I don’t know if you’ve been following the story of the fundamentalist mormon polygamous sect. It’s obvious they have lots of underage females being married to older men, sometimes as second and third wives. Ick. It’s rape, sexual abuse, slavery, illegal etc. But what about the innocent little kids they’ve taken away from their parents? I don’t understand why there isn’t more of an outcry, it just seems wrong and stupid to cause such horrible emotional trauma like this by separating them.
While CPS said Monday that all children are accounted for, one FLDS mother said she has been unable to learn where her 2-year-old son has been placed. He does not show up by name or birth date on CPS’ placement list, she said. He was born the same month, though a year earlier, than another toddler with the same first name - Mahonri.
Her son “has brown eyes and blond hair,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. “The other has blue eyes and sandy, thin hair. . . . My concern is they don’t have him listed as the right person or haven’t listed him at all.
“CPS told me they had my [son] at Baptist Children’s center,” she said. “The other mother got the same news, so that doesn’t really tell us what we need to know.”
Some lawyers representing children and mothers are brainstorming ways to speed up hearings for their clients or to challenge the children’s removal from their parents. Others are working to set up visits between mothers and children.
I don’t understand. These parents are overseeing constant neglect and abuse of their children (at least as it is defined by our laws.)
Even so, I don’t see any reason at all to separate the mothers from the children. It’s extremely distressing for the children as well as the mothers, with no compensatory societal benefit.
A few weeks ago I read a memoir by a woman who had been raised in the FLDS, and was one of 8 or 10 wives; she had 13 children, and her husband had some huge number of children with all his wives. It didn’t sound like much of a life, with girls, especially, discouraged from going to school, and boys kicked out as early as possible to maintain the surplus of women. The girls were "married" to men decades older than they, and the girls had no say in the matter most of the time. They believe strongly in the practice of polygamy but it isn’t a freely chosen life by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s a very complicated situation, I don’t know if you saw that more than half of all the underage girls in the compound are or have been pregnant. I feel bad for the parents, and I don’t even care if they practice polygamy (it was very interesting to hear some of the women from the compound talking about how polygamy was their faith. They seemed very sincere.)
However, all they had to do was bump up the ages of their brides by a couple of years to 17 or 18. As it is, I think the authorities did have every right to take the kids away. There doesn’t seem to be a limit for how young the "brides" are, so what if some wacko decided to marry a bunch of 8 year olds?
I can understand why the children were removed but couldn’t they have left a few of the Mothers, like one Mother for 20 or more kids and then monitor their time with the adult. Maggie, lets hear from you.
I understand the logic for removing all kids when they’re sexual abuse — but in this case there doesn’t seem to be any evidence toddlers or little kids are being abused. Maybe in the end it will be worth it but I don’t understand why they couldn’t have a big investigation like they do for drug operations and organized crime. They could do surveillance, make charts on the wall of the families, have fake delivery people come in, talk to the stores around etc.
I have been following this, and asking Maggie what she thinks because CASA (her job) is there advocating for the children. This is going to be a chapter in every social work text book from now on, I bet. There are many adults and children with the same name, and some of the children claim to have more than one mother, and forget about identifying the fathers. So it’s a social work nightmare. I really hope Maggie posts because one of the things she told me is that when there is suspected sexual abuse, all of the children in the family are removed until their safety is ensured. There are so many tragic elements to this but I think when the dust settles the trauma of the separation of families will be worth it–and that’s my educated guess as a dog groomer.