The details of the raid on the Polygamist cult in Texas are coming out. It’s horrifying. Girls married off to men when they hit puberty. Boys taught to be sexual predators. There’s the strange clothing requirements. The cult got rich out of gangs of unmarried mothers getting welfare. Some 400 kids may have to go into foster care, and the system is overwhelmed. The kids are going to require serious counseling. The Texas courts may rule that polygamy is inherently abusive to children, which the AZ and UT courts have never ruled. Some links here, here, here, and here.
66 thoughts on “Polygamy and Child Abuse”
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Apt. 11d 
The oddly dressed men in the photos that I assumed were cultists turned out to be law enforcement officers. Whoops!
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I hear what you’re saying, but the thought of mothers and kids being separated from each other, and the kids put in foster care, is giving me the willies.
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While obviously horrible, isn’t it really the child abuse that we are upset about, not the particular form that the child abuse took? I can’t imagine that polygamy is “inherently” abusive — just abusive as practiced almost all of the time (and all of the time in sects like this).
I guess I was thinking about this with incest — which in the most common “older relative raping young girl” is incredible horrible, but in the more recent Australian example of “61 year old dad has baby with 39 year old daughter whom he hadn’t seen in decades” skeeves me out on a gut level, but I don’t actually have it in me to condemn it as “inherently” abusive or evil. (See, also, the movie Lone Star.)
I mean, we condemn homosexual prison rape because it is rape, not because it is homosexual. Similarly, we should condemn abusive polygamy (or abusive incest) because they are abusive, not because they are polygamous (or incestuous).
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As the article in the SL Trib noted, there are other polygamous sects in Utah that don’t have the costumes, that don’t have the institutional abuse evident with the FLDS sect. Prior to Warren Jeff’s leadership, were the same elements of abuse present (incest, child brides, age discrepencey between husband and wife, etc.)?
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I’m not going to give an inch to those who prey upon the young, inexperienced, and relatively defenseless. But I’m with Wendy–going into people’s homes, disrupting their community, undermining families and the faith that ties them together…yes, perhaps it must be done, but there is so much that can go wrong when it is done, and so many bad precedents that can be set. I (and a thousand other Mormons with long historical memories of lies and betrayels) are watching this situation pretty nervously.
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I think the High Profile Image method of Propogandic so called jurisprudence is unconstitutional at root. Shart Crick was one of the last areas to be settled and
it was settled by Polygamists, the midwife was a Josephite from London.
I think the focus should be on the larger independent plural community. It is a ordinance of the LDS faith, discontinued gradually–there was tremendous confusion.
First of all, it was not an edict–there was a vote, Secondly Men were allowed to continue Polygamous marriages already solemninized for life. It was at first
understood to have been discontinued only in the USA.
That wasn;t good enough for the Feds. So the saints who were married in the Principal got an edict-No new
polygamous marriage were to be solumnized in any temple.
The 1930 business was about attitudes–many people did and do belive that over the decades or mellenia,
there will be a Milenium when every thing will be straightened out. We think heavenamore casual and educationalplace than do other Christians and he Jeffs
bunch.
And the clothes–no one should be forced to wear anything they don;t want to, but I dressed like that,
and anything that could be said about polygamists,
demographicly, early marriage, [unsualy 15-18]
was just about as common as that i he polygamist
factions.
Kathleen
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I’d like the same standards to apply to these families as to any other. I don’t care about their clothing any more than I want to regulate moms obsessed with producing popular children who force them into uniforms of Abercrombie and Fitch. I don’t think 16-year-olds should be stripped of their children just because they themselves are still children.
On the other hand, the parents of those 16-year-olds parents turned their children into sexual slaves to preserve their status in the community, and hell yeah I want to see their remaining children kept safe from animals like that.
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I’m very skeptical that “the cult got rich out of gangs of unmarried mothers getting welfare.” If you read Carolyn Jessop’s account of life in the cult, there is never enough money for all those children, and many of the mothers and children are required to work and turn their paychecks over to the husband.
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I can’t help but note the irony that polygamy may be considered inherently abusive to *children*, and thus a bad thing. It seems to me the children are only subject to abuse once they are perceived to be women (i.e. of marriageable age). In fact one could argue that the only issue Texas is confronting is that this sect perceives young women to be “adults” at 13, whereas the state of Texas believes it’s more like 18.
But really, isn’t it the *women* who are inherently being abused (be they 13 or 30)? Funny how none of them are worth helping.
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Well, there’s the whole consenting adult problem, jen. I’ve got a 3 hour class coming up and i’m under the gun to make more powerpoint slides. I’m itching to get back to this topic, so a looooong comment or new post will happen later this afternoon.
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“It seems to me the children are only subject to abuse once they are perceived to be women (i.e. of marriageable age).”
That seems about right. I suppose everybody’s seen the article about the 8-year-old Yemeni divorcee? Somebody should start a scholarship fund for her.
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The only person I know who grew up in a polygamous household is my friend Khalil, and we’ve talked about it. His father was relatively prosperous, had two wives, my friend’s mother was the older of the two. There were two wings on the house, one for each wife and her kids. Khalil didn’t like it, neither did his mom. Dad spent most of his time with the younger wife.
Was it child abuse? Wife abuse? I don’t know – it comported with surrounding mores. Nobody thought there was any kind of a crisis. But only the dad was really happy with the situation. The Shah had put out the word that this was not a modern way to live your life, and it was discouraged, fewer families were forming that way.
Age of consent is probably a useful way to ensure that only people who have some idea of their options get into a situation like this. Do I want to stop a, say, 20-year-old from contracting a marriage to someone already married? I’m squeamish about it, for sure. And I don’t really want my employer to cut my wages to pay the employer share of health coverage for someone else’s 6-wife, fifteen-kid family.
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On the topic of who is a consenting adult, I am reminded of the concept of “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. Do these women, regardless of age, have real options outside of these arrangements? To my mind, that should be a focus: not separating kids from both parents, but getting the women and the kids — together — away from the controlling dads.
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A lot of states really need to have a look at their minimum age of marriage laws, especially the ones where parental permission or pregnancy allows you to marry even younger.
With regard to “real options,” even the Amish don’t come out really well using that as our criteria. What kind of future do you have outside that community with an 8th grade education?
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The women, however, do enforce the group’s practices. This is true for FGM, and it’s true for polygamists. It is a mistake to believe that the practices of an isolationist group originate and are enforced solely by the men.
The adult, married women were themselves, most likely, “married” at puberty to older men. The fact that they were themselves once abused innocents, however, neither excuses, nor justifies, their participation in the continuation of sexual, reproductive, and employment exploitation of minors in their care.
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Dave – there was a study in either Journal of Marriage and Family, or Journal of Family Issues (at any rate it was a peer-reviewed, academic journal) about polygamous families and happiness – the study surveyed Middle Eastern Bedouins. Guess who was happy, and guess who was miserable? The fathers were happy, the wives and kids miserable – especially the less-favored (usually older) wives and their children.
That’s the problem with those polygamous communities – not the polygamy per se, but they are oppressive to women and children and only really benefit adult men.
Non-patriarchal, secular, age-of-consent polyamory is a different animal entirely – I wouldn’t want to be in a polyamorous relationship myself, but I think they’re fine for other consenting adults; these relationships are (usually) not set up for the benefit of adult men only. Polyfolk IME are usually ultra-ultra careful to be gender-egalitarian and only involve adults.
And I’m with Jen – the authorities should be focused on helping BOTH the women and children, getting them away from the dads, and if anyone’s going to get the book thrown at them it should be the men.
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I’m one who thinks that polygamy is probably not optimal for children in our high-parental-investment culture, and furthermore I believe that polygamy is fundamentally incompatible with the structures and institutions of a liberal society. On the other hand, I also think that single-mother families are not optimal for kids, and that pornographic images are incompatible with the assumptions of a liberal society. The point being: the sociological and philosophical implications of particular family structures ought to be the subject of vigorous public debate and examination. They ought not be the basis for abrogating the civil rights of those who who look and live outside the mainstream.
This morning on GMA I saw Robin Roberts attempt to interview three mothers whose children have been seized and possible placed into foster care. It was heartbreaking. These women were clearly nervous and on the defensive (who wouldn’t be?), but they managed to get their point across. When Roberts asked, “Do you understand that many people believe you are not free?” one answered “Our freedom disappeared at the point of a gun when our children were rounded up and taken from us.” And to think that now many of those children—as young as four, perhaps younger—are being displaced to caretakers who hate and revile their parents and community… my heart breaks.
Child abuse is vile in all its forms, and a serious investigation was warranted. What has happened has gone far, far beyond even a vigorous investigation.
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Child abuse is vile in all its forms, and a serious investigation was warranted. What has happened has gone far, far beyond even a vigorous investigation.
Really? There was clear evidence of a practice of raping children. Why shouldn’t the kids have been forcibly removed, just as they’d have been removed from an urban mother who was selling sexual access to her children for drug money (to tie this to a recent case here)?
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To clarify: I realize not all the parents have (yet) offered up their children for rape to preserve their parents’ status in the community. But until you can sort out exactly which parents have done so and exactly which men are the rapists, of course you forcibly remove the children for their safety.
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What kind of future do you have outside that [Amish] community with an 8th grade education?
Not a bad one, actually–it’s generally a very good 8th-grade education, and the work habits and trade skills are very marketable.
(Yes, it’s a subject I’m touchy on. I get really tired of the assumptions.)
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Siobhan: please provide “clear evidence” of the systemic rape of four, six, eight, ten-year-olds. Please provide any clear evidence that children of these ages were in imminent, exigent danger that would justify their removal at gunpoint. Indeed, please provide “clear evidence” of the systemic, institutional raping of children of any ages. I am no apologist for this community, and if there’s clear evidence of this kind, I want to know about it.
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“Not a bad one, actually–it’s generally a very good 8th-grade education, and the work habits and trade skills are very marketable.
“(Yes, it’s a subject I’m touchy on. I get really tired of the assumptions.)”
To clarify, I was thinking of the documentary “Devil’s Playground.” The Amish teenagers seem like really nice kids (even the meth addict/dealer kid), but it struck me that the Rumspringa system doesn’t make for good scaffolding between childhood and adulthood. When the kids move out to do the Rumspringa thing, they are really stepping out into the void.
(By the way, this news story got me thinking of our local quasi-Amish community/commune also in Texas, which is famed for wood-working, and which is occasionally accused of being a cult on the internet. I better get in my furniture and quilt orders before the FBI turns up.)
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As with many other abuse cases, I think we all rush into the fray with little knowledge about the actual facts (because they often remain hidden because of child protection rules). So, then, our biases are given free reign. I’m predisposed to thinking that the Texan authorities have solid evidence of child rape in their hands, in the form of girls who are pregnant and mothers, and younger than the age of consent. But, I don’t know. It remains possible that politics and bias has lead to over-reactions.
But, I’m willing to wait it out in order to fully investigate the possibility raised by the 16-year-olds call, that there are children and women being abused, and they are prisoners incapable of helping themselves. I hope people are working to mitigate the trauma to the children, and am deeply thankful that the society didn’t resist, but cooperated with the authorities.
The facts matter, and the investigation is the only way to uncover them. There will be trauma in the investigation, but the authorities have had to make a judgment call, weighing it against the possible harm to the girls. I’m willing to wait for the facts, and I’m not going to let my imagination run away with me any direction.
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I’m curious, Cates — what do you think would have been a more temperate and yet still acceptable response? I must agree that guns drawn seems a bit extreme with any kids in the room, unless there are guns drawn on the other side. (Yow – what a visual.)
I’m also very curious about Julia’s comment above. It is absolutely true that some mothers in this community appear to have been OK with their daughters going down this path. (Some have protested this in the past, I believe. Didn’t the original Tapestry against Polygamy lady break with her community when her own daughters were about to be married off?) I’m not sure what to think about that — where that puts these women on the “unfit mother” scale.
Finally, I also find myself wondering what role race plays in this. It’s very, very unusual to see a white woman who is not a drug addict have her kids taken away. Am I the only one who thinks these women would be judged more harshly if they were a different color?
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I have to admit that I’m hooked and entirely grossed out by these women on these videos. Quite frankly, I’m repulsed by polygamy. Maybe it’s just another alternative lifestyle, and I’m being too judgy. Maybe. But the oppression feels evil to me.
So, what to do about the women and children? What to do about a legal precedent of saying that all polygamous relationships create an environment ripe for child abuse?
As yucky as all this is, women who are over 18 have the right to do all sorts of stupid things. Even sleep with Eliot Spitzer for money. What we should do is set up information booths right outside these compounds with literature. They need to have some counterforce to the indoctrination happening there.
And I suppose if these families aren’t forcing their 13 year old girls to get married then they should be allowed to go on. But if there is any evidence of wrong doing, the law should come down on the family and the whole community like a ton of bricks. Sort of like what’s happening in TX.
I think that there has been a lot of evidence of wrong doing in this community, Cates. They have bus loads of pregnant teenagers. They have 13 years olds who say that they are the spiritual wives of older men. That’s child abuse.
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Laura,
I agree about the Texas ranch women (who are under a lot of stress right now, naturally), but the Arizonan women seemed really normal and happy.
We recently tried watching Big Love, but I gave up before the end of the first episode. Watching adults stress about money, women overspend or vie for dominance, and a kid pee on the floor doesn’t provide the kind of escapist fun that I look for after the kids’ bedtime.
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Here’s another article about the real abuse going on in this community.
Does anybody have a help number that I can post for for women in these situations?
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Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer gives some great insight into the power of leaders like Warren Jeffs.
I think most of these women would elect to stay given the choice, even when given access to other lifestyles. This is all these women have known. They find comfort in having everything mapped out and decided for them. Having no responsiblity in the form of blind faith is comforting to some people.
I think it would take long-term deprogramming and therapy for these women to believe in themselves enough to guide their own lives and the lives of their children.
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I was abused in a religious context and the way these cults operate is anathema to me.
That said, I really think it should be handled under current laws. I have no objection to consenting adults deciding to form contracts in groups of more than two.
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jen, by my lights supporting such a system should make one an “unfit mother.” These women exist in a system with other values, though, so encouraging unquestioning obedience in a child, to the point of becoming the “spiritual wife” of an older man, probably makes a mother virtuous. Think of the Milgram experiments, or the prison experiments at Stanford. When offered a clearly defined role, many people will conform.
As abhorrent as the treatment of minor children is the willful practice of cousin marriage, which has caused this community to be plagued by a rare, grave genetic disorder: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2005-12-29/news/forbidden-fruit/.
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jen, if the Texas law enforcement agencies have credible evidence of teenage girls being forced into underage “marriages” (and I think that there could be credible, if as-yet-unreleased, evidence of this, given the history of this community), then I think that taking all teenage girls into custody, say 11 or 12+, would be a reasonable response. Removing 2, 4, 6, 10-year-olds from their homes and parents, breaking up sibling groups into a terrible foster system in an environment deeply bigoted against their faith, depriving mothers who have yet to be accused of any wrongdoing from any contact with their very young children—-this goes beyond the pale.
To be clear, I find this community deeply distasteful. I’m not crazy about polygamy in general, and this particular splinter group appears to be among the most dysfunctional. I find it plausible that there are underage marriages occurring, and that there is a degree of coercion (though I don’t know of any firm evidence that this is the case). I would be overjoyed if this community gradually opened, integrated and finally dissipated altogether. None of this justifies the mass removal of all children from their mothers.
the deepest irony is that this episode will most likely have the effect of further closing and isolating (is that possible?) these women, rather than leading them toward openness and integration, because it absolutely confirms their worldview of a beleaguered, righteous minority resisting the forces of Satan. Do I see it that way? Of course not. But they will, and it will leave their children no safer from abuse but much, much less likely to find access to an open society. Tragic.
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I’m not familiar with Devil’s Playground.
If you want to get a sense of what tight-knit but weird religious communities feel like from the inside, the book I recommend is “The Rapture of Canaan.” It gets it right; even though “The Church of Brimstone and Fire and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind” isn’t in any detail like what I know, the experience is very much recognizable.
And bj, if solid evidence of child rape…in the form of girls who are pregnant and mothers, and younger than the age of consent is sufficient evidence to take all a mother’s other children away, the state of Texas (and every other state) is letting an awful lot of children with unfit mothers.
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“. Removing 2, 4, 6, 10-year-olds from their homes and parents, breaking up sibling groups into a terrible foster system in an environment deeply bigoted against their faith, depriving mothers who have yet to be accused of any wrongdoing from any contact with their very young children—-this goes beyond the pale.”
NPR reported that the Texans have a 16 year old in custody who has 4 children (though, given this community, we’re going to have to have more proof than that — it’s possible that her definition of her 4 children include those who are not biologically hers).
If that’s true, I can’t see leaving a 10 year old girl in the community, and returning a 10 year old with no assurance that the violations (assuming 13 year olds were encouraged/forced to have sex) won’t occur again. But, I also don’t want to take children away from their families if it can be avoided. I think what I’d want to see an agreement from the group leaders about how the women/children will be treated, and an agreement to all child protection services to do some kind of regular inspections w/ the consent of the group & the court.
I do think there needs to be clear evidence of rape — i.e. men having sex with children who are under the age of consent– in order to justify this process. As outsiders, I don’t know if it exists.
Kristof has an interesting column in the NYT today arguing how significantly ambiguous fact patterns (like this one) can be influenced by pre-existing biases, and, in order to “exercise my mental muscle” I’m going to try very hard not to assume that facts exist that I don’t know about.
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Sam,
You really should see Devil’s Playground. We’re probably going to show it at one of our monthly graduate movie nights. (We used to do a weekly undergraduate movie night when we lived on campus.)
To your points, I’d add that in my home town, no one (except maybe people like my parents)would blink an eye at the prospect of a 14-year-old girl “going out with” a 24-year-old guy. It didn’t seem weird at all at the time, but it sure does now. A family friend who worked at the high school attributed the practice to the relative shortage of women in a logging town. Similarly, the less popular high school boys not infrequently looked for girlfriends among the 12 and 13 year old girls.
So, I’d agree that the Texas polygamists’ mores should probably be compared to those of the surrounding communities, rather than to the mores of upper-middle class America.
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What would it say to these girls about being female, if they are taken from their families but everyone else gets to stay? Doesn’t it seem like that could also be interpreted by these girls as punishing them for being young and female?
I’m all for leaving sibling groups intact, but don’t the mothers also deserve some punishment?
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“And bj, if solid evidence of child rape…in the form of girls who are pregnant and mothers, and younger than the age of consent is sufficient evidence to take all a mother’s other children away, the state of Texas (and every other state) is letting an awful lot of children with unfit mothers.”
Wow, really? Clearly I live in an alternative universe (and, I mean that literally, not as some kind of snark). There are lots of 14 year-olds with babies in Texas who get to keep them? I actually didn’t think about that possibility at all.
But, I am all for consistency. If I think that mothers who encourage/allow their 13 year olds to have sex are unfit, I would think that in any circumstance. I think the argument in some of the other cases (15 year old girls, who turn up pregnant) would be that this was done without the consent of the parents.
(and, as with the statistics themselves, we’re being fuzzy about the numbers. The stats always report “teenage” mothers, and there’s a world of difference between a 13 year old and a 19 year old).
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One thing that concerns me was that the women of this cult are obviously lying to protect the men in their group. Even if they themselves didn’t make their 13 year old daughters marry 50 year old guys, they surely knew that this was happening within their community. They clearly lied to Larry King when he asked them if they knew of that happening to other girls in their community. If they knew that these underage marriages were occurring and did nothing to stop them, they are a party to a crime. If a proper trial happens and they find this to be the case, then I think that they should be punished according to the law.
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bj,
In my time as a high-school teacher in an alternative school, I saw many 15-16 year olds who were pregnant or had a child, and who had younger siblings; I’m not aware of any case where the mother of the pregnant 15-year-old was threatened with losing custody of her children.
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Google is our friend!
Pregnancy among 14 year olds
“# Approximately one in seven sexually experienced 14-year-old girls reports having been pregnant.
# That translates into about 20,000 pregnancies each year and 8,000 births. (For those 15 to 19, the numbers are about 850,000 pregnancies and 450,000 births)”
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From Wendy’s numbers, it seems like there must be a significant jump in the number of pregnancies after 14.
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Thanks for the numbers, always good to have.
I think, though, one of the key concerns in this case is relevant to the following comment at the teen pregnancy site:
“# Parents are usually unaware that their young children have had sex. Only about one-third of parents of sexually experienced 14-year-olds believe that their child has had sex. ” Clearly, that’s a critical caveat to add about the judgment of fitness.
(now, I do completely agree that it is not the parents’ job to prove that they are fit, but the state’s job to prove that they are unfit, and don’t want to see that standard changed, even with the risks it poses to children).
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There’s rather a huge difference between a teenager who is pregnant because she had sex with her boyfriend in the back of his car and a teenager who is pregnant because she was married off by her parents to an older guy.
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Laura, I’m a big fan of monogamy and sex and marriage as over-18 activities, but if you look at it from the polygamists’ point of view, there are obvious advantages for the second pregnant teenager:
1. Her husband and the father of her child is older, better-off, and more respected in the community than the teenage boyfriend in car. There’s also a better chance that the older husband is going to stick around.
2. She’s married.
3. She’s part of a tight social network. She can draw on her own parents and siblings, her husband’s parents and siblings, and her sister wives. When she’s having trouble with her baby or child, her older sister wives will be available for help or advice. It takes a village!
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Also, a 14-year-old from a polygamous compound undoubtedly has a very different skill set than a conventional American 14-year-old. I don’t think the two are at all comparable, any more than you could compare me at 16 to my great-great-grandmother, who got married at that age on the frontier. Social context makes a big difference.
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Amy, I can’t believe you’re defending this! These girls are basically being forced into a life of being nothing more than a breeder. They have no choice other than to start reproducing the very moment they’re able. I don’t really see how “they are married” becomes a great benefit at that point. Much less how the same tight social network that forced a person into this situation is now somehow wonderful because they’ll babysit. Puh-lease.
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Yeah, I’m shocked at the defense of the practice of underage marriage that I’ve read in the blogosphere in the past couple of days.
14 year old girls should not be having sex. Period. It’s bad when they sneak off and do it on their own. It’s horrible and disgusting and unforgivable if parents are forcing their kids to do this.
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Amy,
Also, a 14-year-old from a polygamous compound undoubtedly has a very different skill set than a conventional American 14-year-old. I don’t think the two are at all comparable, any more than you could compare me at 16 to my great-great-grandmother, who got married at that age on the frontier. Social context makes a big difference.
But of course, social context cuts both ways. Speaking as someone with polygamist ancestors, I’ve never been entirely convinced by the social arguments that some apologists in Mormon circles put forward what they called “the Principle”; in the end, however one slices it, there was a lot of discontent in those families. Still, admittedly polygamous arrangements in an enclosed, frontier, mostly agrarian community had something to say for itself–among other things, those social networks Amy mentioned allowed women to share child-rearing responsibilities while the men were out in the fields, thus affording some of them to enjoy a freedom that many even well-off 19th-century women did not. But here is the thing: as much as the FLDS aspire to such, they can’t recreate an entirely enclosed, frontier-style, agrarian world. As several have said already, plural marriage, as it was practiced in the one social context we (or at least I) can speak of where it really did have some social worth for those involved, is no longer an option. The world has turned modern; the lives of women and children have changed. Hence, I really cannot make any substantive defense of FLDS practices; there is no evidence that the women and children living their are gaining a “skill set” which is at all relevant to the socio-economic lives they will not be able to avoid living.
My perplexity wholly comes down to a bedrock belief that one should support the state in taking children away from their parents only under the most dire of circumstances, and while some very dire allegations have been made, I am confused as to whether I can reconcile that direness with all the steps Texas has taken here. I realize that my historical situation enables me (or blinds me) in such that I can percieve a difference between this cult and a “standard” child abuse case, in which of course all the children need to be removed from the home of the accused. I can see a multiplicity of possible relationships here, not all of which deserve complete state condemnation. But I can also easily see others legitimately labeling my perplexity a window for the perpetuation of patriarchy and abuse. As some who is far from convinced that the way the state came down on us Mormons in the 19th-century was ultimately an entirely bad thing, I’m probably condemned to remain confused here.
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Except, Amy P, every one of those children are American citizens by birth. They have certain rights, and one of them is not to be sold, or given away, as a household drudge/baby producer to anyone. They may be born to parents in this group, but that does not mean that they are this sect’s property.
As for a “tight social network,” one of the best ways to limit a woman’s choices is to force her to produce a child. Very few women will walk away from their own child. With a system of so-called “sister wives,” access to one’s own children can be used to control a woman’s behavior.
Polygamy is explicitly illegal in Texas, and Utah, and Arizona. It doesn’t matter if some sect wants to declare that a man may have more than one wife, because before the law, he can only have one. These communities claim welfare benefits for the illegitimate children of the unwed mothers. They are well aware of the legal status of the “marriages.”
The math forces barbaric choices on the group. If one man may have many wives, and that family structure reflects a man’s social status, in order for high status men to have access to wives, other men have to leave the group. This is most easily done when the rivals are young, and that’s precisely what one sees. Young men dumped on the outside world with no money, no marketable skills, and with the trauma of sudden abandonment.
In my eyes, these parents are unfit parents. Every parent has the duty to prepare their children for life. Restricting your child’s education and experience of the world until only life within the narrow confines of this tiny community is not defensible.
By the way, some news reports claimed that Texas authorities have had “a source” within the group for four years. The problem of polygamy has been allowed to fester by state governments unwilling to enforce their own laws. If you’re a state government, why should you tolerate the growth of a group of people who claim a great deal in social services, and yet contribute very little in return, especially when these groups rely on the exploitation of women?
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There’s also the nasty topic of rape. With the exception of the first wife, when the “bride” is under seventeen, in Texas, every single sexual encounter would count as rape, would it not?
“Under the Texas age of consent laws, it is sexual assault for anyone to penetrate a person who is at least 14 years old but under the age of 17, if the offender is more than 3 years older than the victim is. The law includes an exception for married couples. This crime, commonly called statutory rape, carries a sentence of 2 to 20 years in jail.” (http://blog.laborlawtalk.com/2006/11/09/texas-age-of-consent-laws/)
You can’t argue, “they’re married, and that’s different,” because they aren’t legally married. Whatever the sect or parents choose to argue, in the end they are arranging for the rape of their underage daughters. If there are 16 year olds in the community with four children, and most teenaged boys are thrown out, that leaves few other options for the impregnators. Of course, with the degree of inbreeding this group has practiced for generations, genetic testing to prove parentage might be challenging.
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Look, as I said, I’m the biggest fan of monogamy and post-adolescent sexuality you’re ever going to find. But, I’m also a foreign culture geek, and I think that it’s worthwhile to think “with” an unfamiliar culture, to understand it as a coherent system, and to try to see it as its practitioners see it. To a certain extent, one person’s warm, supportive community is another person’s repressive hell hole.
(By the way, Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple is phenomenal.)
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My perplexity wholly comes down to a bedrock belief that one should support the state in taking children away from their parents only under the most dire of circumstances, and while some very dire allegations have been made, I am confused as to whether I can reconcile that direness with all the steps Texas has taken here.
I don’t know, Russell. The allegations are pretty serious. Underage marriage. Rape. A 16 year old who may have had 4 children already. There are stories of people being held in this compound against their will. I’ve been listening to stories from women who have escaped from these communities and I’m outraged. I’m also outraged that I’m not seeing enough outrage elsewhere. These practices aren’t just another alternative lifestyle. At some point, we have to draw a line and say that some practices are just wrong, that parents lose all rights when they cross that line, and the trauma that these kids will endure when separated from the families is worth it. I think we’re at that point.
I think it’s time to put the past aside. Just because underage marriage happened in the past, doesn’t make it okay now. Slavery happened in the past, too. My grandmother was married at 17, and she paid a very, very steep price for that. At 13, the price is even higher. Just because injustices happened in the past to Mormon families (and I have to admit ignorance to that history), it’s a huge mistake to assume that it is happening again.
As a father of girls, Russell, certainly you must be sympathetic to the fates of the girls in this cult.
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At some point, we have to draw a line and say that some practices are just wrong, that parents lose all rights when they cross that line, and the trauma that these kids will endure when separated from the families is worth it….As a father of girls, Russell, certainly you must be sympathetic to the fates of the girls in this cult.
Absolutely, Laura. In fact, after I wrote the comment you just quoted from this morning, I asked Melissa how we would deal with Megan (our soon-to-be twelve-year-old) coming to us and telling us that she’d been talking to this fellow who had convinced her that she needed to live “The Principle,” and needed to prepare herself for marriage and childbirth in just a couple of years. Her first reaction is that she’d just laugh–she couldn’t believe any child of ours might take such talk seriously. Her second reaction–and I thought this was revealing as to how we may be thinking about things differently–wasn’t that she would emphasize to Megan the costs and harms involved in making such a choice, though she would certainly also do that; rather, it was to remind Megan that, by our lights, plural marriage is false doctrine–that it is, simply put, a mistake, an error.
The police and child protection services, though, obviously can’t–and shouldn’t–play doctrinal cops. By the time you’ve got hundreds of people involved in a distant compound, you’re no longer talking about something amenable to respectful exchanges about the finer points of esoteric Christian doctrine, even assuming that the masters of the compound would even willing to allow such exchanges to take place (highly unlikely, by all reports). By that point, the point we’d come to at YFZ Ranch, outrage and blunt action are probably necessary. And again, I’ve never said I’m opposed to what the state of Texas has done here; I’m somewhat troubled by it and worried about it, to be sure, but I’m mostly grateful no one got shot. Perhaps my frustration can best be boiled down to the fact that I see in the FLDS a community that is, in some ways, not entirely different from the original one which shaped the faith I inherited, and thus–as much as you’re probably right that the past should be put aside–I still kind of wish there could have been some way to have respectful doctrinal discussions with those people, discussions that would have led to the breaking up of their disturbing, even outrageous practices, rather than it falling to men with guns and courts controlling child custody to do the breaking up for them.
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Given the very large number of children involved and the condition of foster care, it is inevitable that at least some of these children are going to be abused in the state’s custody.
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Russell, I don’t think for a minute that you would react that rationally if your smart, great little girl said that she wanted to get married at 14. But that’s not the point. The girls in this compound aren’t rationally weighing the pros and cons of different lifestyles and making a free choice to make a 50 year old man with 12 other wives. They are being forced.
Here are two more videos about the stuff going on there.
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Amy, abuse in state custody is, of course, a terrible thing. But state custody arrangements are made and maintained through agencies that, in theory at least, have some accountability for the situation. Your comment leave open the door to saying that since what the state provides victims with may not be much better than what they were stuck with before, the state ought not do anything. I strongly disagree.
Laura, of course you’re correct; my wife and I were discussing a hypothetical, whereas the people in those videos are living it for real. If there really was a chance that Megan might run off and allow herself to be married off at age 14 to be impregnated by a 50-year-old man, we’d probably be chaining in her to the dryer in the basement, civil liberties and doctrinal discussions be damned. (I suppose that’s partly why it’s never a good idea to let decisions like these wait until the moment the crisis is looking you in the face.)
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“Your comment leave open the door to saying that since what the state provides victims with may not be much better than what they were stuck with before, the state ought not do anything.”
I was thinking specifically of a recent Texas case where the foster father of a toddler taken from the biological mother for neglect shook the child to the point that the child was blinded and unable to walk. It’s worth asking, does the state of Texas have anywhere near the number of good foster homes available to absorb 400 children?
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amy, how does the codified practice of raping adolescent girls work towards creating a “warm supportive community?”
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i’m not doing so well with these comments, there seem to be all kinds of slips.
russel, with all respect, do you honestly see the rape of adolescent girls as being something of a “finer point of esoteric Christian doctrine”?
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“amy, how does the codified practice of raping adolescent girls work towards creating a “warm supportive community?””
Trishka, I was trying to think myself into the shoes of the polygamists and try to imagine what they would see as the virtues of their social system. While there isn’t anything to be said for rape, there also isn’t a lot to be said for a society (ours) that thinks that ripping hundreds of children away from their mothers is “protecting” them.
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amy, are you equating the two?
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Trishka,
No, I’m saying that both things are evil. I think it would be OK to take away all children for safekeeping if the group were clearly a suicidal doomsday cult (like Jonestown), but aside from that rare situation, I think that the police should be a lot more discriminating, especially since in this situation, it was only the post-pubescent children (both girls and boys) who were supposed to be in immediate jeopardy. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear (except in hindsight) which groups are going to drink the Koolaid. (Again, I strongly recommend the documentary Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple.)
To put it personally (as personally as you’ve been querying me on rape), could you rip a weeping child away from a weeping mother? Could you in good conscience do that on the theoretical supposition that the mother was going to offer the child up for an early polygamous union in 10 years’ time? Frankly, that’s a bizarre way to deal with child welfare.
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it would be very very hard to do but with the evidence supporting the (theoretical) supposition as strong as it is with the FLDS compounds, i would do it.
it’s not a good thing, it may be an evil thing, but it is certainly, in my mind heart & conscience, the lesser of evil of the two.
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Trishka,
Russell, with all respect, do you honestly see the rape of adolescent girls as being something of a “finer point of esoteric Christian doctrine”?
The rape or coerced marriage of adolescent girls? No. But the building up of a “righteous seed” sufficient for the “establishment of Zion” through encouraging the “patriarchal order of marriage,” a la Abraham, Issac, and Jacob? Yes, that I would consider a plausible “esoteric” doctrinal claim.
Note what the latter lacks: forced or coerced marriages, rape, and other abusive, nonconsesual sexual practices. Nonetheless, it must also be noted what it theoretically may include: arranged marriages, wife sharing, and more. Do I like those things? No. Do I think they are acceptable readings of the Bible today? No. Do I think the blessings those practices are supposed to provide make up for the oppression, missed opportunities, and stunted lives which these days they almost certainly will result in? No. But I cannot get past the belief that this is not necessarily the same thing as a junkie live-in boyfriend raping his girlfriend’s daughter; the social consequences may be the similar, but the route by which it gets there is not, as witnessed by the fact that we did not see every single child and woman in this cult immediately run and plead for protection the moment the cops arrived. They are, or at least a lot of them are, believers in the way they live. And that means, I think, that in a better world, where everyone had all the time in the world and communities could police themselves instead of relying on impersonal bureaucracies to make the hard choices, then yes: it would have been nice to see this raid be conducted in conjunction with a dialogue about the (I think false) Christianity they claim to profess.
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If the mistreatment is expected 10 years in the future, I think it’s wrong to take the child away now.
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There may be a historical parallel available, namely the mandatory residential schools that were run in both the US and Canada for the forcible assimilation of Native Americans and Canadian Natives. I haven’t read up on the subject, but in both the polygamist and the Native cases, the dominant culture finds the minority’s culture disgusting and backward and seeks to destroy it through removing children forcibly from their families.
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OK. This blogger is losing her mind. I’m exerting blogger privilege and closing comments on this thread. If there’s some new development in the case and I’m in a patient mood, I’ll put a new post.
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