No matter how it gets sliced, THIS is gonna get weirder and weirder before it's over... if it ever does get over with:

Source:
MYWAY.COM 4.21.08
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By MICHELLE ROBERTS

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) - More than 400 children taken from a polygamous sect's ranch will undergo DNA testing this week, an attempt to determine who their parents are and if any sexual abuse took place.

Officials plan to begin taking DNA samples Monday at the coliseum in San Angelo where the children are being housed, but may need three or four days to complete the job.

Judge Barbara Walther ordered the tests at the request of state officials, who have complained that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have continually changed their names, possibly lied about their ages and sometimes had difficulty naming their relatives.

The process will likely take about half an hour per sample because of the paperwork and care needed to avoid contamination, said Darrell Azar, a spokesman for Child Protective Services.

A certain number of DNA markers - segments of the DNA with specific genetic characteristics - are tested to determine whether two people are related. If any uncertainties arise, analysts test additional markers.

When the DNA sampling is completed, state officials will begin to relocate some of the 416 children from the coliseum and will separate the children younger than 4 years from adult mothers.

Officials say family relationships in the sect can be confusing to outsiders because the children of more than one wife live in the same household.

The children identify all the women in the house as their mothers, and if a father leaves the community, children and mothers are reassigned to another man, a child welfare investigator testified during a hearing last week.

State prosecutors have argued that the FLDS church encourages underage marriages and births, subjecting children to sexual abuse or the imminent risk of abuse.

Mothers of the youngest children had been allowed to stay with the children before the judge's order on Friday. But that arrangement will end after they are moved from the coliseum, Azar said.

He said it's not clear how soon the children will be moved, but state workers will try to keep them grouped together with siblings or others from the community.

They'll also try to shield the children, raised in an insular community with no television and little contact with outsiders, from overexposure to mainstream society.

"We're going to try to keep the children in groups so I don't think we're talking about your traditional foster setting," Azar said.

After two days of testimony, Walther ordered that all the children swept up in the raid of the Eldorado compound remain in state custody.

The custody case is one of the nation's largest and most complicated. The ruling Friday capped two days of testimony that sometimes became disorderly as hundreds of lawyers for children and parents competed to defend their clients in two rooms linked by a video feed.

The children, including 130 children younger than 4 years and two dozen adolescent boys, will receive individual hearings before June 5.

Law enforcement officers raided the Yearning For Zion Ranch on April 3. The raid was prompted by calls made to a family violence shelter, purportedly by a 16-year-old girl who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. That girl has never been identified."

Evidently, there are as many as 65 possible fathers, and 240 possible mothers involved.

Finally, the fathers speak:

Source:
CBSNEWS.COM 4.21.08
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"...Asked by Rodriguez if he was saying older men don't marry adolescent girls in the compound, Edson replied, "I didn't say that at all, but I think that people have a false concept of what our religion is all about. To say that they're sexually abused and that people here are -- they haven't found anything to my knowledge that proves that. ... But I think that, overall, they look at us as if we're immoral people and, in our own makeup, that is the very most important part of our religion, is to be morally clean. I have a hard time standing here being a criminal, when I had no idea that I'm a criminal. I've always strived to be an upright man and my children and my family, everyone that I know, love me and I love them."

If an adolescent had sex with an older man, should that be considered abuse?

Ruloln answered, "The state of Texas has defined it as that. I would simply say, if you had a teenage girl that chose to go that way, could you force her to do otherwise? No, you could not. We are not a people of force. We are people of free agency and peace. We do not teach our children to have sexual conduct before they are of age. We do not teach them that; we teach them the contrary."

"But gentlemen," Rodriguez asked, "do you think that a teenage girl has the maturity to make that kind of decision, especially if she sees other girls doing it and maybe might believe that it's OK? Isn't it your responsibility to tell them no it's not OK?"

A mah who said his name is Jake and said he has a two-and-a-half-year-old child, responded, "You can tell your child, 'Go through the courts to do it right and proper."

"So," Rodriguez followed-uop, "are you saying that, that's what you tell girls who are young and want to marry these older men?"

"Well, it's not my -- it's not my child. That's what I'll tell my children -- it's definitely -- after they're 18, it's their choice. If they want to go that route, they can."

Earlier, Jake said it's been very difficult not having his child with him. His voice cracking, he said, "I miss my child, my heart's broken. But, I know that we'll see him sometime soon, if we stay at it and be faithful."

The interview will be broadcast in two parts, Monday and Tuesday on The Early Show. "

As of this afternoon... the total number of kids forcibly separated from their mothers has been increased from 416 to 437.

This woman may be responsible for traumatizing 437 children and their parents, and will get away with it scot free.

Even assuming that there WERE instances of violated law in that compound, there was NO reason to mass arrest all those people and put them through what they are having to endure.

Source:
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS 4.23.08
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COLORADO SPRINGS —
"A court document says a phone number used to report alleged abuse at a polygamist retreat in Texas had been used previously by a 33-year-old Colorado woman.

It's not yet clear whether authorities suspect Rozita Swinton of Colorado Springs made any of the calls that triggered this month's raid of the compound.

An arrest warrant affidavit made public today says a phone number she had used previously was used to call a Texas crisis center before authorities conducted the raid and removed more than 400 children. Swinton's whereabouts are unknown.

Authorities have said a 16-year-old girl called a crisis center claiming she was abused at the compound. Authorities have not found that girl but say they have found evidence other children were abused.

Swinton was arrested April 16 on a misdemeanor charge of false reporting in a February incident in Colorado Springs with no known ties to the Texas case. She was later released.

Two Texas Rangers were with Colorado officials when they searched Swinton's home. Texas authorities said the search turned up several items suggesting a possible connection between Swinton and calls regarding compounds in Texas and Arizona owned by the Mormon sect, called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The items weren't identified..."

Child Protection Service is just that, a service to protect those (child/children) that cannot protect themselves. A parent that puts the perverse desire of an adult above the welfare of their own child is revolting.

Michael, did you catch the news program a couple of weeks ago about the "Lost Boys" from the compounds?

quote:

Originally posted by Why?:
Child Protection Service is just that, a service to protect those (child/children) that cannot protect themselves. A parent that puts the perverse desire of an adult above the welfare of their own child is revolting.

Michael, did you catch the news program a couple of weeks ago about the "Lost Boys" from the compounds?

I did see some reporting about those boys, and some since too.

It's a pathetic situation. But, I can testify from direct experience that Child Protective Services, while noble in intent, can very quickly become a barbaric and callous organization.

I believe they went overboard in this instance. Granted that there likely is probable cause, in SOME cases down there, to make a finding worth investigating and prosecuting, I have seen nothing (yet) which demonstrates to me that the strategy CPS and law enforcement took was necessary, or could not have been handled in a far less traumatic manner.

As it stands now, virtually every single one of those children will NEVER forget this experience, and have been harmed by the CPS as much as by anything that may or may not have happened to them on the ranch.

I have direct personal experience with being made a Ward of the Court as a child, and with foster homes and government run boarding schools, and with the entire Child Welfare system. In fact, my own mother married my father when she was 16 years of age... and all it took was the signature of one parent, right here in Joplin. I don't believe she suffered any ill effects or moral degradation as a result of her age at the time.

Being a father of four grown kids, I once found myself appealing to CPS to help me get one of my son's away from his physically and mentally violent drug-crazed mother. CPS refused to help me because the mother had full legal and physical custody.

I have great empathy for those children and parents down there, and very much want there to be an end to ALL "marriage" and pregnancy among minor females of the FLDS. However, CPS has created a social catastrophe by its ham-handed bean counting methods. In fact, even from what little we know about the facts, it is safe to say that their response to what may well have been a hoax complaint was and remains nothing short of hysterical. They have ALL been found guilty or needy of something, to be decided by the state of Texas, without full revelation of specifics.

Many people forget that the tragedy at Waco years ago among the Branch Davidians got started because of allegations of child abuse... and unless I am mistaken, none were ever proven.

I hope nothing more serious or destructive will be allowed to occur, and that the bad guys will receive their due. And, no... I am not a Mormon nor a wannabe.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Michael S. Bell,

As of today (April 25th) the number of children taken into Texas custody has increased from 416, to 437 and now to 460... according to an article I posted in this thread, but which was, for some reason, edited out in full.

I some ways, all of this reminds me of what the American government did to "re-program" native American children in the early last century... sharply cutting them off from everything they had ever known before.

Texas should be ashamed of the way it is handling these children.

Now we are finally getting somewhere. 53 girls between age 14-17 were living on that ranch. Of that number, 31 either have children or are pregnant.

It is THOSE minors who may have been victimized by specific males in the sect. It is THOSE children, NOT the 429 others currently being kept from their mothers !!!!!!!!!!! who should be the subject and target of the investigation.

The tragedy continues for every day the innocent are kept from their homes and families and for every day that the perpetrators are free to continue their practises.

Source:
ASSOCIATED PRESS 4.28.08
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SAN ANTONIO (AP) -
"Texas child welfare officials say more than half the teen girls swept into state custody from a polygamist sect's ranch have been pregnant.

Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar says 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 were living on the ranch in Eldorado. Of that group, 31 already have children or are pregnant..."

So, based on a hoax phone call from a 16 year-old girl who has yet to be located, and now an arrest warrant which has been dropped, a virtually para-military force of law officers invaded private property and took 460 children into custody, all of whom are prevented from returning to their parents and homes to this day.

Source:
MYWAY.COM 5.3.08
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ELDORADO, Texas (AP) -
"An arrest warrant has been dropped for a man thought to be the husband of a teenage girl whose report of abuse triggered a raid on a polygamous sect's Texas compound, authorities said Friday.

A Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman would not say why the warrant was dropped for Dale E. Barlow, 50, who lives in Colorado City, Ariz. Barlow has denied knowing the 16-year-old girl who called a crisis center.

The girl reported that she was a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that she was beaten and raped at the sect's Eldorado ranch.

An investigation led to the April 3 raid, in which state welfare workers took 463 children living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch. A boy was born to one of the sect's mothers Tuesday; he and the other children remain in state custody.

Authorities have not located the 16-year-old girl and are investigating the source of the call.

Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger would not say when the warrant for Barlow was dropped, only that "it is no longer active."

Rob Parker, an FLDS spokesman, said the dropped warrant shows the weakness of the state's case against residents of the ranch.

"I think that's just one more piece of evidence that the whole basis on which this raid was premised was unfounded and was inadequately checked out, to the formulation of what basically amounted to an army that went in there and took their children," Parker said."

By the way... has it crossed anyone else's mind that it takes a precious looooooonnnnnnnggggggggg time to get the government to order and receive results from a DNA test that has been requested by Defense counsel which might prove the innocence of somebody, but when the government wants to DNA test 460+ kids AND their parents then they can manage to get that accomplished in about 3 days?

The red tape and deliberations process suddenly gets shortened rather amazingly, does it not?

Hey now, we have to watch those religious compounds in Texas. We have the troops on standby and the flamethrowers ready.