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Author Topic:   Texas child abuse case
randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 1 of 8 (469025)
06-03-2008 1:54 AM


The state returns the children after a court rules the state overstepped it's bounds. Always seemed strange to end custody of all parental rights over the accusations of a woman with 9 different personalities.
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Woman linked to calls that triggered FLDS raid claims life of abuse - The Salt Lake Tribune
Of course, that doesn't mean the state should not investigate in a normal and judicial manner, but seizing every family's kids was way over the top. There may well be abuse here but you should not be allowed to take away people's children wholesale on flimsy accusations and when most kids are not even potentially subject to abuse as the accusation is teens are forced into marriage, not younger children.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by Larni, posted 06-03-2008 3:42 AM randman has not replied
 Message 3 by Adminnemooseus, posted 06-03-2008 4:17 PM randman has replied

  
Larni
Member (Idle past 164 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 2 of 8 (469032)
06-03-2008 3:42 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by randman
06-03-2008 1:54 AM


article states writes:
Court sides with polygamists
The Third Court of Appeals ruled that the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and had offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children.
It's a great relief that no more than 5 of them were abused. Any more and it would have been an outrage.
A lttle distress to stop not more than 5 teenaged girls being abused?
A fair trade.
article goes on to write writes:
Texas authorities last week collected DNA from jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs as part of investigation into underage sex with girls, ages 12 to 15. He has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and is jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate charges.
So the leader of this cult is a paedophile?
Yay FLDS!
Edited by Larni, : Second article

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Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 3 of 8 (469076)
06-03-2008 4:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by randman
06-03-2008 1:54 AM


Link to previous topic on this theme

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by randman, posted 06-08-2008 1:43 AM Adminnemooseus has replied

  
subbie
Member (Idle past 1255 days)
Posts: 3509
Joined: 02-26-2006


Message 4 of 8 (469081)
06-03-2008 5:24 PM


At the risk of appearing reasonable in the face of a situation that apparently calls for hysteria (not necessarily referring to anyone here), and at the greater risk of agreeing with randman, here are a few facts.
First, here is the opinion of the Texas Supreme Court, and here is the opinion of the Court of Appeals. A simple reading of those opinions shows that the children were removed because of insufficient evidence establishing an immediate threat of harm to the children that were subject to the suit, and because the child welfare officials did not properly follow all procedures before removing the children.
All of the children from the entire community were taken on the basis of an anonymous telephone report, and the fact that 5 of the underage girls were pregnant. While there is no doubt that these facts are a sufficient basis for investigating what is happening there, it's not enough reason to remove every child, including prepubescent girls and all the boys.
The Texas Supreme Court opinion does not mean that the state will simply drop the matter. The state can later remove some, or perhaps even all, of the children if further facts are developed during the rest of the investigation, and if proper procedures are followed.
I suspect that if the state had removed only the pregnant girls, or perhaps only the post pubescent girls, that removal might well have been upheld by the appellate courts. Of course, the local frenzy prevented such thoughtful action, replacing it instead with a witch hunt mentality.
I am by no means defending the positions or rumored activities of these religious wackos (please pardon my redundancy). But the fact that they hold out of the mainstream religious views is, or should be, irrelevant in determining whether to take their children. Pity that it wasn't.

Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Replies to this message:
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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 5 of 8 (469854)
06-08-2008 1:43 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by Adminnemooseus
06-03-2008 4:17 PM


And...?
Not sure how to respond. Are you saying this topic is closed or something?
As far as the other thread, it's not the same subject and I am not interested. In fact, it seems a gross slander and negligent defamation to accuse me of somehow supporting pedophiles when in reality, at least for prepubescent molestation by adults, if it's STRONGLY clear the perp is guilty, I favor the death penalty for that crime.
But what we are talking of here is a clear case of abuse of power by the state, which the courts have ruled on. Regardless of the accusation, people are entitled to due process and seizing someone's children and taking them away should never be done unless there is clear evidence of the children being in immediate danger. Moreover, it's even weirder to take away children from teen Moms because of alleged abuse of the Mom. We don't do that with any other situation.
If a teenager somewhere gets pregnant because she was statutorily raped, we do not take her child from her and further subject her to abuse. That's not what we do with teen Moms in other situations.
Lastly, if only teens are even alleged to be threatened with abuse by a system encouraging them to voluntarily have sex as if they were adults, why are you taking small children from families. Simply prosecute the statutory rape and tell the other families, you'll be watching and if they follow the same practice, they will be prosecuted.
Let me put it this way....I suspect there are similar or worse percentages of unwed, teen Moms in the projects. Do we go into the projects and say, look, because you are part of a subgroup in soceity with a high disposition towards teens getting pregnant, and yes, some by those older than 18, we are going to take away all of your children?
Is that right?
Edited by randman, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Jaderis
Member (Idle past 3426 days)
Posts: 622
From: NY,NY
Joined: 06-16-2006


Message 6 of 8 (469865)
06-08-2008 4:21 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by subbie
06-03-2008 5:24 PM


All of the children from the entire community were taken on the basis of an anonymous telephone report, and the fact that 5 of the underage girls were pregnant. While there is no doubt that these facts are a sufficient basis for investigating what is happening there, it's not enough reason to remove every child, including prepubescent girls and all the boys.
I admit that I haven't read the cases, yet, but I will. For now I would like to state that suspicion of abuse in a family merits the removal of any and all children from that family, no matter if the charge is against a particular sex or age or even if only one child is being abused. In this case, the familial relationships are ambiguous and it has been previously established (RE:Warren Jeffs trial) that the "abuse" does not necessarily come from the parents (although they seem to be complicit). I don't think that returning the children without a more thorough investigation was the right thing to do.
For starters, the investigation into the parents of the underage pregnant girls wasn't complete and, therefore, we don't know who their parents or who the parents of any of the remaining children are (please correct me if I am wrong here).
Therefore, it is impossible to know which parents were/are complicit in the abuse (putting aside the cult abuse argument).
This is why the child protective services had to act the way they did, IMO. Because they had no way to establish maternity/paternity or even parental responsibility off the bat. In regular abuse cases, all children are removed from the home while an investigation is completed. In this case, there was no clear way to tell which kid was whose, so the safest bet was to remove them all and investigate.
But besides the biological argument, they live in "group" homes. They operate as a group, therefore, they should be treated as a group.
If I have a group of 10 foster kids and one of them accuses me of abuse, I expect to have all of the kids removed from me while an investigation goes on. I should not be able to influence or further abuse any of my charges while the investigation is going on.
In this case you have (hypothetically) 5 women and one man. One 12 year old girl is pregnant. There are 18 other kids ranging in age from 0-14. They are all one family. They (the adults) are all responsible for what happens to that 12 year old girl. They (the adults) should not be able to influence or further abuse any of the children in their charge while the investigation is going on.
Barring actual knowledge as to the parentage and household situation of each child, I fail to see the difference between every day abuse cases and this one.

"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by subbie, posted 06-03-2008 5:24 PM subbie has not replied

  
Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 7 of 8 (469908)
06-08-2008 1:51 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by randman
06-08-2008 1:43 AM


The reason for the link to the other topic
I linked to your message 1 not really as a reply to your message. It was more just to connect the link to the message 1. An alternative would have been to edit the link message onto the message 1. Another alternative would have been to close your new topic and force the discussion back to the older topic.
You may or may not have a topic theme change in your new topic. Regardless, your new topic is directly related to the other topic. I supplied the link in case anyone wished to go to the back-story topic.
I closed the previous topic since I viewed this new one as a continuation of it. If someone wishes to present a case for the previous topic being reopened, the should go to the Thread Reopen Requests topic.
I am not going to enter this debate other than as a moderator.
There is no need for anyone to respond to this message. So don't do such.
Adminnemooseus

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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dawkinsisNOTGod 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5769 days)
Posts: 33
From: Lashville, Tennessee
Joined: 06-11-2008


Message 8 of 8 (470508)
06-11-2008 8:59 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by Adminnemooseus
06-08-2008 1:51 PM


Re: The reason for the link to the other topic
You are all bad texans

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