I'm sure I'm supposed to feel bad for them, and on some level I guess I do (many might've started out as child victims), but having been a victim doesn't give you the right to turn your children into victims.

That this was allowed to go on for so long is a disgrace.

but I'm with you, BDBlue -- that this has gone on so long is sickening.

There's a piece at Slate that gives some background on how a failed raid in 1953 in Arizona/Utah contributed to the culture out of which this abomination grew. Links to more on the FLDS and on the story of a woman who ran away, taking all her children, in 2003, from being the fourth wife of the guy in charge at the Eldorado compound.

Me, I favor simple justice -- and cleaning out the gene pool. These old guys, with all their myth-based power, have been kicking young men and boys out of the church to preserve their chances of "marrying" more, not to mention younger, women over the last decade; and they're using the "single" mothers to milk the welfare system.

Look at those women. Tell me they're not damaged, in some way at the very core of their souls. How could they, as mothers, want to bring their children back for more of this insanity?

These look like felonies to me. I'm not a Texas lawyer, but did they need an actual complainant? I know it's an insular community and so investigations take time, but I can't believe nobody could provide enough information to meet the probable cause standard for a warrant. What about the kicked out men? They couldn't provide probable cause?

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a complaint about the folks who made this case. They deserve credit for doing what apparently others before them wouldn't or couldn't do.

Yes, those women are damaged terribly. I don't buy into the mother myth that every woman would put her child's life above her own, but when you see the exact same reaction from so many women - and it's such a wrong reaction - then that's a sign that something more is going on and it's all bad. They were probably treated the same way their children are being treated. To admit that it's wrong is to admit not only that they've been victims their entire lives (and what that means their parents did to them) but that they've helped victimize their children. That's a lot to deal with. I don't even know how you would start.

Truly horrifying.

As for the men, I'm not a death penalty proponent, but - as with Tim McVeigh - when it comes to these assholes, I wouldn't lose much sleep over it. Not that they're going to be eligible for it given their particular crimes.

of child rape, if the Tom Green County district attorney can bring a case, might be an argument to put some of these ... men ... where they belong.

Far as I am able to parse it, yes, the phone call to the family violence shelter was a necessary item -- the legal technical term is, I think, "probable cause."

Besides, I lived in Texas when the Fibbies raided the Branch Davidian. Trust me. Nobody wanted to repeat that outcome.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

That's tactics after you get the warrant, how you serve it.

Getting the warrant, which does require an affidavit setting out probable cause to believe a crime has been committed within the jurisdiction, is a separate thing.

How and why you get one has nothing to do with how you execute it. You can have a perfectly good warrant, as the Feds had against Koresh, and then decide on a terrible execution plan that leaves numerous federal agents dead and a mess of a standoff, which then led to other questionable tactics to try to resolve. Or you can have a bad warrant - gotten, say, using false information - and execute it without incident. If that makes any sense.

As for the death penalty, that question (whether you can give the death penalty for child rape) is currently before the Supreme Court.

I am all for people choosing to live the way they want. But that choice has to be a fully informed choice, and the women in these communities are the furthest thing from fully informed.

And the sick disgusting thing about it, is the men. Yes, the women are messed up, purposefully wanting to return their children to this situation. But these women are damaged, and they were damaged by the men.

Men who "needed" to control and subjugate women to feel powerful, men who "needed" to rape little girls, to "spread the faith". I hate to get all Freudian, but you really have to wonder at the inadequacies these men felt, to do this to women and children.

And yeah, I don't support the death penalty in its current form, but I do feel that there are heinous crimes in this world, and when a human commits those, they lose any claim of a right to life, IMO.

Like these sad twisted fucks.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

turns almost everyone in it into a victim.

The children still there.

The boys who were driven out.

The women.

And yes, the deluded men still in it, all of whom were raised in the faith and truly believe that their immortal souls are at risk.

Not to excuse the wrongs, but a little more charity for the victims is, IMHO, the right thing to do.

The ones at the top, Jeffs in particular, and any men who committed rape, off to prison. For a long, long time.

PS: The death penalty is never justified.

This case is beyond bizarre. Human beings are very strange. Lots of detail in that story, but the extremity of the FDLS situation has made everybody crazy.

Old white guys, as Wright said. Something in that.

Absolutely, punish the guys at the top who set up this monstrous situation and benefitted from it.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

as I did early in my tenure here, if you knew, had incontrovertible evidence, scientific proof backed by not just the victim's word but DNA, that a child had been raped -- and that the rapist would continue to rape not just that child but every other child he could -- would you vote for the death penalty?

I'd have a damn hard time not voting for it. Rape is a form of spiritual/psychological/mental rabies -- it isn't about the sex. It's about the power. It's about the control. It's about the ability to break another human being just for the hell and be damned of it.

Survivors, male or female, bear their scars to their graves, and rape is one of the oldest known forms of torture and one of the most universally-acknowledged war crimes.

It's difficult to look at these women as other than survivors, but it's even more difficult to try to wrap my mother's mind around the ... faith ... that drives them to give up their daughters to rapists in the name of God, and allow their sons to be banished at puberty, again in the name of God. As lambert notes above, this thing is making everybody crazy.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

I fail at being better, Goddess knows, all the time, but still.

These people are crazy, by any measure. Warped and twisted in ways I hope none of the rest of us ever have to try and deal with. But the damage was done to them, before they in turn damaged others. Something has to break the chain, surely, and now is already too late, but for the children and the women and the exiled boys I have a whole lot of sympathy, not much blame. For many of the men, they need a good serious wake-up and they need to stop - now - what they've been doing.

Crimes need to be punished, and severely, no argument there; but. Other than immediate defense of innocent life and physical safety, there is no reason to kill other humans. I have to hold to that.

Lock people up for life plus a year, if that's what is needed. Capital punishment? No, no matter what, can't approve.

Don't however, come creeping in my back door....

As a policy matter, truly I am. Horrible and should be abolished.

Still, when it comes to my emotional energy, I'll save that for the victims.

Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven." Excellent book, takes a look at the development of the Mormon church, the split of the FLDS (surprise! it was when the LDS church reversed the decision about polygamy in order to be admitted to the Union -- and the whole process of decisionmaking is enlightening) and how insular and controlled the modern FLDS communities are. These are people who have been trained all their lives to live this way and to revere the sect leader almost as a god.

Even if you had DNA evidence?

Torture - even if you knew that you had exactly two hours to torture out of a suspect where the nuclear bomb is going to be exploded somewhere in the US?

It's the same logic. The point is, once you allow the death penalty for a new kind of crime not previously conceived as a capitol crime, it will be applied in cases where there is no DNA evidence. And one thing we know about accusations of child sexual abuse, they are the easiest ones in the world to make a mistake about.

I lived in LA through-out the nightmare of the McMartin Daycare case. It turns out that nothing happened. Lives were ruined, including the children who were convinced that something happened to them.

And yes, children are suggestible.

NPR had a report just this week about a stepfather who has been tried and convicted of the rape of his stepdaughter for whom there is a desire to impose the death penalty. Unfortunately, the child first claimed that it was two older boys who forced her out of her own yard and raped her. There is a recording of the step-father calling 911 to report the rape. The police immediately honed on on the step-father - never even tried to find other perps.

Through-out the heavy questioning, the child insisted it wasn't her step-father.

The child was removed from the home, put in foster care, and both the mother and child made to understand that she would not be returned until they testified against the step-father.

Talk about reasonable doubt. Oh, and there is no forensic evidence linking him to the rape.

Please, do go and listen to the report or read the transcript. You can find it here.

Religion is fascinating to me, I like to learn about all of them, especially seeing where they go wrong.

Fred Clark at slacktivist is fascinating, talking about the evangelical faith from the inside. The link is an archive for his chapter by chapter dissection of the horrid Left Behind series.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

that's why the "if you tell anybody what I've done I'll kill your whole family" threat works.

McMartin Daycare, if I recall correctly, involved "recovered memories."

This situation in Eldorado is a completely different one. Physical evidence -- pregnant children among the exhibits -- abounds regarding what was done to these children, and will be done to them and their siblings to follow if somebody doesn't put.a.stop.to.these.perverts.

They're not just perverting family life.
They're not just perverting marriage.
They're not just perverting faith in God.
They're using their perversions of all those things to serve their lust for and their repeated assaults upon innocent youngsters, boys and girls alike.

Look, I'm not saying it's politically correct, or that at some point there won't be a better way. I am saying that what we know -- what we can prove -- is that if these predators ever get the chance to rape again they will do so, without hesitation. You needn't take my word for it; talk to any specialist in the field. There should be someone affiliated with your local rape crisis center, and if not there will be someone -- almost all states mandate this -- in the parole office where sex offenders are required to report. Information for both those programs will be public record.

What we know is that the only way these predators stop is when they die. Chemical castration has been tried and has failed. Years of group and individual therapy at state expense have been tried, and have failed. One of the most liberal people I know admits, "some people are broken, and you cannot fix them."

Sexual predators -- and make no mistake, whether they hide behind the prophet's orders or not, sexual predators is exactly what these alleged men of faith are, and what they will raise their sons to be if they get the chance -- are among that coterie of broken people who cannot be fixed.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

So the only defendants who are subject to the death penalty are those who insist they are innocent and demand a trial where, as this case demonstrates, says Fisher, there are special risks of erroneous conviction.

Here, he notes, "there is no DNA evidence, no positive physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime; you have a victim who has told two diametrically different stories and changed her story only after being told by the state that she was going to be put in foster care if she denied that her stepfather did it."

The child did indeed tell two dramatically different stories.

In a videotaped interview with a psychologist shortly after the rape, she said two boys came to her house, dragged her over to the side yard, and as she put it, one of them put his "thing" in her "pee pee."

Over the course of two days of interviews, she was clearly reluctant to talk about the rape, at one point bursting out that she knew police wanted her to accuse her stepfather.

"I will tell the same story," she says, her voice rising. "They just want me to change it." The psychologist asks the child, "Who wants you to change it?" The reply: "The policemen. They want me to say my dad did it, and I don't want to change it."

The story says there was no DNA evidence in this case.
The story says the child changed her claims.
The story suggests the police coerced the child to change her story to fit their theory regarding the crime, because they did not want to believe her.

Bad police work.
Worse prosecutorial work.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

And now they're going to take all the kids away and give them all genetic testing so they can figure out who's really whose kid so they can figure out what legal regimen applies.

This is like a bad science fiction novel, except with real children.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Jeffs took over the FLDS, the multiple-marriage thing didn't involve quite the same flavor of perversion. Under the previous Prophets, evidently the women being given in marriage were all at least 20 years old.

Doesn't mean there's a pitcher of warm spit in Hades' foyer worth of difference between the types of deceit and misogyny involved.

Might be a reason to consider a sentence of life at hard labor, without possibility of parole.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

as my local NBC affiliate's sidebar-story on the effect inducting 416 children into Texas' already creaky foster-care
system is having.

If you're a lawyer, a paralegal, or a reasonably literate adult with some time available, think about contacting CASA. If you aren't in Texas, call your local children's advocate group anyway. There are frightened children in foster care in every state, every day, and since the GOP takeover in 1980, budgets, staff and funding for these kids' care has increasingly contracted, without noticeable decrease in the need.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

In the Mormon religion, whether mainstream LDS or old-skool FLDS or any of the several other sects, all the power is held by the men; it is God’s will. Women can only progress through the heavenly procession of holiness through the man’s power of the Priesthood. While all men can hold the Priesthood and make progress in the afterlife, those who are most perfected in this life are most likely to prosper after death. In the original LDS and for current polygamist branches, those most perfected are able to take multiple wives. In doing so, they pile up bonus points; women, and children, are a burden and points are awarded the men for the sacrifice they make in caring for them. Enough bonus points and the men will someday get to be gods, like the God of this Earth, and have their own world to rule along with one chosen wife. For a wife to reach the status of goddess, she needs to please her husband more than his other wives.

The Prophet, Warren Jeffs in the FLDS and before him old Rulon his equally evil father, is the literal representative of God on Earth; whatever he orders is to be obeyed, without question. He decides who will marry, whether or not a man is worthy of multiple wives, and which ones. The Prophet controls which men will get a leg up on the race for godhood, which women will be associated with them, and with the women whether or not they will even have a chance at reaching heaven. The Prophet can, without notice or appeal, take wives and children from one man and "assign" them to another. He can expel any member at any time, and confiscate their property. All of the subordinate members, men women and children, exist in a state of perpetual uncertainty about their relationships and their future; they are, all of them, as emotionally abused as human beings can be.

People raised in this environment, closed to all outsiders, truly believe. It isn’t like science fiction; it is Social Fiction, a separate reality that is, from their perspective, the only reality. All of the acts of the members have to be judged from that point of view. It makes no more sense to condemn them for what they do than it does to condemn a Fore tribesman for ritually consuming his ancestor’s brains; it is wrong, for many reasons, but they simply don’t know any better.

The reason the polygamists have been able to sustain all this time is because the mainstream LDS have always been a little uncertain about giving up the polygamy rite. There has always been some residual doubt, so like a reservoir of heirloom seeds they have been allowed to breed and perpetuate so long as they kept to themselves and didn’t cause any trouble. There are now several tens of thousand of these polygamists, maybe more than a hundred thousand, mostly spread up and down a corridor from Idaho through Utah and into the Four Corners, parts Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico; in that predominantly LDS-controlled environment, the fundies have been protected and covered for, like illicit, exotic pets. Once out in the wider world, amongst the Baptists of Texas, they are seen as the threat they really are, just as they were when the cult began and were driven by responsible citizens from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah.

Without the protection of the greater LDS community, overtly abusive sub-cults like the FLDS could never have survived. The blame for what has been done to the members of the FLDS goes well beyond the Prophet Jeffs and his Priesthood leaders; all of contemporary Mormons share in the shame, and the guilt.

people can't leave, have to do what the leader says, all dress the same, are really really creepy and sound brainwashed (and rehearsed for the media), ...

The FLDS is both a cult in its own right and a sect of Mormonism, a faction of the greater cult.

That rehearsed performance is not just for the media. They are drilled fom as soon as they can speak on how to represent themselves to Outsiders. They've been rehearsing for this day all their lives.

you can leave, and you don't have to live where a leader says, or marry who he says to, etc...Your every waking moment is not dictated by some mormon leader.

Take Hasidics--they're a sect, but you can leave and you're not locked away and at the total mercy of one person, ...

The culture in the homeland, especially the smaller towns, is so coercive there is no escape without running away, leaving the only home and family you’ve ever known, and your responsibilities are drummed in relentlessly from the time you are born. Golden plates, magic glasses, divine revelation, secret signs and rituals, code words, an organized plan for your every waking hour, and condemnation if you don't comply.

Call Mormonism a cult, call it seduction, call it contagious batshit crazy; you get your pejoratives, I get mine.

that these people are more victims, than perpetrators, but

It makes no more sense to condemn them for what they do than it does to condemn a Fore tribesman for ritually consuming his ancestor’s brains; it is wrong

There is a big difference. If I'm not mistaken, their ancestors were dead, and these people are alive.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

Calling me "Lamber" is sweet, one "t" short of a huge and hugely undeserved compliment, but also nearly enough to send poor Lambert himself to reaching for the bucket whilst banging his head - not a pretty way to start the day.

Yes, some are dead and some alive. My point was only that behaviors we see as aberrent and disgusting are to those raised in the culture perfectly normal and, in the cases I cite here of the Fore and FLDS, demanded by religious belief. They do what they do to honor each other in the eyes of their gods, as they've been taught for generations.

I'm not suggesting we give any slack to these behaviors. It was right to intervene with the Fore, they had paid a terrible price for their beliefs. Similarly with the FLDS; their hurtful practices have to stop. To reach them, the victims, will require IMHO a great deal of empathy and understanding, and rather less condemnation. I feel terribly sorry for almost all of them.

... via the Fore, the brains thread has merged with the FLDS thread.

Maybe there's a deep reason why this is so; maybe there isn't.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I try to avoid it on the weekends, when I don't need to become alert swiftly, since I'm not at work.

That shows me, huh?

I thought you were making the "they eat brains, and that's disgusting, and must stop" argument, not the "they eat brains, and it's killing them, and must stop*" argument. Even though to me, you are equating a disgusting and unhealthy act, with an immoral and unhealthy act, but that's ok.

I to feel very sorry for all of them, but it goes into a discussion I've had with others about how innate morality is. Now, I didn't grow up like they do, but some part of me believes that some of these people had to know what they were doing was "wrong", even if their god told them it was right. You see it all the time with other religions, so why is this one exempt? Is it the indoctrination, or do we not have a moral center, and the sheltered lives these people lead, allow them to see no "right" or "wrong".

*Maybe, we should have just introduced them to cooking the brain, to kill infections, though I don't know if that would work.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

they have, but they haven't been able to leave, is what i'm thinking--they don't have privacy or access to the outside world, do they?

The one girl who called cops this time was a rare occurrence with this group, no? I'm surprised she could get to or use a phone.

that many knew it was wrong, it can't all be women. There had to be many men who knew it was wrong, but liked it and wanted to stay. So are the victims, or should they be prosecuted?

That's part of the reason the whole "they didn't know any better" argument bothers me, not that anyone here is making it. I believe that many did know better, regardless of how they were raised, but liked the power.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

they're not at all as fully restricted and kept effective prisoners as the women are.

I wonder if the men with multiple partners think it's wrong--doesn't polygamy run in families with them and didn't all of them used to do that? why would they think it was wrong?

being polygamists, no? They were so sure they were right that it was intolerable for them to stay and not be able to do as they had done.

Need to differentiate between the act and the people themselves. Raised in that world, right and wrong for specific acts do not mean the same thing to them as to us.

The acts that are unacceptable in our society need to be stopped. Those who overtly perpetuated those acts need to be punished. At some point down the hierarchy, however, we need to recognize that actions were being driven by forces that individuals could not resist. It is all too easy to sit at our remove and say that they should have been able to see how wrong it all is. For them, impossible. They have no TV. They have no radio. They have no newspapers or magazines. They have no conversations with Outsiders. They are taught to view everything that is Outside as evil and wrong and threatening to their soul. All they know, all they believe to be true, is based on what they have been taught. They know nothing else, and whatever else they do come in contact with, they fear.

A lot of thoughtful work has been done on analyzing what it meant to be a "good" German under the Nazis. Mostly we can see that while there is certainly guilt, most of the real responsibility lay at the top of the social structure. Farther down were people who couldn't muster the strength to resist. We hung and imprisoned those at the top. Those lower down were re-educated, and nearly all of them have had great remorse and borne their guilt as punishment enough.

Innate morality is, in my view, a bit of a conceit. We've had a long, hard slog from out of the jungle to get to where we are, and still we have trouble defining and defending something as simple as "Thou shall not murder." Seems perfectly obvious to me, and many people might argue that as an innate value; history, as well as contemporary behavior, would argue otherwise, that it is an abstract concept with which most people actually disagree.

A little more charity of the spirit is due for these people, IMHO.

is not the same thing as a free pass IMO.

Let the work of redemption begin with the children, and the women (affects that flat aren't indicators of psychic or spiritual health), and the men young enough not yet to be abusers.

Let the work begin with counselors -- trained in sensitivity to faith, if need be -- and continue until all the broken people who can be made whole again have been.

But don't give a pass to Warren Jeffs, or Rulon, or their faithful and complicit, informed disciples. That would be wrong, too -- and it would deprive the women and children of part of the justice they need, whether they know yet they want it or not.

So somebody else will be sorting him out, or not; no longer something we can work on. His evil spawn is doing hard time in a not nice prison, learning the true meaning of subservent. Good.

Not asking for charity for the leadership; there are limits to my compassion and they've all gone way past. Further down, however, it gets a lot more difficult - for me - to sort out criminality from conditioned submission to overwhelming force.

Just so's we're clear, agreed that the abuse and rape and manipulative control and all criminality needs to stop. Agreed, helping the children needs to be the first concern. Agreed, helping the adult wives to see their own complicity along with their victimization will be part of the healing process.

Not all of the men involved are, IMHO, deserving of condemnation only; they've been manipulated and exploited and emotionally abused too, that's all I'm saying.

Thanks again, Sarah, for the break in the political action. Always good to talk with you.

...ask anybody who regularly quotes Ben Franklin, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Mohammed or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

That said ... I don't know, Bringiton.

I know what I believe about rape, and why I believe it.
That it's really hard for me to forgive is all bound up in there, and I know that too.

But you don't turn rabid animals loose after some length of time in the lockup, either.

Life plus a year seems right.

As for Old Rulon, I'm all for an expedition to dig up his bones and scatter them; you bring the shovel, I'll do the digging.

Not all polygamists are rapists; the ones who are, off to the slammer. The rest need some help to get out of the nightmare, and some reinforcement to make them pay attention and behave whether they change their beliefs or not.

In the FLDS men are expected to take multiple wives, by the other men and by the women. As soon as a man marries, his wife will start pushing him to take another; she then gets the title of First Wife, and her status in this world and the next is enhanced. The more wives the more status for her husband, and in turn the more status for her. The system is evil, and only the children are innocent.

And yes, forgiveness is difficult. Hatred is a corrosion in the soul, something we shouldn't harbor for long. It drains us of our own goodness, and turns us against our better nature. All of which is easier to say than to do, it surely is.

Have you put in your garden yet? Weather's been warm enough. You were IIRC going to try banana squash. Green growing things lift the spirit.

out of the roses and grapes, actually (grape leaves are little delicate purple buds that might not get frozen, and the rose has one fuschia bloom with countless promises).

May pick up a tomato plant or two this week. Off to the grocery store soon, as the new job is located in the heart of a construction zone and lunch-time travel can be interesting in the ancient Chinese sense.

Thinking about other stuff, but we need a rain ...

There's a metaphor begging to be exploited.

Hopefully bindweed or similar, nothing poisonous. You don't have kudzu out where you are, do you? That is some seriously nasty stuff.

Not to be cruel, but my tomatoes are just busting at the seams. From 49 cent seedlings a few weeks ago, they're pushing two feet tall and lots of flowers. Still a little cool at night to set fruit, but soon. Supposed to get a warmimg trend next weekend so maybe, maybe. I'd put up photos but it seems harsh for the northerners.

Chard, Sarah. Tasty, and so good for you.

Not kudzu. Some ornamental thing my next-door neighbors let escape ... if only the wizened wistaria on the shared fence were as hardy!