Jezebel

Oh, those poor mothers.

/sarcasm

I'm gonna have to disagree with my civil rights brethren on this one. If children of any age or gender are being abused in a home, ALL children should be removed from the home, regardless of age or gender.

@♥ dosido ☮: I meant, of course, the mothers of the children. The children who are PREGNANT.

I know the men did this, but I will never be able to get past the culpability of those "mothers". "Monsters" is more like it.

Serious questions about how age is determined? I don't know, I assume that they ASK the girls. What incentive would a non-victimized girl have to drag her age down and cop to a prior pregnancy?

What? Do they treat the little kids of all genders perfectly until 13, then start with the morally dubious stuff and keep it up til 18, and then go back to all round loveliness?

It just doesn't sound like a healthy child rearing environment and I'd like to hear how being there is good for their civil liberties...

I have to admit, this news broke my heart when I flipped over to CNN last night. I knew that abuse would be discovered, but I was apparently hoping against hope that it wouldn't be this outrageous.

I do feel bad for the mothers, not because their 'children' (who they are probably not all that attached to) have been taken away, but because they also lost their youth and innocence at too young a age. They're too brainwashed to know it's wrong. It's a sick situation.

*puts fingers in ears, sings lalalala and tries to get through 2 weeks of finals without the outside world causing a mental breakdown*

@♥ dosido ☮: Well those teenage girls are mothers too now.

@BeckySharper: Seriously. Generally if one child shows up to the hospital abused, child protective services gets them all out of there. ACLU, I love ya and all, but we're not going to see eye to eye on this one.

Aw, but Miley is a minor being sexualized by the adults around her for Jesus. These are.... oh wait.

Yeah, funny that Miley posing for a picture that reveals she is a young woman growing into her sexuality, which is fairly innocent, while these 14-year-olds in their buttoned up dresses and modest hair and make-up are still sexualized in a very real way. maybe we are kidding ourselves as a society that teenagers are not sexual beings? Maybe?

Not that I don't she a differnece between a woman growing into her own sexuality and being sexualized by grown men...

@SarahMC: Precisely. Hopefully they got out in time to learn how to be good mothers who don't let their daughters be raped.

@gherkinfiend: Exactly.

"But we only abuse the girls!"
"Oh, well that's okay, then. We'll just take the girls."

Because the boys are being raised to do what exactly? Oh, right. Abuse girls when God says they're old enough.

@♥ dosido ☮: I don't think it's that simple. These women are brainwashed and living in fear of the men in charge. It's hard for us to understand how that could happen, but if you're born into that kind of environment, and that's all you know, it's a lot harder to protest or escape.

@♥ dosido ☮: So, once these girls turn 18 they're "monsters?"

I had a feeling something like this was going to be discovered.
We know so much about the mothers, but nothing about the fathers. Are there just a few with tons of wives? Just one? What's the deal?

@BeckySharper: exactly. i think that it's ridiculous to say 'oh, they don't do bad things to them, leave them' because it's a culture that teaches them to be abusive towards women, if nothing else.

@DorothyZbornak: There has been a lot of speculation that Stockholm syndrome is rife among the FLDS community.

It seems likely, given that HOW CAN YOU IGNORE THAT YOUR 13-YEAR OLD IS PREGNANT????

The FLDS is going to have a harder and harder time squirming out of this as more of these revelations come to light. They have a lot to answer for.

Mr Parker, we all have serious questions as to how you were determining age in there.

hmmm... the FLDS brass certainly didn't plan on DNA testing, which will, more than likely, prove that this is a cruel culture of religiously sanctioned paedophilia and sexual slavery.

Good god, the legality of this whole case is a friggen Law & Order SVU episode.

Stabler: These children have been abused!
Slimey Lawyer: But the evidence wasn't obtained properly.
Stabler: *marine anger shining through* Damnit you know he abused her!
Benson: You're forcing these children back to their rapists!
Purse-Lipped Judge: I'm inclined to agree with slimey lawyer-- the evidence of abuse is out. Detectives, you have three days to find new evidence or I'll have to declare a mistrial.

And you always get really pissed, because the evidence is THERE and you're selling children's pasts and futures to the gods of bureaucracy.

Normally, I'm an ACLU supporter on almost every issue because I think they do really important work that often isn't appreciated by the public, but I'm going to have to agree with the previous posters on this one - if any child is being abused by a group, all the children need to be removed from that group's custody. You abuse a child, you lose the privilege to care for children. Period.

@nadarine: The members of the FLDS have not been exactly cooperative in determining age and relationship among the children. That's why they began taking genetic samples, to try and match parents to children. I don't know how they deal with the age issue -- were any of these children born in hospitals? Even if they weren't, birth certificates are supposed to be filed.

I do have serious questions about how they are determining age in there.

@Dear Blond Diary...: Miley was sexualized by grown men, too. A 14 y/o as a sexual creature is not something horrific in and of itself. Exploiting that is.

But you just touched on something I've brought up in the past with the FLDS girls being sexualized through super-modesty.

@CorporateTool: I think there's definitely a Stockholm Syndrome-type thing there but worse because it's a religious cult. When you throw God into the mix, people will do some crazy things.

@SarahMC: I have a feeling this is going to be a bit of a re-run of yesterday's thread about the Austrian situation and the mother...

These girls made some VERY bad choices! Oh, wait, that was Jamie-Lynn Spears...

@LaComtesse: Actually, this case is like a crossover between L&O:SVU and L&O:Criminal Intent. I think they need Goren here to get inside the heads of these people.

@AthertonMerriweather: From what I understand, they chase off most of the young men of marrying age, so there's more wives for the few men that want them.

Yes, I do get all my information from Big Love. Why do you ask?

Ugh. I am so sick of waking up and reading or listening to the news and greeting the world with a WTF rather than good morning. I want to know what we can do now to stop all the abuse, torture and general distreatment of ALL (boys and girls) of the world. Seriously.
Also for those of you in the UK did you see the documentary on BBC regarding the disturbing trend of teenage girls in the UK aspiring to be nothing more than Page 3 girls? Unbelievable.

@SarahMC: I think we had similar viewpoints in threads like this before. I don't want to see the over-18 mothers thrown into jail for being "child abusers," because many of the mothers who are now adults were probably pregnant as teenagers too.

But - our society has determined, arbitrarily or not, that 18 is the age at which people can make adult decisions, whether or not they've been brainwashed and imprisoned and abused their whole lives or not. So, to some, the 17-year-old pregnant teens are victims, and the 18-year-old pregnant teens are criminals.

I don't even know if there IS a solution to this whole mess. It's sad and terrifying no matter how I look at it.

how are they underestimating the age of the pregnant girls?

@Meg: Even if one is under the age of 18, there has to be serious discussion of what's going on. There must be records of the births -- that's mandated by the state and the Federal government. If you don't have a birth certificate, how do you establish identity?

@gherkinfiend: Sorry, but there's no way these 14 year old victims suddenly become monsters when they become legal adults, just because they can't find a way to escape their communities with the children they were forcibly impregnated with whilst they themselves were just kids.

@SarahMC: In this case, you bet.

@LaComtesse: Stabler was a marine? Or are you talking about the beautiful colour of his eyes?

I hope they're also speaking with the little boys that they took. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there was abuse there as well.

@NefariousNewt: Did the FLDS even have valid birth certificates? I'd assume so, right? Since there was all that rigamarole about "bleeding the beast" and the cult members couldn't get government assistance without actually having records of the children existing?

No Shit...

Where are the concerns for the Lost Boys from these mothers?

Did anyone see the Dateline this week where the reporter was clearly siding with the FDLS? It creeped me out beyond all creepiness.

Also, yes, if a community is fostering the abuse of teenage girls, children of any age should be removed. The little ones are just victims in waiting.

@♥ dosido ☮: But don't you imagine the mothers were subject to the same coercion and abuse the daughters were? It's hard to assume they had much agency within this world.

Christ. Theyre out, and we need a plan in place to protect these kids, so they dont go running back.

@NefariousNewt: We never need Goren and his pasty dough face and mumbling. (I can't stand CI. Gimme Stabler any day, every day...)

@tscheese: **I don't want to see the over-18 mothers thrown into jail for being "child abusers," because many of the mothers who are now adults were probably pregnant as teenagers too.** So should we not put violent gang members in jail because their parents were also in gangs? Mitigating circumstances should be taken into account of course (in both examples I've posed), but people make choices.

What's terrible is that the mothers of the children that are mothers were likely in the same position when they were young teenagers, too.

And while I try not to be judgemental toward religions I can't understand, it's clear that over the years, FLDS have become far more abuse-oriented than anything else.

@SarahMC: I didn't actually mean to link to you. I was just pointing out this will probably become the 50/50 split on mothers protecting children in abusive situations that yesterday's thread turned into...I'm not judging any of the women...

@Dear Blond Diary...: Good point. Sexually repressed socities are always the most perverse.

What about all the FLDS babies that are going to be born to the adult women in the next year? Won't somebody pleeeaze think of the children?!

@weedie: The character was a Marine. A fabulous, wonderful, DILF*-y Marine...

*Dad I'd Like to Fuck

@DorothyZbornak: Exactly. This people, both the men and women, that this is THEIR PURPOSE IN LIFE. They believe the polygamist lifestyle, specifically one with young wives, who are able to have children once the elders can not, is what God intended for them.
And its ridiculous that the ACLU is attempting to do anything but defend the lives of these children now.

while i can't entirely understand why these women would allow such abuse to be perpetrated upon their children, but it is in part b/c i haven't lived their lives. i was, and continue to be, lucky in so many ways. i did not grow up being ostensibly raped by community sanction (having seen it done to my sisters, mothers cousins, etc), and being brainwashed into believing that to rebel would bring about my and my children's rejection from their entire society (the only one i have ever known) and that of god's grace. the threat of eternal damnation is not an easy one to bear, if you are a believer.

and at the end of the day, despite our free will and intelligence, we aren't so very different from herd animals. some will be belweathers and lead the sheep, and some will remain w/in the flock.

condemnation is what these women have had hanging over their heads since forever- and for forever, if their teachings are to be believed, so i'm saving up my bile for the shitbags they call husbands and religious leaders.

@NefariousNewt: I've read that a lot of them don't have birth certificates- they're born on the ranch and the parents don't want to register them with devilish New World Order Mark of the Beast SS#'s.

Also, then there would be proof they were having sex with children, so...

@SarahMC: They do once they come of age. They can leave. People DO leave. They can get help. People DO get help.

Did anyone else think of Ursula K. Le Guin's chilling short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas? Because this situation reminded me of both that short story and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.

"In the story, Omelas is a utopian city of happiness and delight, whose inhabitants are smart and cultured. Everything about Omelas is pleasing, except for the secret of the city: the good fortune of Omelas requires that an unfortunate child be kept in filth, darkness and misery, and that all her citizens know of this on coming of age.

Some of them walk away; the story ends "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

People can - people DO - walk away from that sort of evil.

i remember seeing a bunch of the YFZ mothers on larry king live. they played the pity card saying they just wanted their children back and they vehemently denied any abuse. how could