May 23 2008
Anonymous Tips Alone Shouldn’t Be Enough to Remove Children from their Parents
The Texas court ruling that the state had no right to take the FLDS children highlights that the entire system for determining whether or not a child is in danger needs to be looked at. Is an anonymous phone call really enough to create so much turmoil? I know from things that have happened to friends who have fallen foul to an angry neighbor that this is an effective way of getting even as CPS is keen to investigate anonymous tips and are good at following up on those which are founded on nothing more than maliciousness. For sure there are some practices within this particular FLDS community that need investigated, but to put so many young children through the trauma of being removed from their parents and put into a completely alien culture was far more damaging than the possibility that some of the mothers may have been under-age when they became pregnant. There is the issue of whether or not the young women are being forced into relationships they do not desire, and the fate of boys of a similar age group, but this concerns a small percentage of the children who are part of the Yearning for Zion ranch and so at the very most only this age group of say 12-17 years should have been removed from the community until an investigation was carried out.
When we see cultures in the US, and elsewhere in the world where young women of other religions are married young, or those who get pregnant due to low education standards or carelessness, or even those who end up marrying someone because their parents entered into some cultural agreement with friends when they were younger, we don’t find these children removed from their parents despite there are health or right to freedom issues being brought into question. We may shake our heads, but we don’t put all children of parents within each involved culture into care. However, if this happened to the FLDS children, who’s to say it won’t happen somewhere in one of the small mountain communities, or an inner city project next?
There are so many children who really are in danger and they aren’t found because no-one’s looking for them. They live in nice houses, with traditional working parents of mainstream US religions, they attend school like everyone else, and yet they live a nightmare life at home. No-one reports them because it’s the white-picket-fence scenario – nothing could possibly be wrong there. However, just as many child molesters don’t look like monsters, the parents who abuse their children one way or another appear to fit the cultural norm. It’s communities such as the FLDS who stand out and therefore are obvious targets for those with a political agenda who know how to manipulate the news to get the public support of the mainstream culture.
Different cultures aren’t wrong. They aren’t illegal. They’re just different. Polygamy is against US law, but adultery isn’t. I’m not FLDS follower, or even a Mormon, but from what I understand in FLDS communities a “marriage” isn’t actually a legally binding ceremony as the rest of the world understand it, they have their own marriage traditions which mean they are not actually breaking the law and committing polygamy. The only question here is whether or not the girls are forced into relationships against their will and at what age. And for that the state has traumatized over 450 children. Meanwhile there will be a number of children secretly at risk who continue to be harmed because the state’s resources are being used up on what will probably turn out to be a legally expensive and time consuming wild goose chase.
6 Responses to “Anonymous Tips Alone Shouldn’t Be Enough to Remove Children from their Parents”
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While I’m not a follower of the religion I don’t believe EVERY child in the religion had to be taken away. In fact some said yes they are in the religion but would never allow their teens to marry an older man. Some had high standards, but because we don’t like a religion or don’t understand something we yank or get scared. I hate this and look at how many children went into foster care or that the state had to take care of. I understood the ones that were beat getting taken or those that were getting sexually abused but the babies that had no harm or young moms? This makes no sense to me. I feel for these families that did nothing wrong and are now fighting like mad to get their families back. This is wrong on so many levels.
I think the states biggest problem with them is welfare fraud. It wouldn’t surprise me though if the court throws out all the dna testing because the state acted inappropriately to begin with.
While I am dismayed at some of their practices, I guess the government should have thought better of its own tactics.
This is a really hard situation. I have seen at least two talk shows where adults who were children in the FLDS community escaped and told their stories. The women said they were molested and even raped at young ages, as early as six years old, and they asserted this behavior was normal in the community. I think it is so sad.
I think a lot of governemnt and social services people have wanted to investigate the community for a long time, but they never had a reason before now. So, when they got that phone call, they saw the opportunity to investigate.
I am sure it is traumatic for the children to be removed from their mothers, but I think what would be more traumatic for them in the long run is being forced to marry older men, being molested by their fathers and other men in the community, and being forced to reproduce at an early age.
I have studied psychology and social work in depth (almost done with an MSW), and I would rather CPS err on the side of safety - removing the children and finding out that not all of them are in danger, rather than not remove the children and hear accounts of such abuse later.
Great post on a heated topic, by the way!
Anonymous Tips, sound like a good thing until the tables are turned. And you could be the one someone Anonymously called about because they hate you. Even now they are saying it should have been a case by case. Yet i can see how it would be a hard line to hold/
Thanks! You couldn’t see it but I was wearing my flame retardant underwear when posting it! LOL
Lisa: I saw the 2003 statistics for child abuse that said 12.3 children in every 1000 are abused or neglected. To use that statistic (which I guess is probably lower than the current one), then it’s possible that at least 6 of these children are at risk but that statistic holds across the entire country and not just in this one compound. They can’t take away a whole town’s kids because a handful may be abused - if that was deemed to be ok in Texas, it might be my town next because any teacher could make a call to say that a child in her class has a few too many bruises on a regular basis. Their investigation would probably find that there were a few children that were victims of abuse, but to use the 2003 stats again, what about the 981.7 children who are not in the 12.3 victim stat and who have been un-necessarily traumatized? Where are their rights?
This is such an interesting case on many levels because rights are being violated all over the place and the outcome could impact a far wider population than the FLDS members of this particular community.
Chato: I don’t know know what went on there, but as a mother it terrifies me that someone could make an unsubstantiated statement and my child would be placed in care until I proved it was false. Given that I know of at least 2 girls who were abused by their father and then in their foster care placements, (1 of which was moved and abused by her 2nd foster carer), the whole situation is scary.
Children do need protection from the perverts who would harm them, but I just don’t think that what went on in this situation was the way to do it.
Thanks for such a great debate!
As an officer of family court who has worked as a child advocate, I completely agree that that situation (however odd it may seem to us) has just not been handled correctly at all.