Fundamentalist Mormons and individual rights

[Rich Engle]

In case some of you haven't noticed, the government is rampantly taking children away from their parents, everywhere. This is a high-profile case, and it's complicated by the whole Mormon thing (it reeks of inside stuff), but it's really not surprising. I'm running across this more and more every day. There have been some real nasty cases as of late, I'll try to find something and throw it up for comparison.

You know, in FL there are still like three thousand kids they can't account for, and as far as I know they never did anything about it. I guess some of them just got lost in the bureaucracy, and maybe some of them made it back safe, but still.

Edited May 22, 2008 by Rich Engle

[Rich Engle]

Meanwhile, here's a little more in-depth article about the issue at hand:

The Texas Child Grab

Pro Libertate

May 19, 2008

The news was simply too good to hide under a bushel.

Arrow Child and Family Ministries, a foster care and adoption agency with headquarters near Houston, "found out today that they will be receiving 80-100 permanent placement children," exulted the sister of an assistant to Mark A. Tennant, founder and head of the agency. "More than likely, the parental rights of their parents will eventually be terminated and they will be placed in foster homes and/or adopted out."

That letter was set adrift in the blogosphere (scroll down to comment number 71 et. seq.) sometime around April 22-23 — that is, at approximately the same time that Judge Barbara Walther issued a "placement order" that resulted in hundreds of children being torn away from their mothers and sent away in buses.

Walther has a lot to answer for, beginning with the fact that she didn’t compel the State to produce the anonymous "victim" whose call produced the original search warrant for the YFZ Ranch. It’s also quite likely that she was aware of the fact that "Sarah" didn’t exist, and that the original call was a demented hoax, at the time Walther issued the original search warrant; she had to have known as much when she issued the April 22 "placement order."

So it’s clear that Walther, like most people who wear the habiliments of the judicial profession, is guilty of serious crimes against the Constitution. But she hasn’t yet issued an order to "terminate" the parental rights of the FLDS mothers. The obvious import of the letter cited above is that this development is a foregone conclusion, since provisions have already been made for long-term custodial care for the abducted children by Arrow and other foster care/adoption agencies.

"These children will be in a wonderful Christian environment," gushes the author of that letter, who goes on to explain that the Arrow Center was in need of volunteers to help clean the facility and perform other routine tasks "over the next couple of years." Furthermore, "it looks like CPS [Child "Protective" Services] is coordinating with the University of Texas to have a charter school on site at the retreat center. This will take place in the fall. Therefore: Arrow will have to build several new buildings for the school."

Immediately after the children had been removed from YFZ, the Arrow Center "sent a staff of 15 over a two week period to assist the Department [of Family and Protective Services] and other providers on the ground in San Angelo to help with activities and supervision of the children and families from the compound."

How thoughtful of them.

Mental health workers assigned to help CPS have testified that the conditions for FLDS children and mothers in state custody were akin to those of Nazi "concentration camps." So the role played by the good Christian people from the Arrow Center was to help with "activities." You know, sort of like organizing games of Red Rover and Ring-around-the-Rosy at Ravensbruck.

Obviously, a great deal of planning and preparation went into all of this. The initial raid on YFZ Ranch took place on April 3; within less than a week, Houston’s NBC affiliate KVUE reported that Arrow’s staff was preparing to receive scores of children.

"The Arrow Retreat Center was built to be just that — a retreat center," reported KVUE. "But after Hurricane Katrina, they turned it into a shelter. Now that, once again, hundreds of children are being forced from their homes in West Texas, the center could be used to house them."

Rex and Patricia Childress, foster parents of five boys, were presented by KVUE as potential foster parents for girls ripped from their home at YFZ Ranch.

"You’ve got to show [the children] that people do care about them, and that there are people out here that are willing to help," Rex Childress explained.

The typical passive consumer of the officially sanctioned lies we call "news" was thus invited to perceive the scores of children taken from their mothers as victims of some tragic caprice of inscrutable nature, rather than the victims of armed abduction by a state-sanctioned criminal syndicate called the CPS.

There’s no evidence at all that the children of YFZ Ranch had been abused or neglected in any way, or that they had been deprived of affection from the people who mattered the most to them. And now that those kind, caring, self-described Christian people have "helped" them by terrorizing them at gunpoint and breaking up their families, at least some of these children will be left hurting, confused, and probably susceptible to whatever mind-rape the CPS sees fit to inflict on them in the course of creating "evidence" to justify this entire abominable enterprise.

After being silent about the matter for a month — he was busy; it takes time to find the right shade of Just For Men to keep one’s youthful thatch of hair a preternatural chestnut brown — Texas Governor Rick Perry finally commented about the El Dorado affair. By way of an intermediary, Perry defended the honor, such as it is, of the CPS and promised a full investigation of the allegations of CPS mistreatment at San Angelo. That investigation of the CPS will be conducted by the CPS, of course.

"The Governor is very proud of the work being done by CPS," Perry said via spokeswoman Krista Piferrer. "CPS has handled a very complex situation both professionally and compassionately. " Perry also "applauded" the CPS for promising an "internal" inquiry into the charges, which amounts to the Governor granting the agency plenary authority to conduct a cover-up.

This is the same Governor Perry, of course, who has presided over a foster care system rife with abuse — including murder and the sexual molestation of children as young as three years of age. It is the same Governor Perry who promised a "top-to-bottom review" of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) following revelations of widespread physical and sexual abuse of teenage detainees by guards, staff, and other inmates within that juvenile correctional system. In the year that’s passed since the TYC scandal went public, the agency has been through five chief administrators without seeing any serious improvement.

Given the near-ubiquity of criminal violence and abuse directed at children in Rick Perry’s Texas, I’m starting to wonder if the YFZ Ranch was the only place in the state where children were safe from such treatment.

So far there is no evidence that anyone living there was ever mistreated in any way. And since the only witnesses to any alleged abuse are going to be in the custody of an agency with every reason to taint their testimony, it’s difficult to see how any abuse allegation could be free of reasonable doubt. But with the children securely in their possession, the CPS can either manufacture the needed "evidence" after the fact, or simply hold on to the children while legal proceedings grind on interminably.

Uh-oh: FLDS women under CPS detention are seen waving at friends and family members, a gesture they were told was forbidden to them.

Like the war on Iraq, the war waged by Texas on the women and children of the FLDS community may turn out to be an immaculate deception.

Everybody knows that the reasons behind it are utterly spurious, and that innocent people are suffering needlessly, but nobody is willing to do what is necessary to end it and punish those responsible. So people just pretend as if the truth is either infinitely malleable, or entirely inconsequential.

And we can see good Christian people playing roles similar to those they’ve essayed where the war in Iraq is concerned. Christians have been enablers, facilitators, and supporters of official crimes, eager consumers and diligent regurgitators of official propaganda, sanctimonious sanctifiers of the State’s criminal aggression, and pious profiteers when presented with the opportunity.

If those who profess to worship Jesus can’t become principled opponents of the lawless Regime ruling us, the very least they should do is stop volunteering to be the ice cream every time the State feeds us a helping of cowpie ala mode.

Update: The Ice Cream’s All Gone…

… and this is what’s underneath:

"Abandoning their religion and husbands may be the only way that FLDS mothers will be reunited with their children," reports Rod Decker of Salt Lake City’s KUTV news. "Texas officials issued new rules Thursday that dictate what the mothers will have to do before the state will return the 464 children. The plan says that the mothers will have to prove that they have provided the children with `a home free of persons who have, or will abuse the children.’"

Does the State of Texas now have a fully functioning Department of Pre-Crime? Or does it merely expect the mothers to exercise some form of precognitive gifts?

Neither is the case, of course. As Decker surmises, the People’s Republic of Texas is demanding nothing less than a full and unconditional repudiation of the FLDS religion by the mothers, and the rat bastards are using their children as blackmail leverage to extract this concession.

"To hammer their point even harder," continues Decker, "Texas officials told FLDS communities that if they don’t cooperate, the court could `terminate parental rights’ and `appoint a conservator with authority to consent to each child’s adoption.’"

None of this will come as a surprise to the supernally sweet Christian folks at Arrow Child and Family Ministries, who were advised weeks in advance of Judge Walther’s April 22 "placement order" that FLDS members would have their parental rights terminated.

Among the nastiest things former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs did to rebellious members of the sect was to "reassign" their wives and children to more faithful members. He did this with the help of a state-sanctioned police force.

How, exactly, does this differ from what the State of Texas is now threatening to do to the FLDS mothers?

And of course, the most effective way for the FLDS mothers to ensure an abuse-free environment for their children would be to keep them out of the hands of the State of Texas by whatever means necessary.

It bears repeating that all of this is being done without so much as a particle of evidence that abuse has ever been committed by anyone at the YFZ Ranch. From the beginning, this entire undertaking has been carried out without probable cause, and in defiance of every principle of due process known to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under law.

It’s not just that the CPS has delivered this ultimatum without bothering to prove its case; that ultimatum has been issued without the CPS even bothering to make a case of any kind. This is straight-up mass child abduction and extortion devoid of even the pretense of legal authority. And if the perps are successful, the atrocity in El Dorado will be just the beginning of sorrows.

[Selene]

Folks:

I wonder what John Adams, Jefferson, Tom Paine, Hancock, Washington would have done when states like NY NJ Conn. Maryland [and I could list almost all of the original 13] take children away on ex parte temporary orders of protection and the signers could only visit their children at a state supervised visitation center?

They probably would have gotten down on their knee and said, "Yes, Massah whatever you want me to do!"

Fuck the state.

Adam

[Ellen Stuttle]

Highlighting some exerpts from the long piece Rich Engle posted -- which most might not read and which includes some polemics that some here might find objectionable (I'd have preferred a less polemical approach myself):

Meanwhile, here's a little more in-depth article about the issue at hand:

The Texas Child Grab

Pro Libertate

May 19, 2008

[....]

Given the near-ubiquity of criminal violence and abuse directed at children [in State custodial care] in Rick Perry’s Texas, I’m starting to wonder if the YFZ Ranch was the only place in the state where children were safe from such treatment.

So far there is no evidence that anyone living there was ever mistreated in any way. And since the only witnesses to any alleged abuse are going to be in the custody of an agency with every reason to taint their testimony, it’s difficult to see how any abuse allegation could be free of reasonable doubt. But with the children securely in their possession, the CPS can either manufacture the needed "evidence" after the fact, or simply hold on to the children while legal proceedings grind on interminably.

[....]

"Abandoning their religion and husbands may be the only way that FLDS mothers will be reunited with their children," reports Rod Decker of Salt Lake City’s KUTV news. "Texas officials issued new rules Thursday that dictate what the mothers will have to do before the state will return the 464 children. The plan says that the mothers will have to prove that they have provided the children with `a home free of persons who have, or will abuse the children.’"

Does the State of Texas now have a fully functioning Department of Pre-Crime? Or does it merely expect the mothers to exercise some form of precognitive gifts?

Neither is the case, of course. As Decker surmises, the People’s Republic of Texas is demanding nothing less than a full and unconditional repudiation of the FLDS religion by the mothers, and the rat bastards are using their children as blackmail leverage to extract this concession.

"To hammer their point even harder," continues Decker, "Texas officials told FLDS communities that if they don’t cooperate, the court could `terminate parental rights’ and `appoint a conservator with authority to consent to each child’s adoption.’"

None of this will come as a surprise to the supernally sweet Christian folks at Arrow Child and Family Ministries, who were advised weeks in advance of Judge Walther’s April 22 "placement order" that FLDS members would have their parental rights terminated.

Among the nastiest things former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs did to rebellious members of the sect was to "reassign" their wives and children to more faithful members. He did this with the help of a state-sanctioned police force.

How, exactly, does this differ from what the State of Texas is now threatening to do to the FLDS mothers?

And of course, the most effective way for the FLDS mothers to ensure an abuse-free environment for their children would be to keep them out of the hands of the State of Texas by whatever means necessary.

It bears repeating that all of this is being done without so much as a particle of evidence that abuse has ever been committed by anyone at the YFZ Ranch. From the beginning, this entire undertaking has been carried out without probable cause, and in defiance of every principle of due process known to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under law.

It’s not just that the CPS has delivered this ultimatum without bothering to prove its case; that ultimatum has been issued without the CPS even bothering to make a case of any kind. This is straight-up mass child abduction and extortion devoid of even the pretense of legal authority. And if the perps are successful, the atrocity in El Dorado will be just the beginning of sorrows.

___

Edited May 22, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Ellen Stuttle]

Selene,

Don't feel bad. Some dude on another forum just confused me with Ellen.

Whadya think that does to a guy's self-esteem? Or hers?

Michael

Well, if you want to know, it certainly doesn't please me to have my writing confused with yours. And, yes, you asked for that answer by making the comment, Michael. Your various touches of male chauvinism sometimes become a bit obvious.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Male chauvinism?

Heh.

So your writing is female?

(Broads are to slapped around when they cut up. Didn't you know that? )

Michael

[bmacwilliam]

Shut the bastards down, seize everything and give it back to the victims I say.

Bob

The victims are the children, who are in custody, in worse straits than any they were in before they were "rescued," and the women -- and you think the children and women would get the money if the money to pay for their currently being punished for no crime whatsoever were seized from the leadership's assets? Get real. The victims would see not a cent of it; the Texas coffers would get the funds.

Ellen

___

Well, it remains to be seen if the children will be worse off long term or not. Arguably, the girls are better off without a parent rather than an incompetent one. But, where the money goes is an important question, but the fact that the cult is destroyed is a good thing in and of itself.

Bob

[Selene]

Bob:

"Arguably, the girls are better off without a parent rather than an incompetent one. ..."

That is one of the most irrational statements that I have seen during my limited membership at this fine forum.

However, it is an excellent argument against state authority because Bob might actually be the head of child protective services and would impose his bizarre concept at the point of a gun.

Adam

[bmacwilliam]

Bob:

"Arguably, the girls are better off without a parent rather than an incompetent one. ..."

That is one of the most irrational statements that I have seen during my limited membership at this fine forum.

However, it is an excellent argument against state authority because Bob might actually be the head of child protective services and would impose his bizarre concept at the point of a gun.

Adam

Really?

Then you'd have to agree that a child living with a parent that willingly agrees for their daughter to be sexually assaulted is better than the alternative of being removed from the home?

Tell he how, Oh great rational one, how it's better to leave the child be?

Bob

[Selene]

Bob:

"Arguably, the girls are better off without a parent rather than an incompetent one. ..."

That is one of the most irrational statements that I have seen during my limited membership at this fine forum.

However, it is an excellent argument against state authority because Bob might actually be the head of child protective services and would impose his bizarre concept at the point of a gun.

Adam

Really?

Then you'd have to agree that a child living with a parent that willingly agrees for their daughter to be sexually assaulted is better than the alternative of being removed from the home?

Tell he how, Oh great rational one, how it's better to leave the child be?

Bob

Bob:

Your statement, was "...an incompetent parent..." not a parent who violates the individual's right to be free from the initiation of force. Perhaps you meant to choose a different word in that argument, rather than incompetent?

Adam

[bmacwilliam]

Bob:

"Arguably, the girls are better off without a parent rather than an incompetent one. ..."

That is one of the most irrational statements that I have seen during my limited membership at this fine forum.

However, it is an excellent argument against state authority because Bob might actually be the head of child protective services and would impose his bizarre concept at the point of a gun.

Adam

Really?

Then you'd have to agree that a child living with a parent that willingly agrees for their daughter to be sexually assaulted is better than the alternative of being removed from the home?

Tell he how, Oh great rational one, how it's better to leave the child be?

Bob

Bob:

Your statement, was "...an incompetent parent..." not a parent who violates the individual's right to be free from the initiation of force. Perhaps you meant to choose a different word in that argument, rather than incompetent?

Adam

'Incompetent' includes the inability to protect the child adequately.

[Selene]

Bob:

Ok

"'Incompetent' includes the inability to protect the child adequately...."

"What other inabilities would be on your list?

Adam

[Selene]

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Thursday, May 22, 2008 -- 1:48 PM ET

-----

Appeals Court Overturns Sect Custody Decision

Child welfare officials had no right to seize hundreds of

children from the polygamist sect, a Texas appellate court

ruled.

THE DEFENSE RESTS!

Adam

[Selene]

The more fleshed out story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080522/ap_on_...ygamist_retreat

"The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered 'legally and factually insufficient' grounds for the 'extreme' measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.

The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.

It also failed to show evidence that more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.

It was the extremis action by the state which was not even minimally sufficient.

This is why these people who allegedly act in the "best interests of the children" are never to be trusted or let into your home or business.

Adam

[Selene]

Here is the per curiam decision released today from the three judge Third District Court of Appeals:

http://www.3rdcoa.courts.state.tx.us/opini...OpinionId=16865

Adam

[Mikee]

Selene,

Thanks for posting the links. Great news for now.

Rick: "It bears repeating that all of this is being done without so much as a particle of evidence that abuse has ever been committed by anyone at the YFZ Ranch."

Thank you for this timely observation. I can't find anything to disagree with in your post, well said. I'm too angry and saddened to compose much in way of rational discourse about these events. I hope I can be optimistic that these children will soon be returned to their parents and that they all will be left alone.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Male chauvinism?

Heh.

So your writing is female?

(Broads are to slapped around when they cut up. Didn't you know that? )

Michael

Interesting. From anything I can tell, you don't even see the detail in your wording which occasioned my description.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

Selene,

Thanks for posting the links. Great news for now.

Ditto.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Interesting. From anything I can tell, you don't even see the detail in your wording which occasioned my description.

Ellen,

Some people believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I can't fault them if they are sincere, but I have difficulty in seeing details of corroboration in the same manner they do.

Haven't you got enough problems without making stuff up? You sure must have a lot of time...

Michael

PS: What I am feeling at this moment is good-natured ribbing. You are, of course, free to interpret it in any manner you see fit. I am just advising beforehand what the reality is. This is one I just can't take seriously.

[Ellen Stuttle]

This is one I just can't take seriously.

Noted.

Ellen

___

[Rich Engle]

I skimmed, and that's bad but I am trying to you know do the thing...

Bob Mac got one that led me thinking, he was doing like "there's many times where the state barges in," that kind of chop.

The STATE is looking for ANY reason to barge in. Read early Rand. What the eff do you think she was talking about off the rip?

People think the state are trusted enforcers of freedom. Yeah. It's a simple point, and it is WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON AROUND HERE LATELY.

And guess what always happens to the artists and intellectuals? DOAH!!!

rde

enjoy your "no refusal checkpoints" this weekend

[Selene]

Latest on the FLDS Ranch: [it is not a "compound" which is defined in my unabridged dictionary as: n 1) In the Orient, an enclosed space with a building or group of buildings in it, especially if occupied by foreigners. 2) and similar enclosed space as for the temporary confinement of prisoners of war.]

CPS agrees to reunite 12 FLDS children with parents

Posted: May 22, 2008 01:17 PM

Updated: May 23, 2008 10:27 PM

Motion for Emergency Relief (PDF)

Petition for Writ of Mandamus (PDF)

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services

Writ of Mandamus Filed by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (PDF)

Texas Polygamist Sect Raid

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- State child welfare authorities have agreed to reunite 12 children from a west Texas polygamist sect with their parents until the state Supreme Court rules on their custody case.

Teresa Kelly, a spokeswoman for the parents' lawyer, says Child Protective Services agreed on Friday to allow the parents to live with their children in the San Antonio area under state supervision.

An appeals court ruled Thursday that CPS was wrong to seize more than 440 children from a ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The state appealed that ruling to the Texas Supreme Court on Friday.

CPS said it took the children into foster care because the sect pushes girls into underage marriage and sex and raises the boys to be perpetrators.

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=836...mp;nav=menu73_2

there are blue links on the left which will bring you to the documents that the state submitted, etc.

Adam

[Rich Engle]

This is about setting a precedent, combined with the Mormon church.

But the main thing is getting us used to having our kids taken away.

One of the definers of a police state.

There's no humanitarians here.

[Brant Gaede]

CPS has much more power than the courts for the context the children are in can be continually redefined by reference to their welfare not by the courts but by CPS. Eventually the courts will prevail if at odds with CPS but months and years will have passed with damage to the children continually mounting. The wheels of justice grind very slowly but they grind exceedingly fine doing no real good for the children. It is not justice or the right the courts find for but the law--only the law.

--Brant

[Selene]

Folks:

Great News!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080529/ap_on_...ygamist_retreat

Adam