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opinion dimond
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Sadly, Cult's Mothers Just Couldn't Be Trusted
By Diane Dimond
Of the Journal
You know how we, as fallible human beings, come up with snap solutions to very complex problems? We bring our own baggage to the dilemma and blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
That's what happened as I watched the footage of those 463 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints being bused off into foster care recently. My motherly instinct, my woman's point of view took over my brain.
My snap solution: Remove the men from the Yearning For Zion Ranch! Leave the children and the mothers alone! Don't victimize the innocents by removing them from everything they hold dear and familiar!
It made sense to me. If it's the men who are suspected of breaking the law, of taking underage girls as their brides and making babies with them, then punish them or at least segregate them somewhere else while the whole mess gets sorted out.
It doesn't take an Einstein to understand it just can't work that way.
Texas officials report more than 30 minor girls taken from the compound already had children, some had multiple children. Kids forced to have kids. Also, two other underage girls were pregnant, one giving birth while in state custody earlier this week. Her baby now becomes a ward of the state as well. All this happened because the so-called “responsible adults” on the ranch let it happen. Both the men and the women who live there turned the other way as girls as young as 14 were sent to bed with male members of the sect who likely already had other wives.
Put the whole church connection aside and realize one thing. There is no child protective service in any state that would let any children remain in a home where the mother allowed her young daughter to be violated. Even if the mother had once been a victim herself, in the eyes of the law, it does not excuse offering up a child's virginity to an adult man.
When this story first surfaced, really, I felt for those women ripped away from their children, sobbing that they just wanted their babies to come home. I thought of my own daughter.
Like so many others I watched in fascination as one sect member named Marilyn gave a TV tour of their dormitory-like existence. Everything was spare, orderly and spotless. Each bedroom was equipped with several single beds; each girl had several similar dresses. The huge kitchen served up homemade bread. “We grind the wheat ourselves, for the best nutrition,” she explained.
TV viewers saw the communal dining room where women and children ate every meal together. Marilyn took viewers into their living room which featured several rows of blue upholstered chairs and a piano. “We sing much of the time,” she explained. It seemed an almost idyllic, pioneer lifestyle.
Curiously, there was no mention made of the men and boys at the ranch, where they ate or slept or why Marilyn was acting as the tour guide and not one of the dominant male members of the church.
There is the argument that some of the displaced children are too young to enter into these “child marriages,” as about 130 are under the age of five. And, some of the kids now in foster care are boys who were, reportedly, not physically or sexually abused. But we know their fate. With all the underage mothers discovered at the ranch, think about the lessons in manhood being taught there.
And realize this is the FLDS compound established by Warren Jeffs, who is serving time for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl. She testified Jeffs forced her to marry her own cousin, forced them to have sex. Jeffs still faces other trials on similar charges.
Doesn't society have an obligation to try to derail these children's sexually subservient destinies? If we err, shouldn't it be on the side of protecting the innocent?
The FDLS may lead an isolated, rustic life but I noticed Marilyn was PR-savvy enough to display her child's baby book and hold up her picture to the camera. Marilyn explained in her robotic monotone voice that her 7-year-old daughter, Marva, was “so scared” when authorities took them away from the ranch.
“We need our children to come home — they need us,” Marilyn said as she choked back tears. But she didn't explain what her faith would require of Marva in just a few years, once she reached puberty.
Did she stop to think that Marva might be scared then, too?
Diane Dimond's column appears in the Journal on Saturday. E-mail to diane@dianedimond.net
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