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Sanity Finally Reigns

On April 16th 2008 I wrote an article in Sparrow Chat entitled, “Self-Righteousness Only Creates Wrongness”.

It concerned the seizing of over four hundred children by Texas officials from the Yearn for Zion ranch, a sect whose members had broken away from the traditional Mormon church.

The children were seized following an anonymous tip-off purported to come from a young female sect member, who to this day has never been identified.

Accusations of sexual abuse and under-age marriages were leveled against the sect by the anonymous caller, and foolishly the Texas authorities over-reacted and raided the ranch, confiscating the children and dispersing them in foster homes around the state.

Thankfully, the Texas court of appeal yesterday upheld the families’ case that there was no evidence to warrant the raids and subsequent removal of the children. The Texas authorities had failed to provide evidence of child abuse, and the court ruled the raid and impounding of the children unlawful.[1]

Sanity has finally prevailed and the children are slowly being returned to their parents, though the state of Texas is looking to appeal the appeal as a face-saving exercise, despite the additional harm such delay might provoke among the children kept incarcerated while a torpid legal process churns forward with agonizing slowness.

Despite the acidic comments of local Child Protective Services officials, who were at pains to point out “this was all about the children”, it would seem to be more about narrow-minded, Texan morality than the welfare of four hundred unhappy kids.

Frankly, such people make me sick. They are driven not by a love for children and a wish for their overall happiness, but by a pseudo-religious, blinkered morality that blinds them to the truth and causes untold suffering and a lifetime of psychological scarring for the victims of these harpie-like individuals.

Well done, Texas. Your inhumanity to your fellows shines like a beacon of darkness in the light.

[1] “Seizure of Texas sect kids unlawful”, Arizona Republic, May 23rd 2008

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5 Replies to “Sanity Finally Reigns”

  1. Sometimes i wonder, when reading such accounts, just how many of them are paramilitary exercises to test how much outrage the American public will bear without protest.

    Events… specifically designed to acclimatize the people to being manhandled by the lawmen they hire to protect them.

    And, of course, they can also serve as a sort of social filtering, to provide lists of those who will. Protest, that is.

    I tell you, RJ, the only way to create effective change with these abusers is to teach them kindness. They have absolutely no immunity to it.

  2. I seem to recall many years ago that something not a million miles from the likes of this happened in – was it one of the Scottish Islands, RJ?

    Children were thought to have been abused by parents, there was a bit hoo-haaa and lots of publicity, but eventually it tutned out that nothing untoward had occurred? Or am I recalling it wrongly?

    There’s a busy-body element to human nature which, if unchecked, and if related to any form of prejudice or bigotry, can lead to great injustices – this was a good example.

  3. Anan – kindness is a remedy, and a little goes a long way. Half a house brick is quicker, though. 😉

    Twilight – “Satanic child abuse” panic swept through UK social services in the late eighties and early nineties. I seem to remember it began in Rochdale, then spread to somewhere in Scotland. There was also a later case in Orkney. On each occasion, social workers over-reacted and removed children en masse from their homes, based solely on the evidence of other kids. Social services stated at the time that “children never lie about such matters.” That, of course, is a load of rubbish. Kids make up fantasies about all sorts of things, for a variety of reasons, which makes the action of Texan officials all the more appalling, based as it was on the telephoned accusations of one anonymous teenager.

    I’ve just found this BBC link about April 4th 1991. It describes the Orkney case.

  4. Old guys screwing young girls is pedophilia. Religious freedom is just the frosting hiding the terrible cake. Sorry to disagree with you on this and I agree that removing the children to the terrible maze of social services was inappropriate, but I thought the old guys should have been arrested.

  5. Flimsy – I agree with your first sentence. The problem in this instance seems to be that the Texas social services were unable to come up with any evidence of old guys screwing young girls. Originally, they tried to suggest that some girls as young as thirteen were pregnant. Later, they refuted that and said the girls were much older than originally stated.

    The correct way to handle this would have been by going into the compound, interviewing all the inhabitants, collecting evidence, then charging whoever was considered guilty of an offense. Storming the place, rounding up innocent kids and terrorizing them, dragging them from their parents and into the care of strangers, is inhumane and barbaric. A case of zealous religious morality used as frosting that failed to hide a terrible cake?

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