Jezebel
As of this morning, Texan authorities have taken custody of 401 children from the polygamist sect The Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). As previously reported, Texas child protective services was acting on a tip from a 16-year-old girl inside the compound who said that she was forced to marry 50-year-old convicted sex offender Dale Barlow at the age of 15 and bear his child. Among the 401 children and 133 women who have been taken from the 1,900 acre FLDS compound outside Eldorado, Texas, police have still been unable to find the teen informant, as many of the women and children share the same last names or have multiple given names. Court proceedings to determine whether to remove the children permanently began yesterday, and officials are trying to determine whether to send every child from the compound into a foster home.
Marleigh Meisner, the spokeswoman for Texas child protective services, tells CNN that the agency is trying to keep siblings together in the event that they are taken from their parents, but that there is already a critical shortage of foster homes; she tells CBS News the FLDS kids would have a tough time acclimating to modern life.
The children who lived at the Yearning For Zion ranch had little or no contact with the outside world. According to former sect member Carolyn Jessop, who used to be married to the alleged leader of the YFZ compound, "Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it." She adds that the community focuses on self-sufficiency because they believe the end is neigh; women are under particular control, including a ban on cutting their hair or wearing red. (Cult leader Warren Jeffs, who is currently in jail on charges stemming from arranging a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin and allegedly fathered 56 children by 40 wives, says that the color red belongs to Jesus and so no mortal should wear it.)
It's hard to argue that Texas authorities should just sit idly by if they can prove that children are regularly abused at the FDLS compound, but there does seem to be something cruel and illogical about separating over 400 children from their mothers and thrusting them into a modern world for which they are ill-equipped. The FDLS has a reputation for exiling young men — nicknamed "the lost boys" — so that it can maintain a gender imbalance necessary for polygamy, and, according to The Guardian, these lost boys floundered outside compound walls, with no experience dealing with modern life and nothing to live for. The situations are not analogous, as the children taken from the YFZ ranch will be placed with foster parents, but the consequences might end up being just as severe for these kids experiencing brutal culture shock.
Texas Takes Legal Custody Of 401 Sect Children [CNN]
400 Children Taken From Polygamist Sect [CBS News]
The Lost Boys, Thrown Out Of US Sect So That Older Men Can Marry More Wives [Guardian]
Earlier: Polygamist Sect Raided On Charges Of Abuse Of Girls
Comments
I don't know why they can't stay with their mothers and the state try to setup some kind if shelter, transitioning-to-normal-life center. That's more kids than they probably pick up in a year so it would be worth it. Those are the ONLY people they've ever known and they live in a community that advocates isolation from the outside world, throwing them into an already fucked up foster care system is just going to screw them on a huge scale.
Why do the crazy people procreate so much!!
This is so "Big Love" I can hardly believe it! Where's Roman?
@Leiakat: Because it doesn't take a license, an IQ test, or require anything special to do.
@Leiakat: so they can have a brainwashed army of crazies and try to take over the world!
Knowing this would be a "special circumstance" in multiple regards going in, wouldn't it have been the prudent, humane thing to set up a temporary shelter for these displaced kids? A place where they could acclimate a bit to the, uh, real world and not just get chucked into the foster care system? It all seems rather haphazard.
@battleaxonista: Possibly because mom is already screwed up by living in a compound? While some may be able to move on quickly, other really are not ready to raise a child that has just been through all this.
This makes me so sad. And mad.
How cruel to cut these children off from the world, and then kick out the boys into homelessness and despair while imprisoning the girls for your own personal perving. Because "it's God's will"?
So sickening. The instigators of all this need to be locked up for a long, long time. I only hope the victims are eventually able to adapt to the outside world and open themselves up to life, in all its glory and pain.
In the "normal" world, you have to prove that the child is being regularly beaten or sexually assaulted or is in danger of being killed in order to be put in foster care.
I find the cult's beliefs and practices horrible and appalling on many levels, but I think it's pretty difficult to prove that all 400+ of these children are in that kind of imminent physical danger.
@battleaxonista: The mothers may be under investigation and/or may want to return to the compound.
I love the rule that women can't wear red. Cult leader Warren Jeffs says that's because red is Jesus's color. Ten bucks says it's really because he think red washes out his wives' complexions.
Cults scare the shit out of me, and though I'm sitting here yelling "How could any parent let their child grow up in an environment like this? How could this happen? How could these people believe this bullshit?", I can't help but wonder how easy it is to fall into this type of mind trap, especially if you've been involved since birth, and you know nothing else.
I've been a lapsed Catholic for 15 years, and I still feel bad when I eat meat on Fridays during Lent. It's fucked up, but your brain is programmed so young that it's sometimes hard to shake the religion that was handed down by your parents.
These children are going to need a great deal of therapy, and the system, sadly, is not set up to provide it for them. Sad.
No, this is not right. I agree that if children and minors are being abused, we should step in, but separating 400 children and sending them into a foster care system that is broken at best is irresponsible and insane. I do not believe that this is helping anyone and it is hurting many
@battleaxonista: Why am I so slow? Coffeetime.
Presumably the children will be taken into foster homes, given counselling, and helped to adjust. I hope so.
@NefariousNewt: @PrettyKitties: And the smart rational people are breeding less. This is how we get loons in the white house!
@Trixie from Toronto: "Big" Love? This is more like "Tsunami" Love. And to be frank, I think "love" is pretty much a misnomer, when you're a 13 or 14 year-old girl being forced to marry some 50 year-old man with bad hair and bad teeth who's waving a Bible and screeching "The End is Nigh!" in the middle of impregnating you.
@Lymed: The article says that the mtohers are free to return to the compound, but most of them have chosen to stay. Given that, it seems pretty cruel to separate them from these children.
@Leiakat: It's the quickest way to grow your religion...
@battleaxonista: Yes, I thought they would be placed in some kind of temporary shelter for deprogramming? Wouldn't that happen before it was decided that any kids were placed in foster care? I need to read up more on this.
why is it that the crazies are always the most fertile??
You don't understand. El Dorado is tiny. It has exactly two stop lights and isn't even big enough for a grocery store. There's no way they could house over six hundred people in a town that is probably less than a thousand and there's nothing else around for miles. It is literally middle of nowhere. The nearest city, San Antonio, is about two hours away. I'm not sure what the lesser of two evils is for these kids, honestly. Staying or going, they're going to be in a bad situation regardless and I'd be surprized if they can find legal grounds for removing all of them.
I hate to be negative but Texas doesn't exactly have a good track record of dealing with these matters.
@leMaldeTete: Yeah, I'm wondering why they don't coordinate with the Utah foster care system. Surely there are some LDS families (not FLDS) whomight want to take on some siblings and slowly acclimatize them to life, the neighborhood, the public school system, etc.
@BeckySharper: They don't have to go there -- they can certainly bag the leaders of the sect for statutory rape in many cases.
Well, uh, at least it didn't turn out like Waco?
@NefariousNewt: oh christ, that gave me chills.
Have they figured out who the 16 year old is yet? From what I've read, they haven't.
She deserves a fucking medal. That was very brave.
It is such a difficult dilemma, how to transition kids and their mothers from what I personally deam as a cult mentality to the real world. I don't believe there is any one answer because nothing about this situation is ideal and it will be much harder for the mothers/women to make the transition than the children. You can only hope for the best.
@battleaxonista: Also, there's probably a huge chance that the mums are still believers? I'm thinking that even though they're removing them the mothers/ adults are still brainwashed. The children too.
56 children by 40 wives? Can he be sterilized while in prison? He obviously thinks he's a great big stud of a man who can have a million wives and a million children. I can think of no worse punishment than taking away what he belives is his God-given right to knock up every woman and teen girl in sight. Yeah, he'll probably be in prison a while or forever, but we'd still take away his manhood. And I don't trust him not to get out at like, 80, and start it up again.
And do it to the Dale Barlow guy as well. God knows how many poor girls he's violated. If someone tells you to marry them and then have sex with them because God commands it, that seems like rape to me.
Yeah, so sterilization won't happen. Just thinking about it makes me a feel a little better, though.
@hamburgerhotdog: True, at least time the compound wasn't burned down.
The AP story says the women and children left the place "of their own volition." So I'm not sure they were forced to leave. However, clearly, they have no suitable place to go in the short term.
@Leiakat: Um, because one of the key distinctions between their faith and other religions enables (encourages) the males to have sex with multiple females in a socially-accepted lifestyle - including very young girls and children - all of whom are too uneducated to know of an alternative lifestyle.
That would be my guess anyway.
@leMaldeTete: I think they are all now at a special place. I think maybe the foster thing is more down the road.
The kids are probably going to be some kind of fucked up either way. Their families are clearly crazy (not ever going outside and having a convicted psycho for a leader= crazy). This is just a lose-lose situation.
@NefariousNewt: thank you for that.
Here's a solution - kill all the men (especially "church" leaders) and then let the freed women take care of their children.
@Dear Blond Diary...: Agreed. Unfortunately, what do you do? These people have been isolated from the regular world and so have poor skills in that regard. They've known only their fundamentalist creed for the longest time. Many of them may feel that they are being persecuted by "un-believers." Frankly, they will need psychological assessment first, to see just what level of coping they are capable of, and then be placed accordingly. They have to keep families together as much as possible, but due to inherent inbreeding, I would be willing to bet the 400 are tightly related.
@hamburgerhotdog: Good point. How about they take away teh crazee men and leave the people in their homes?
@NefariousNewt: Yeah, I don't understand why they don't just do that. They can break apart the cult by arresting its leaders. I just don't see how it helps these kids to be yanked out of their homes and piled up in a shelter. Talk about traumatic.
i hope they find the girl who made the phone call.
Does anyone think the person who tipped them off may not have been someone inside the compound? How have they not found this girl yet?
@Lymed: From what I understand such fundamentalist places place a high priorty on women helping with all the children, so they should be able to just gut the compound and leave the non-brainwashed women there to help the kids acclimate to normal life. Maybe shuttle them to some classes or something. But throwing 400 brothers/sisters/cousins into foster care when they've never met another soul most likely is just going to end badly.
@BeckySharper: Maybe not, but there's a culture of abuse that can't be ignored. I don't really like the method that they're using, but I think it's best to get all of them out of there first and sort it out later.
@TruculentandUnreliable: Also, sorry, I didn't read the post closely enough. More caffeine, pls.
This is such a mess. I'm sure the Texas foster system is overwhelmed enough as it is without adding hundreds of kids at once. I'd say let them go back to the compound without any of the men, but that doesn't seem to have the greatest potential for recuperation. I wonder if the lost boys can now be reunited with their mothers.
i dont know whats worse - being on the compound or being in the foster home of a texas born again, force feeding you mac and cheese and telling you you're evil in the eyes of the lord
no but seriously temporary accomdation seems like a much more sensible option - the community down there is probably as well equipped to deal with potentially abused brainwashed children as those kids would be to play rock band
@Lizawithazee: uh, the innocent people-- women, children, etc.
@Leiakat: BUT, this compound has been running for awhile and the authorities had full knowledge of what was occuring inside. I find it hard to believe they couldn't get access until the call from the 16 year old. I mean, even petty crap like zoning or taxation or building inspection would have got them in there. I watch Law & Order, I know the score!
Civil liberties are awesome except when you're an abused child.
Further proof that anything described as "fundamentalist" is evil...
This is a tough situation for all involved because where are all these kids going to go where its not going to mess them up worse than where they are right now? This is so, so screwed up that I'm all frazzled trying to comprehend/think about it all...
Bottom line: The kids need to be placed where they feel safe, secure, and their needs are taken care of. The adults can stay or go for all I care, but the young ones are the ones who probably have fared worst in this whole ordeal.
@zivah: Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well the women would be able to take care of their families. They've been so beholden to their men for support, that I'm not sure how they could function in the regular world without Government assistance. Their rehabilitation may take a decade.
Well, hopefully the national media attention on this story will have a positive effect on the outcomes for the kids.
'they believe the end is neigh'
Does this mean the four horsemen of the apocalypse are on their way?
@stacyinbean: Or that maybe it wasn't a 16 year old girl at all, but one of the mothers?
Foster care, the goverments sect...
Uh, is it any surprise Ms. Meisner was also involved in the Waco disaster?