April 24, 2008...12:21 pm
FLDS Tragedy: First They Came For The Branch Davidians…
A current twist on the sentiments of Neimoller:
First they came for the Branch Davidians at Waco
and I did not speak out
because I was not an alleged wacko Christian cultist with guns.
Then they came for the FLDS church in San Angelo
and I did not speak out
because I was not an alleged child-abusing polygamist.
Eventually they came for me, and my church
and there was no one left
with any courage or outrage
to speak out for me.
I sit in stunned amazement of so many Americans cheerleading the government of Texas’ actions in the military raid at gunpoint, detention and kidnapping of the women and children at the FLDS compound in San Angelo earlier this month.
Let me state outrightly that I am not Mormon, I do not agree with their religious doctrines and both polygamy and child abuse is wrong and evil in my opinion.
But what was trampled underfoot YET AGAIN in Texas, was not the trampling of the rights of the FLDS members, it is the trampling of due process and the Constitutional rights of ALL AMERICANS.
I’m stunned no one sees or understands the absolute dangerous cliff we are going over with the tyrannical actions made against the FLDS in Texas.
Your right to religious liberty in the First Amendment was trampled.
Your right to be secure in your persons papers and effects, was trampled.
The Constitutional requirement that warrants to search and seize must be obtained by affirmation and oath of more than one witness of probable cause of a crime commited, has now been abolished.
A military raid on YOUR HOUSE or church can now be conducted after nothing more than an anonymous phone call by someone making false allegations.
Your children can and will be forcefully taken away from you at gunpoint if the state says you have abused them, even if no evidence of abuse was presented to a Judge to obtain a warrant.
Your children will become wards of the state and shipped to group home gulags with a history of abuse and murder. Parents are then prohibited from seeing their children and despite petition from attorneys, are denied by Judicial tyranny.
You can have your prayers prohibited unless they are monitored by a court-appointed overseer.
Your individual case to plead is abolished and you are treated in bulk with the whole of those accused.
And all of this, done before any defendants have their day in court.
I cannot relay to you how much my own blood boils at the abject tyranny on display in this case. This is Waco part II, without the bloodshed - but even more damaging to our liberties as Americans than at Mount Carmel.
I had someone argue with me vehemently that the FLDS deserved to have these things happen to them, and that regardless of the violations of due process and the Constitution that the State’s action’s, the seriousness of the charges outweigh their Rights, and by extention - ours.
During the course of the argument they wrote that “Whatever was needed to be done, even if it violated due process as you say and the Constitution, those children’s lives and stopping the abuse is more important than your stupid belief in the Constitution - I’d hate to live in a country of people that think like you do”.
So now a mere allegation or “common knowlege” is more important than our “stupid belief in the Constitution”
I now know and understand how it was possible that an enlightened people in Germany empowered a madman.
If people think for ONE SECOND that ANY of what was done to the FLDS deserves applause, kudos and thanks to the gestapo agents of the state, then will all due respect, they are no different than these enablers of tyrannical bastards:
What is frightening beyond comprehension, is that this entire raid was instigated by a BOGUS AND FALSE phone call, from Rozita Swinton in Colorado Springs CO!! She PRETENDED to be a 13 year old girl being held against her will in the compound.
Suddenly, the stormtrooper goons with submachine guns show up with APCs to bust in and kidnap the women and children without so much as showing a warrant, producing a warrant or providing any hard evidence of a crime to have procurred the warrant.
When asked if they could see the warrant, the stormtroopers told the women they do not get to see any warrant. That exchange was caught on video.
Then the Police and officials of the State lied to the women they took captive:
Worse yet, is after the kidnapping of these women and children, the women are being held in detention without being charged with any crime, and their children have been stripped from them and shipped to foster home that HAVE A HISTORY OF ABUSE, RAPE and even MURDER.
William Grigg notes this in his blog:
Judge Walther has ruled — and wasn’t the suspense terrific? — that the 416 abducted FLDS children will remain in “temporary” state custody.
This, despite the fact (as explained below), that the abuse report that provided the pretext for the raid was contrived. This, despite the admission, under oath, of Bruce Perry of the ChildTrauma Academy — an “expert” witness on behalf of the state — that the foster care system “would be destructive to these kids.”
As what follows will illustrate, Perry isn’t exaggerating one whit.
So … the warrant was based on a lie, the raid was therefore illegal, the children face the prospect of certain harm within the state foster care system — and Judge Walther is OK with this.
The raid was conducted on a false allegation, with no evidence of abuse and now are being put into a system where rape, abuse and worse have plagued the agency.
The children suffer behind an iron curtain of corrupt secrecy. That curtain was lifted a few years ago, long enough to get a brief but terrifying glimpse of what was being done by people who had placed themselves beyond accountability.
Scores of children were killed, poisoned, beaten, and otherwise abused each year. Child rape was terrifyingly common: The largest group of victims were between 12 and 15 years of age, but thirteen percent of the victims were three years old or younger.
An official investigation of this secretive system was undertaken, but soon foundered over obstructions thrown up by those who had the most to lose if the full truth were revealed. But before the portcullis was slammed shut, the investigator learned that a child being raised in that system was four times more likely to die of criminal violence than a child in the general population.
The obvious course of action would be to mount an armed raid to liberate those children, but whatever necessary means, from the abusive system in which they’re being held.
Unfortunately, the entity that would carry out such an operation also presides over the systematic abuse. The findings described above are from an abortive investigation of the Texas Foster Care System conducted by Carole Keeton Strayhorn on behalf of the state Comptroller’s office.
Grigg goes on and his sentiments are noteworthy to consider. This is an affront to liberty and an attack on freedom itself.
They’ve done what they intended: They’ve stolen the children, and they’re not going to give them back unless they’re literally forced to do so.
“I think some people have really focused on that [Sarah] but the reality is that her phone call is the reason we went out there, but it was not the reason for the removals,” claimed DFPS shill Greg Cunningham. “The removals happened based on what we saw out there.”
What, pray tell, did they see “out there”? We won’t find out until a court-appointed “Special Master” has had a chance to review — or, if necessary, contrive — the “evidence.”
Here’s what the public has seen:
We witnessed a military assault, with armor provided by the Department of Homeland Security, against a peaceful, unresisting religious community.
We have seen happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who have been separated at gunpoint from loving mothers.
The children suffer behind an iron curtain of corrupt secrecy. That curtain was lifted a few years ago, long enough to get a brief but terrifying glimpse of what was being done by people who had placed themselves beyond accountability.
Scores of children were killed, poisoned, beaten, and otherwise abused each year. Child rape was terrifyingly common: The largest group of victims were between 12 and 15 years of age, but thirteen percent of the victims were three years old or younger.
An official investigation of this secretive system was undertaken, but soon foundered over obstructions thrown up by those who had the most to lose if the full truth were revealed. But before the portcullis was slammed shut, the investigator learned that a child being raised in that system was four times more likely to die of criminal violence than a child in the general population.
The obvious course of action would be to mount an armed raid to liberate those children, but whatever necessary means, from the abusive system in which they’re being held.
Unfortunately, the entity that would carry out such an operation also presides over the systematic abuse. The findings described above are from an abortive investigation of the Texas Foster Care System conducted by Carole Keeton Strayhorn on behalf of the state Comptroller’s office.
“In April 2004 I said I would give our forgotten children in foster care something they need — a voice,” recalls Strayhorn. “I have been and will continue to be their voice. This Governor’s Health and Human Services Commission continues to stonewall my investigation and this governor continues to hide the truth.
We have seen and heard women who have experienced the single worst thing that can happen to a parent — the loss of a child or children — present themselves with dignity and reserve in the face of arrogant aggression by a corrupt state bureaucracy (as if any other kind existed).
What we have not seen is any evidence that children were being abused in the FLDS community.
But there is ample evidence of systematic abuse of the most heinous kind in the foster care system into which the child-snatchers seek to place the FLDS children.
Perry, or at least the government over which he presides, did eventually act to “save” children — by conducting a potentially lethal military raid against a community where they weren’t being abused, for the purpose of delivering them into a government-run system in which children are routinely killed, molested, and poisoned.As an ABC News analysis points out, the DFPS legal strategy is to treat the people living in the YFZ enclave as a single household. In this fashion, under what the Texas government is pleased to call the “law,” finding a single case of abuse within the community would be enough to justify keeping all of the children in permanent state custody.
Which means, of course, that they would become the property of a single collectivist “household.” We could envision it as sort of a polygamous union between various foster homes and the state government, in its role as Parens Patriae. And in that collectivist household, abuse is widespread, frequently lethal, and protected by “law.”
As legal proceedings in the FLDS custody battle began today (in — as the bitter ironies continue to accumulate — the Tom Green Courthouse), the presiding judge, Barbara L. Walther, was praised by all and sundry as the very soul of equity.
Judge Walther will give the FLDS “a fair shake,” insisted attorney William Moore of San Angelo, where the case is being heard. Fellow attorney Guy Choate praised Walther for her command of details. And Robert Post, whom Walther defeated in the 1992 election in which she won her seat, insisted that the judge won’t be a “rubber stamp” for the state bureaucracy, but rather will “make them prove it up.”
Judge Walther may be the embodiment of competence; she may be the essence of good intentions made flesh. But either through professional blindness or something more sinister she failed her first, and perhaps most important, test today:
She did not issue an order to the DFPS commanding them to produce “Sarah,” with an inflexible and immediate deadline to do so.
Walther is the judge who issued an extravagantly overbroad warrant on the basis of “Sarah’s” alleged report. Today she admitted into evidence documents seized in that raid without confirming that there was a legal basis for the warrant.
By relieving the DFPS of the responsibility to produce the alleged witness that was the basis of that report, Walther has graduated from commonplace offenses against the Constitution to participation in a criminal conspiracy — assuming, as I think by now we should, that “Sarah” doesn’t exist.
The criminal conspiracy in this case involves the attempted — or, better put, not entirely consummated — theft of children by a state bureaucracy with a financial interest in enlarging the ranks of its foster care system, however miserable or dangerous that system is to its enrollees.
So, who will be next?
The Mormons themselves?
The 7th Day Adventists?
YOUR CHURCH?
If all it takes is an uncorroborated anonymous phone call by someone claiming a crime to bring the entire weight of an armed police state through your doors, the confiscation of your children and property, then America and liberty as we knew her are already gone, and all that is left of us is to wait in fear - waiting for that knock at the door in the middle of the night, before the Gestapo bust down your door and shove a gun in your face while your family is taken away and shipped to who knows where.
In a touch of irony when fiction mimics life, as Padme Amidala noted in the last Star Wars movie ‘Revenge of the Sith” -
“So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”
Witness liberty dying before your eyes Americans.
To thunderous applause.
UPDATES:
JUSTICE DENIED.
Legal aid group challenges state’s forced relocation of FLDS children to foster homes
The Third Court of Appeals has decided to hear arguments over whether the state of Texas can place children from the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints currently in its custody into foster care without giving each of their families the opportunity to defend themselves in court, according to a press release.
“These families have the right to have their voices heard in the legal process,” said TRLA attorney Robert Doggett. “The idea that these children can be taken away without giving their families the opportunity to address allegations and fight to stay together is absurd.”
STATE MOVES CHILDREN, BEFORE APPEALS COURT CAN HEAR FLDS MOTHERS” PETITION
Late this morning (4-24), two buses left the San Angelo Coliseum about 20 minutes apart.
The first bus seemed to have only a few people aboard, but the second was fully loaded and headed south.
Both buses had heavy law enforcement escort.
As the second bus was leaving the San Angelo Fairgrounds, a window was cracked open, and a sign thrust out that read “SOS mothers separated help.”
Confidence in FLDS arrest warrant now shaky, authorities say
Revelations that the March 29 phone call that sparked a raid on a Schleicher County polygamist compound may be a hoax have led prosecutors to doubt the reason for the original search-and-arrest warrant that granted authorities access to the YFZ Ranch.
Arrests still could be made in the case, said First Assistant 51st District Attorney Allison Palmer. The raid, based on the warrant, led to the removal of 437 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch, the largest child custody action in Texas history.
“If it were true that the female who identified herself as Sarah is not really Sarah, I do not feel that would be enough to (invalidate) the search warrant,” Palmer said.
Palmer used the phone calls as the probable cause necessary to secure the search-and-arrest warrant granted by District Judge Barbara Walther.
“Some events have shaken our belief and confidence in that probable cause,” Palmer said.
13 Comments
April 24, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Wow. What a horror.
April 24, 2008 at 4:37 pm
This so not not surprising coming from these people…
Those poor FLDS children, even if by the grace of God they are eventually reunited with their parents, just imagine the emotional damage that has been caused.
Ya gotta love Texas (NOT), ya know with their astronomically death penalty rates, The Branch Davidians, and now this…
Man, I wish these people had fled to Mexico to set up their town…Our country’s been going to the crapper for a long time, and this just sends it more so…
April 26, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Call it what ever you like, makes no different if they are a religion a cult a black or white. they can be perverts or not, IF WE FAIL TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION. we all loose. I say catch the bad guys, but do it without destroying America. and that is what Texas failed to do, by texas’ blatant disregard for following the law in this they have just made a easy way for criminals to get away. I am forced to side with the FLDS cuz if I dont I am against the Constitution. Damn you texas.
April 27, 2008 at 4:47 pm
It is official.
There are just three girls under the age of 18 that the state thinks may be pregnant from FLDS.
One will be 18 years old in a month. One refused to take a pregnancy test and one whose age is yet to be determined.
Among many references to this account: The Salt Lake Tribune 04/26/2008 05:14:10 PM MDT
Bingo, no abuse, no arrests, no adults detained, no underage pregnancies. (By Texas law, underage is “under 16″).
But the State is still refusing to release the kids. Two children under two years of age are now missing by the State of Texas’s own admission! (Though I am sure some logical explanation will come up?) Three or more little children are hospitalized as of Friday; one is in critical condition because he is an infant that could not adjust without his mother’s milk. CPS admits that many have contracted chicken pox, measles, diarrhea, flu, viruses and other diseases they were not inoculated for now that they are exposed to the “mainstream” and are blaming it on the parents. And of course, as we all now know, (providing you have some education on the subject), the State of Texas has now concluded that the original call was a hoax.
Those of you who judged and threw your own accusations should hope someone other than a person like yourself is around to defend you if you have the misfortune of having your life torn apart and have your children taken away.
Tragic.
http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_9056589
May 1, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Oh please…this is a pathetic attempt of liberal sympathies towards these most manipulative, brainwashed women. They are completely incapable of showing clear judgement on what is “taking good care” of their children or not…obviously…a good mother would not allow her daughter to be forced into a marriage between 12-17 (yes, there are numerous accounts to forced marriages and forced sexual contact through the years to back up this claim). They breed, they groom, and they send away and the cycle repeats itself. Since when isn’t the government suppose to protect citizens (children included) from this type of disgusting abuse that they have unfortunately been born into? If you don’t like our government, then move to Canada or England, where there citizens are allowed to do basically anything they want with a rap on the knuckles as punishment and the government regulating every tiny little thing, then see how wonderful our government really is!
May 1, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Oh, and to correct the statement above, there are over 100 CHILDREN under 18 (2 as young as 13) which are currently pregnant or have already had children…get your statements correct!
May 1, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Amy, I post a daily digest of all the latest FLDS news and, in doing so, crawl over the web looking for virtually all news articles. It’s odd that I have seen nothing which supports your claims. May I have your links to these articles or other sources of information? Any hard news will be very useful in my digest tomorrow.
May 18, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I am astounded by the public’s willing ignorance on this matter and cannot understand why they are so easily mislead even in the face of such damning evidence. Please allow me to post that evidence with reference links.
We know that last week, Texas Authorities dropped their warrant for Dale Barlow, who was the accused rapist by the now debunked hoax caller, Rozita Swinton, who claimed to be a 16 year old being raped by her father at the Yearning for Zion Ranch. This was which turned out to be a lie, initiated the storming of the polygamist community by armed militia and the abduction of 463 children. See the Video here:
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=79463
Here are links concerning the hoax caller and the statement by Texas Authorities who dropped the warrant on Barlow.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61963
http://www.kvue.com/news/state/stories/050308kvuepolygamist-jj.c4de3865.html
Texas Authorities also now admit cover up and possible disciplinary actions to their own when admitting that a growing number of girls who they claimed were minors and who had children while in state custody are actually adults, some as old as 22. Authorities also seem to admit to having the birth certificates all along. In other words, they lied to the public.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIdMpRHjN4hpNKBhfYyAsR4DDo4QD90N2T8G0
In what could be said to at least ‘appear to be suspect’ concerning the timing of the report coinciding with falling public support, Texas authorities then claimed they found 41 broken bones among these children. A claim now however, they seem to quickly be retreating from. Quote from the Texas CPS website as of April 29th and maintained as of May 18th: “We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we’ll continue to examine”
http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/About/News/2008/2008-04-30_Eldorado_Senate.asp
After that retreat and seeming to feel the public heat, the next claim by Texas authorities was that a new revelation was just uncovered that young boys were being molested. A story by the way sharply denied by the young boys themselves.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1312929,00.html
In what seems to be an attempt to mislead the public, Texas authorities repeatedly use the phrase “attorneys for the children”, which is absolutely untrue. They are in fact attorneys for CPS and the State of Texas wishing to remove the children from their homes. They are not in fact, attorneys chosen by the children or the families of the children and in what seems now to be a desperate attempt to justify their actions, it was reported on Friday, May 18, 2008, that Texas Rangers have been threatening very young FDLS children under interrogation without the presence of “real attorneys”
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/05/exclusive_texas_rangers_interv.php
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? I imagine the next claim will be that they were boiling down infants and turning their fat into ritual candles.
I am saddened by what I see in many of my former Texas neighbors. I lived in Dallas from 1984 through 1992 and found the people to be quite sincere. But how they could support this event after watching our friends in Waco burn to death along with their children is beyond me. For years, those of us who had friends in the Waco area or knew people who knew some of these good folks, tried to tell their story; only to be mocked and scorned. Years after fooling many of you, (not me), the FBI quietly admitted to starting the fire; though most citizens are completely ignorant of this admission.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/25/fbi.waco/index.html
I believe those who spread the government’s stories concerning Waco deserve some of the blame for those young children burning to death. You may not have lit the match, but you certainly helped fan the flames, just as I believe some of you who now spread the government’s stories concerning these parents in Texas should also share the blame for what has happened.
May 18, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Feel free Joe to post all the relevant links and info to this entry.
I am as outraged by you on this matter, and this entry is getting more visits than any other entry I posted in the last few months.
It is important to understand how the Authorities demonize a people in order for the rest of society to accept crimes they then perpetrate against those people.
They did it with the Branch Davidians, they have done it with these FLDS folks, who is next?
The Amish?
7th Day Adventists?
Any church that does not toe a mainstream belief system?
All it now takes is a bogus anonymous phone call to have a paramilitary raid at your church or home and your children taken from you.
For their protection of course.
May 21, 2008 at 7:01 pm
It is happening again. Another raid is commencing after Sheriff Sloan can remove the media. The Rangers won’t strike until this happens.. Being filmed via KXAN and online at Free the FLDS Children blog.
May 22, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Hmm, where did Amy go? People like her are the very reason why George Bush has been supported for 9 years despite the cold hard evidence behind his corrupt and absurd administration!
May 22, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Yes,,.. 9 years. People voted for him in the primaries and as soon as he opened his mouth the world should have known that we needed to keep power away from him. God made him stupid for a reason, but there apparently are more stupid people in this country besides him
May 28, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I have worked with the state in some capacity since 1979. I helped with child placement, keeping records for a private placement on both foster parents and foster children. We trained said parents, and worked directly with CPS. I became a foster parent for a year and retired. I have to say I have seen more child abuse at the hands of CPS than any other organization in the child care arena…very close to that will be the group homes, one in particular in the Tyler area. The mental abuse is horrible, the drugs they give these children (for just being children) is even worse. The system is broken and that was proven during the emergency meetings ordered by the State several years ago. You can go back to the records taken against CPS during that time and find neglect, abuse, fraud, altered records, substandard medical care at the hands of CPS, abuse of parents, trumped up charges against parents…the list goes on.
I am sitting on a case at this time that was investigated by the Inspector General of Texas. His report is very direct and states he could not find anything to support the allegations made by CPS against the family or foster parents. Fraud was committed not only by CPS but by the Ombudsman’s Office put in place to “police” such atrocities by state caregivers (CPS). This fraudulant information was then sent to State Reps. and Senators as the family had tried to go to them for help. The mother was tricked by CPS into giving up this newborn child. The mother thought she was signing a paper for the care of the child.
I have list of foster homes that should not be open, should never have been opened, and need to be closed as we speak. Many of the group homes fall under the same umbrella.
The raid on the FDLS was illegal. The removal and the way it was done was illegal. Keeping the children the way they are is illegal. CPS will be allowed to do what they are doing for 1 major reason….the State (powers that be) want the FDLS gone from San Angelo….CPS is just a mouthpiece.
The “propeganda” put out against this group is even more bogus….WHY DON’T WE STUDY WHY THEIR CHILDREN ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY FREE OF AUTISM, WHY DON’T WE STUDY WHY THEY HAVE LITTLE TO NO ADS? WHY DON’T WE STUDY AND FIND OUT WHY THEY LIVE 10 YEARS LONGER THAN WE DO? WHY DON’T WE STUDY AND FIND OUT WHY THEY HAVE SOCIAL SKILLS OUR “WORLD” NO LONG POSESSES. They have a work ethic that our children would consider abuse. They wear the clothes they do because they chose to wear them. They are in most cases hand made, simple, and go along with their lifestyle. I guess we are not happy because they do not have their breast and rears hanging out!!!!!!!!Has anyone taken notice of the women’s hair? It is beautiful and well kept. I have not seen hair like that since the 40’s and 50’s.
One more thing…the “hidden rooms” shown on Oprah where they stated the “children were probably hidden there”….What is probably more accurate is they maintain a system of keeping food which will sustain the families for a year or more in case of raids, etc. This comes from their many years of persecution. People should read how these people really believe which follows Abraham. They are great people. Every religion has “nuts” and we (Baptist, Catholics, Episcopalians, ETC.) have more than our share. Look around at our world. We are not “saving the children.” We can’t even “save our own.”