Polygamist Sect Raided
Texas authorities entered into the complex of the openly polygamist FCLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints), a sect led by now jailed Warren Jeffs (seen below with two of his dozens of slaves wives). The property has been sealed, with no one going in or out.
UPDATE: The authorities have removed a busload of female children from the compound. Here’s hoping that their destination is a brighter place than the harem they were in.
The only information released was that the were investigating on the “welfare of the children” in the complex, and that there was an allegation of sexual assault. Add those two together and I’m sure you can figure out what might be happening.
The complex houses 400 followers of Jeffs (who himself was incarcerated for bigamy, being accessory to rape, and lewd acts upon a child), including a small army of children. Child protection services entered the complex under armed guard. The sect keeps traditions that would make the Taliban proud. They excommunicate young men (because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough women for them to exploit) and even kick out married men, because when a man is kicked out his wives and children are given to other men, as so much human chattel. The sect practices arranged marriages, and is known to have done so even with 13 year old girls to older men (which is part of the reason Jeffs is in jail).
With this sort of history it shouldn’t come as any surprise that some poor young girl may have been brutalized after having been given to a sex-crazy monkey.
Remember, not Afghanistan, right in the middle of Texas.
This is plainly religious persecution. Leave them alone! How about this: if I don’t like someone, I can report that they are abusing their children, and those children will instantly be taken away with no questions whatsoever! Stop persecuting religion in the name of “protecting children”. Any church will contend that children of another church are not being raised right.
AP, the abuse of girls in the FCLDS is very well documented, as well as the forced marriages, physical and emotional abuse girls as young as 9 suffer when forced to "marry" men decades older than they are. Survivors who manage to escape (and it’s the correct word, considering that local authorities are under sect control, so they have to literally run until they are far enough that the police won’t drag them back) consistently testify to these things, including incestuous sexual abuse. What’s REALLY shameful is that the US authorities allow this travesty to continue right in the heart of the USA.
What this group practices is an abomination, but I don’t think the juxtaposition of this and Afghanistan is apt. The very fact that this compound was raided and the girls were taken into custody shows the difference. If your only point was to show that there are monstrous distortions of religion to justify violations of human rights in parts of the Christian West just as there are in parts of the Muslim world, I agree with that. But I think it’s important to point out that this is obviously not condoned or even permitted by law here, unlike under the Taliban in Afghanistan; that fact also probably contributes greatly to the difference in prevalence of these sorts of problems in each group.