed a crime or they get to go home. it takes longer than that to run a DNA test on a baby, especially one that hasn't been born yet. So, after 48 hours they can go home, pack up the children, and leave the country. Yes, it's illegal. Guess what, people break the law all the time. Yes, it would mean leaving the country. These people consider themselves members of this church before they consider themselves citizens, I don't think that would matter to them much. And no, if we can't stop thousands of people illegally coming north across the border, how are we going to stop a few hundred going south?
The point it, without proof to keep them in jail, without knowing who specifically the abusers are, removing the men would not meet the goal of keeping the children safe. It sucks, but there it is.
Point 2) Women abuse too. How do you know all those Mothers are safe?
Oh, and for those asking why they don't pick on the Amish, because they are also agrarian, homeschool in a way, Christian, marry young and dress and act funny...my understanding is that you can't marry in the Amish faith until you're an adult church member, and you can't be an adult church member until you're a legal adult in that state. Two eighteen years olds does not equal a thirteen year old and a sixtyish senior citizen. So it's apples to oranges there.
