YFZ Ranch In The News

[phoenixx[$]]

Apparently YFZ ranch is in the news: The Eldorado Success

YFZ wiki: YFZ Ranch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[rmthunter]

Gee, why don't we hear James Dobson and his fellow travelers screaming about violations of religious freedom?

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Tensions escalating, more emergency vehicles at the scene --- I hope it doesn't become another Waco.

[phoenixx[$]]

They already evacuated all of the kids, I think.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Not quite. Agents are still looking for the 16-year-old girl who was the subject of the original child abuse complaint.

[mtomm[$]]

Melanie says:

Sorry, but A) less than 10% of a group of kids that stay outside a lot and do a lot of physical work during any given day doesn't seem all that surprising to me and B) the word "may" has been bandied about a LOT by the Texas authorities, all in the name of trying to make their action seem right.

I don't agree with polygamy, I don't agree with forcing people to marry (civilly or "spiritually") if they don't want to (if that goes on at this ranch) but I think the government is wrong, wrong, wrong in the way they handled this entire case. And if anything *has* been going on at the ranch, they've probably blown their whole case by the way they've handled it from the git-go.

Two places I've been keeping up with this story:

Grits For Breakfast
The Common Room

And about those broken bones?

Quote:

I think I'm totally in this camp with you, Melanie. Can't reconcile their lifestyle with our own but feel they at least are deserving of not having their rights violated. I think we should wait for real evidence before jumping to conclusions about their guilt. Also, we should avoid making them all guilty because of association. In any population you are going to have abusers but that doesn't make every parent at the ranch one.

[rmthunter]

Sara Robinson has been doing a series on this at Orcinus that's worth reading. She brings up a lot of issues that have been discussed here -- and a few others that haven't.

[mtbat]

there are at least what-31 underaged girls pregnant or with small children-that's abusive. There also seems to be an un-normal split of boys vs. girls after a certain age-many less teen boys than girls-making me suspect that this group probably practices the whole, toss out the boys when they get a bit older so they can do the whole multiple wifes thing.

I don't CARE if a man wants 10 wives and fifty thousand kids... as long as the wives are of CONSENTING age when he marries them and gets them pregnant-go for it I don't care... but raising girls to be nothing but extra brood mares from a very young age and marrying and getting them pregnant from the age of 14 or so-not okay.

[emeleel]

That number is very much in dispute, Fridai. You have to keep in mind a couple of things:

A) When they first started rounding people up and getting info on them, a lot of the young women stated their ages, and those ages were over 18 for a lot of them. However, when CPS declared that if you were over 18, you could not stay with your kids when they started splitting up the moms and kids, imagine that - suddenly a bunch of them then claimed to be 18 or younger.

B) CPS has arrived at ages for some of these young women by the oh-so-scientific method of "looking at them". They don't look 18 or whatever, so CPS tots them down in the age column THEY feel is right, no matter what their legal paperwork says. The girl who gave birth in custody the other day? She and the lawyers, etc. list her age as 18 - and CPS did initially in the hearings. But when she went to the hospital, they suddenly decided, nope, she's 17.

Another thing to keep in mind about the numbers is that the legal marriage age changed less than three years ago. Until 2005, it was legal in the state to get married at 14 with parental permission. Whether you agree with it or not, that's what was legal - so it's perfectly possible that a young woman who's only 17 now could have been legally married, with children by now. But she'd still be in the "under 18" age column.

I don't agree with getting married that young nowadays, but it's not that long ago in our own country's history, and still in many places around the world, that it was/is okay and wasn't a big deal.

[Prepoia[$]]

mtbat said

there are at least what-31 underaged girls pregnant or with small children-that's abusive. There also seems to be an un-normal split of boys vs. girls after a certain age-many less teen boys than girls-making me suspect that this group probably practices the whole, toss out the boys when they get a bit older so they can do the whole multiple wifes thing.

I don't CARE if a man wants 10 wives and fifty thousand kids... as long as the wives are of CONSENTING age when he marries them and gets them pregnant-go for it I don't care... but raising girls to be nothing but extra brood mares from a very young age and marrying and getting them pregnant from the age of 14 or so-not okay.

I agree.

Getting married at a 14/young age is okay if it's consensual(sp) but the parents saying yes is not a good reason and neither is raising young children to think they "should" get married at this young of an age because it's the right thing to do (that's brainwashing).

[mtbat]

Another thing to keep in mind about the numbers is that the legal marriage age changed less than three years ago. Until 2005, it was legal in the state to get married at 14 with parental permission. Whether you agree with it or not, that's what was legal - so it's perfectly possible that a young woman who's only 17 now could have been legally married, with children by now. But she'd still be in the "under 18" age column.

then they will have to prove that 1-a legal marriage existed and 2-the girls were 14 before 2005, not after. if she were 14 in 2004, she'd be 18 now. And it is a mute point if a legal marriage never existed, and (this topic came up with friends yesterday I'm trying to remember how my friend quoted it)-the marriages with the underaged girls were never legal because-in most of, if not all cases, the men were already married to other women.

[emeleel]

The TX law wasn't signed into law until 6/6/05, so it's still possible that a 14 year old could have gotten married in the first half of '05 and have been legal.

I do have questions about the last part of your post, though - how many of these "marriages" have been legal because the men actually civilly married these young ladies? Or have they been these "spiritual" 2nd, 3rd, etc. marriages. Big questions about that. Of course, TX would have more of a leg to stand on if they bothered to go after more under-17 couples who have sex, and especially those where the male half of the couple is more than 3 years older than the girl. (The legal age difference that makes the difference between consensual and non-.)

The young lady who gave birth the other day is in a legal, monogamous marriage, though, I do know that.

[emeleel]

This thing is just making me sick to my stomach. Please be sure to read the letters linked at the bottom of this post, from reports filed (anonymously, to prevent retribution) by some of the Mental Health workers who worked with the the women and children who were taken:

Grits for Breakfast: YFZ kids abused and neglected under CPS care
I just want to cry. This is America?!

[Prepoia[$]]

Grits is a blogger giving his/her opinion.

[emeleel]

The letters at the end of the post are letters from mental health workers who were there. Very end of the post.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

court rules Texas child protective workers had no right to remove kids

The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.

Goes back to what I've been saying in other threads about removal is only for immediate, imment risk of serious harm, not just for poor or unusual parenting.

[emeleel]

I've been following this case obsessively for the last few days, but haven't posted anything here because it was pretty obvious nobody was particularly interested. But I've known all along that this was going to be one of the biggest legal screw-ups I've ever seen, and I'm glad to see that the tide seems to be turning to prove that right. I certainly hope this goes through (lower court's still got 10 days to appeal, or the 3rd Court will act for them) and that this is the beginning of the end of this nightmare of "justice".

[amykhar]

I've been interested, Em

[mtomm[$]]

Me, too.

I've followed this on another board and wowsa do people get all fired up about it!

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I've followed it too. My only objection was when some of the news stories were being posted in the Big Love TV Show thread.

[emeleel]

Here's a good succint post that lays out the pertinent facts (be sure to catch the footnotes) and the problems to date:

American Thinker: Cycle of Abuse: The FLDS Raid