Sunday, June 15, 2008

What Happened?

I started a big long post on the Fundamentalist Mormons, but have decided to make it a short one. I kept looking at what I wrote and just keep wanting to write it again, thinking I can't say what I want to say. One of my problems is I that I don't want to seem like I'm really sympathizing with the largely unsavory aspects of that community in any other way than to say that I can't stand to see even a despicable group's rights violated. And I don't believe it was necessary to do so in this case. I am capable of feeling differently; sometimes I lose my high and mighty notions. I certainly have been known to go around claiming the Gunn City Massacre is a model of how we ought to handle some of the scoundrels involved in some of these fiascos like the Sub-Prime scandal. I guess such a claim is a type of bluster that I don't really subscribe to. If you make me get "all serious" you could get me to disavow such things as rooting for Vigilante action. But if it seemed to me that a lot of wrongdoing was going on with the FLDS while they hid behind their rights, that could bother me too. Just the same, to my knowledge, no member of that Mormon community has been charged with anything since the raid, which hardly sounds right. So far this seems to have been the sole result: State of Texas Shells Out 14 Million Dollars after FLDS Raid .

Something that struck a lot of people were reports that the same Child Protection Agency that was so eager to take these kids, claiming they were mistreated, then basically began to mistreat them, albeit in a different way. Particularly poignant was the report that Texas Child Protection employees reacted to children crying for their mothers by following these kids around and taking notes. Of course the agency was totally overwhelmed, something that these kinds of agencies never seem to be able to foresee is going to happen. It does seem to me that the same agencies with people who are totally ready to sympathize with the plight of the families they are supposed to help have no concept of how impossible they themselves are making the situation.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess what has confused me from the beginning is that at ;east one of the children made a sexual abuse claim to get the ball rolling, if you will. What happened? Did they make it up? I just don't understand how everything got so screwed up to begin with.

Carlw4514 said...

yes, "what happened?" is exactly how I titled this.

I am not sure what else they have besides one lady calling in from Colorado, that seems to be acknowledged as a hoax....

there seems to be a feeling there are more people making charges, but it's all secrecy it seems.

Do we need 'Habeus Corpus' laws when it comes to Child Protective Services? those charges have to come out when adults are charged, or you can't hold them.

Forrest said...

I have had some experience with CPS in Arlington VA as part of a volunteer job. I would never argue that we don't need CPS and I think that they have terrible jobs. The people that do this work certainly have my respect. However, sometimes they do get too "authoritarian" and can exceed the authority that was intended, in my opinion. There don't seem to be any checks and balances.