TIM LYNCH AT CATO: I think it is telling that no young adult or child has been found saying "Thank you so much for rescuing me! It is nice to be in a place where I am not beaten up!" The absence of proof is now considered evidence of massive "cult" brainwashing. If a child says "I love my parents and want to go home," it means he has been brainwashed by the "cult." And if a child says "I like my foster parents a lot. They give me candy and the video games are awesome," it means the child's actual parents are unfit.
State authorities talk a lot about rape and forced marriages, but 300 children are ages 4 and below. They should be sent home because there is no evidence of abuse. All the boys should go home because there's no evidence of abuse. As for the remaining girls, they have been held for 3 weeks already … the judge should give the police one more week to present evidence or they should be going home too. The investigation can continue, but 3+ weeks in custody is enough already.
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Scott Henson: Where's the evidence of abuse?
DALLAS NEWS
07:58 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Judge Barbara Walther, who is overseeing the YFZ Ranch case, yesterday declared: "The court has ruled the conditions those children were in were not safe for the children. I did not make the facts that got this case into the courts."
Excuse me, Judge? You issued a sweeping, house-to-house search warrant based on a highly questionable anonymous call that turned out to be phony. You refused to allow individual hearings for children, grouping them together like cattle. You accepted the testimony of an expert on "cults" who only learned about FLDS from media accounts, rather than an academic who'd studied them professionally for 18 years.
You've ruled the existence of five girls between 16 and 19 who were pregnant or had children was evidence of systematic abuse, even though in Texas 16-year-olds can marry with parental consent. You've ruled young toddlers are in "immediate" danger because of their parents' beliefs or what might happen 15 years from now, not because anyone abuses them.
From the evidence presented publicly, I do not believe that the children have been sexually abused or physically harmed. Allegations of forcible rape turned out to be bogus, and only five girls 16 to 19 years old were found pregnant or with children – probably about the same ratio you'd find if you rounded up all the kids in my neighborhood.
Instead, I wonder what it would be like for these children to be torn from a loving family by people whose message is this: Everyone who loves you is bad. Everything you believe is wrong. The God you've been taught is a fraud, and belief in Him is harming you.
From a psychological perspective, though, what's more likely to happen is that scared youth will cling to their loving family, not rally against them. Or they'll act out, especially once they're exposed to media from the outside world portraying them and their lives in ways they know are false and unfair.
There's also perhaps a personal reason I've latched onto this case, and since it definitely influences how I approach the issue, I'll just put it out there. In high school back in Tyler I had a crush on a beautiful young Mormon girl.
What ultimately put me off in that relationship was this gal's belief, not so dissimilar to those in the FLDS (though she didn't believe in polygamy), that bearing and raising children was a woman's highest calling. She, her sisters and friends would openly discuss what would be the maximum manageable number of children while I listened, near horrified. I recall her speaking with admiration of women she knew with 15 or 17 kids, but didn't believe she could "handle" more than 12, the same as her mom.
I was fascinated by her family nearly as much as the young lady, and for a while really loved spending time with them, especially her mother who I truly admired. The kids were all happy, disciplined, and well-adjusted.
In Eldorado, no one alleges YFZ parents are themselves abusing children. Instead the allegation (in court, at least) is that they're teaching their kids that a woman's highest calling is giving birth and raising children and that it's acceptable to get married at an early age. Even if it were true, and the allegation was disputed, can this really be enough to seize children from their homes?
I wonder if somebody put my high school sweetheart on the stand at age 16 and asked her honest, fundamental beliefs about her religion, women's role and child-bearing, if her answers wouldn't sound as strange to a bunch of CPS workers as the FLDS ideology?
I'm pretty sure I know the answer. But I can tell you for sure the state of Texas wouldn't have done nearly as good a job raising those dozen kids as her parents did.
Scott Henson is a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger. He can be reached through www.gritsforbreakfast.org.
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