Suffer The Children
One telephone call started the process which led to the removal by the police of 416 children from the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church Of The Latter Day Saints) near Eldorado Texas. Most of the ones taken away had never been outside the compound and had in fact been trained to believe the ‘outside’ world was a place of sin. The children must have been terrified. They were taken to Fort Concho but had to be removed from there to the San Angelo Coliseum when approximately 20 of the children were found to have chicken pox. Now they have to wait for the courts to decide their future. Will they be allowed to return to their parents? Will they be allowed to be returned to their mothers if their mothers leave the compound and give up their religious lifestyle? What will be the fate of these children some of whom are still babies?
Polygamy is not a lifestyle that most of us condone but there must have been a better way to handle this situation in which the children who were taken because they were thought to be the victims of sexual abuse appear to now be the victims of society.
Darrell Azar (Texas Department of Family and Protective Services) has stated that although the mothers and children are being kept together right now at the coliseum the mothers are not being allowed back in if they leave to see their husbands in Eldorado.
There are a lot of issues for both sides of this situation and it’s further complicated by the fact that some of the children may not even be Americans but are Canadian citizens who are now in ‘state custody’ as a result of the ruling of Judge Barbara Walther. No one knows how long it will take to sort out the situation. Under Texas law, the state has to hold a custody hearing within 14 days of when a child is removed from a parent’s custody and care. The raid occurred April 3, 2008 and the judge has said the custody hearings for these children must be finished by June 5, 2008. Meanwhile they will be put in foster care. Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy, an organization that works in cooperation with a multitude of state government agencies to counsel traumatized children, stated under cross-examination, “the traditional foster care system would be destructive to these kids.”
Now the authorities think the original telephone call may have been a hoax. Apparently there hasn’t been any concrete evidence of sexual abuse. It seems as though there is something very wrong going on here.
April 19 2008 05:26 pm | News
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