Polygamous-sect children ordered to stay in Texas custody

[Morcova]

Last year in Colorado, 13 children died in the custody of their parents because the state took the same attitude you want Texas to take.

But at least they died in the 'care' of their parents!11!

 

[Crazy Liz]

Liz are you pro-incest and pro-pedophilla?

As distasteful as that question may be it has to be asked, you've argued this whole thread that it's better to leave these kids with the very people who are abusing them.

Are these 400 kids all victims of incest and pedophilia?

Other than being members of the same religion or living in the same neighborhood, what evidence is there that all 400 of them are being abused?

 

[IisJustMe]

Are these 400 kids all victims of incest and pedophilia?

We don't know. Are you willing to leave them in the compound where they almost certainly will be victims of incest and pedophilia? <staff edit> Do you not understand that leaving them there is the same mistake Colorado officials made last year? <staff edit>

Other than being members of the same religion or living in the same neighborhood, what evidence is there that all 400 of them are being abused?

<staff edit> We all have posted the facts and links to the facts that prove the children are in danger. <staff edit>

 

[Crazy Liz]

What part of "it is more dangerous and hurtful to them to be left in an environment where they absolutely will be sexually abused" do you not understand??

What evidence is there for this assertion?

Last year in Colorado, 13 children died in the custody of their parents because the state took the same attitude you want Texas to take. Despite evidence that the children were endangered, the supervisors took the attitude that is was better to leave them in the home with the parents. Now there are 24 people facing charges ranging from manslaughter to capitol murder because of bleeding hearts who don't want to see the truth. That's why kids need to be removed from homes when there is perhaps not enough evidence for a criminal conviction.

And how many kids died in foster care?

Certainly the third floor of the temple and the young pregnant girls who were taken out of the compound are ample evidence to substantiate the need to remove them and continue the investigation with the children in a safe environment. If you can't understand that, then you are too naive to have a part in the discussion.

The third floor of the temple has a bed where people have sex. So what?

Should all pregnant teens be removed from their homes? Perhaps. And then we need to break the cycle of underage parenthood by taking these girls' babies away from them so they won't be able to make the same mistakes raising them that their own parents made, right?

There just isn't a simple answer.

But I guess I'm crazy for thinking the situation is complicated.

 

[IisJustMe]

What evidence is there for this assertion?

You've been given the evidence. You ignore it. Why should I bother?

And how many kids died in foster care?

One. In a car wreck that wasn't the foster parents' fault. Nice try.

 

[Crazy Liz]

Perhaps I'm just more familiar than others with the kinds of abuse that can go on in foster care.

Perhaps I think treating a mother who is 17 as a victim and a mother who is 18 as a perpetrator makes very little sense. A baby whose mother is 18 gets separated from his mother, but a baby whose mother is 17 doesn't. Is this arbitrary or what?

 

[IisJustMe]

Perhaps I'm just more familiar than others with the kinds of abuse that can go on in foster care. Perhaps I think treating a mother who is 17 as a victim and a mother who is 18 as a perpetrator makes very little sense. A baby whose mother is 18 gets separated from his mother, but a baby whose mother is 17 doesn't. Is this arbitrary or what?

It's an overgeneralized statement that doesn't bear up under scrutiny. Lost of adolescent mothers are separated form their children because of the nature of the allegations concerning them. In the case of the compound in Texas, many of the mothers are abused children themselves. You can't apply your situation (assuming it is yours, sorry if that's in error) to this one. This is unique and the size and scope of the investigation is unrprecedented. If this is indeed your scenario that you speak of, I'm sorry. But as a psychologist I'd have to side with the state at least until it's investigation is complete. There is no way to know what danger the child may or may not be in if left in the home. Colorado learned that the hard way.

 

[Crazy Liz]

You've been given the evidence. You ignore it. Why should I bother?One. In a car wreck that wasn't the foster parents' fault. Nice try.

If the DNA evidence showed only adults had used it, would it still be so sick?

 

[Crazy Liz]

It's an overgeneralized statement that doesn't bear up under scrutiny. Lost of adolescent mothers are separated form their children because of the nature of the allegations concerning them. In the case of the compound in Texas, many of the mothers are abused children themselves. You can't apply your situation (assuming it is yours, sorry if that's in error) to this one. This is unique and the size and scope of the investigation is unrprecedented. If this is indeed your scenario that you speak of, I'm sorry. But as a psychologist I'd have to side with the state at least until it's investigation is complete. There is no way to know what danger the child may or may not be in if left in the home. Colorado learned that the hard way.

You're a psychologist?

 

[IisJustMe]

If the DNA evidence showed only adults had used it, would it still be so sick?

Yes. It's a temple. Not a brothel. Only pagans had sex in their temples.

 

[Crazy Liz]

Yes. It's a temple. Not a brothel. Only pagans had sex in their temples.

So religious discrimination is part of the problem.

 

[immersedingrace]

Nobody here is concerned that children are harmed when taken from their parents and the only home they have known, no matter how bad it is? In places other than Texas, social workers normally do all they can to keep children with their parents, because they know removing the children will be traumatic. They want to be VERY sure the harm being done is both immediate and worse than the trauma they will cause by the removal. Otherwise, they will use other interventions before removal.

Have you ever worked for Child Protective Services? I have. And believe me, the LAST Thing a SW wants is to add 4 hundred more children to their already OVERLOADED caseload. I am confident that the state tried to interene and from what I've been hearing, these families are not too cooperative. The CHILDREN aren't being cooperative. I just wonder where they got that from! When I worked of CPS (in PA, not Texas so not sure how it works there but I'm guessing similarly) the casworker was assigned to ALL the children in ONE family based on who the mother was. THANK GOD that it wasn't by father, and I'm praying it isn't in this particular case because it would be an even bigger nightmare for the SW. No one is saying or has ever said that removing children from a home isn't traumatic. Working in placement, I rarely ever had to do it because I was working on reunification or adoption but I did have to remove 6 children from the same family (it was all the children) at once. While it can't compare to the trauma the children and family feels it is traumatic for the SW as well. No official in this case came to the decision to remove 400 children without giving it much thought and consideration to the best interest of the children. There's almost no way they could have orchestrated something like this without much thought. It took my agency a month to orchestrate the removal of 6 children with the least amount of trauma. But no matter how traumatic it is for these children, that can't even compare to the trauma it is to be raped/molested. If the parents would have cooperated with an investigation and answered the questions about which child belonged to which family and gave proper names/identification, etc, I seriously doubted the state would have taken the measures they took because that's just opening themselves up to lawsuits and public criticism etc. The state did the right thing.

 

[IisJustMe]

Immersed, my hat's off to you. Having a family therapy certification on my license, I have dealt with a fraction of a fraction of the issues you've seen. I couldn't do it. Thank God there are people gifted and talented to do so.

You're right about the kids not cooperating, either, nor are the mothers. They won't say their correct names, they won't say how many children they have, they won't give their husbands' names (that's not a typo, the SWs know some of them have the same husband) and they won't even say how old they are. What a mess! It will take years to sort through.

Why would anyone think it prudent to leave kids in an environment that fosters that kind of "cooperation" with authorities?

 

[Crazy Liz]

You've been given the evidence. You ignore it. Why should I bother?One. In a car wreck that wasn't the foster parents' fault. Nice try.

I'm glad Colorado has had better luck with kids in foster care than California. Perhaps they keep the number of children in the system low enough that they can carefully screen potential foster parents and only choose the very best ones.

You have to weigh the risks. In order to lower the criteria for removal of children in CO so as to have prevented these 13 deaths, how many more children would have had to be put in the system? Since we can only know from hindsight which children actually will die, we certainly can't assume the number of kids in foster care would be increased by only 13.

So let's say Colorado doubled the number of children in foster care, just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately, the risk to children in foster care would more than double because Colorado would have to lower its standards, training, screening practices, increase the incentives to become foster parents, etc. All these things would make foster care more risky for children.

You can't just remove children from their homes wholesale "to be on the safe side." There are risks on both sides, and when you tip the balance, you increase the risks on the removal side.

 

[IisJustMe]

Liz, I have to agree with you that it is a balancing act that I'm sure "immersed" could tell you makes the SWs feel like they are walking on a tightrope. When we have blatant sexual perversion afoot in a closed compound as we do in Texas, we cannot afford to leave innocent children who for all practical purposes have been brainwashed to lie to authorities to protect their pedophile "fathers" from arrest. Again, if that is difficult for you to see, I don't know what else to tell you. The Texas situation is a tragedy, and the only greater tragedy would be to leave those kids in the FLDS compound while they try to sort out this morass.

 

[Crazy Liz]

It's an overgeneralized statement that doesn't bear up under scrutiny. Lost of adolescent mothers are separated form their children because of the nature of the allegations concerning them. In the case of the compound in Texas, many of the mothers are abused children themselves. You can't apply your situation (assuming it is yours, sorry if that's in error) to this one.

What kind of "situation" are you assuming I have?

This is unique and the size and scope of the investigation is unrprecedented. If this is indeed your scenario that you speak of, I'm sorry. But as a psychologist I'd have to side with the state at least until it's investigation is complete. There is no way to know what danger the child may or may not be in if left in the home. Colorado learned that the hard way.

As a family mediator, I spent a large part of my career trying to help parents and children stay out of the family court system. Every situation is unique. It is like walking a tightrope. Before I became a mediator, I used to wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety attacks, fearing I had ruined some kid's life because I hadn't thought of the exact right words to say during the 5 minutes I had in front of the judge who was going to make a decision that would change the rest of their life. The number of cases I saw as a litigator where children were harmed by the family court system were much more numerous than the ones I saw where they were saved.

 

[LouTheWicked]

They have to be seperated, only temporarily if they wish. When this huge and tragic mess is sorted, then I'm sure the mothers can be reunited with their children, if they want to.

 

[IisJustMe]

What kind of "situation" are you assuming I have?

Your statement read as though you had been the "victim," personally, of having a child taken from you. My mistake in making that assumption. <staff edit>

 

[TexasSky]

I'm glad Colorado has had better luck with kids in foster care than California. Perhaps they keep the number of children in the system low enough that they can carefully screen potential foster parents and only choose the very best ones.

You have to weigh the risks. In order to lower the criteria for removal of children in CO so as to have prevented these 13 deaths, how many more children would have had to be put in the system? Since we can only know from hindsight which children actually will die, we certainly can't assume the number of kids in foster care would be increased by only 13.

So let's say Colorado doubled the number of children in foster care, just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately, the risk to children in foster care would more than double because Colorado would have to lower its standards, training, screening practices, increase the incentives to become foster parents, etc. All these things would make foster care more risky for children.

You can't just remove children from their homes wholesale "to be on the safe side." There are risks on both sides, and when you tip the balance, you increase the risks on the removal side.

Maybe the Colorado foster care system needs to be revamped. Your statements indicate it is better to leave a child in a home where they can be physically or sexually abused than to put them in foster care in your state. That speaks badly of your state's foster care system.

 

[TexasSky]

What evidence is there for this assertion?



And how many kids died in foster care?



The third floor of the temple has a bed where people have sex. So what?

Should all pregnant teens be removed from their homes? Perhaps. And then we need to break the cycle of underage parenthood by taking these girls' babies away from them so they won't be able to make the same mistakes raising them that their own parents made, right?

There just isn't a simple answer.

But I guess I'm crazy for thinking the situation is complicated.

If the family is teaching the underage pregnant teenager that it is that teenager's obligation to family and God to let someone else have intercourse with them, whether they want it or not, then yes, we should remove them from the home.

I hope that you have enough sense to know the difference between a child who will be ostricized if they do not submit to an older man's sexual advances, and who is told they will go to hell if they do not submit to this, and in a teenager who forgot to use a condom on a date.