Monday, June 09, 2008

Family Values


I heard today that Texas law enforcement agencies decided to cite "the law " as the reason for returning all those polygamist kids to their mommies. I am not surprised. It seemed absurd to me at the time that without a search warrant or evidence of a crime, the authorities were even allowed on the compound—let alone given permission to remove hundreds of children from their homes.

Not that I'm a fan of polygamy. On the contrary, I've read Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer's chilling account of two fundamentalist LDS brothers whose so-called vision from God led them to murder their younger brother's wife and daughter. I was as horrified as the next person at both the murders and the multiple stories of sexual abuse perpetrated by fundamentalist "elders" documented therein. But here's what I'm having a bit of trouble with: no one is citing the extreme emotional and psychological abuse the women and children of these fundamental LDS churches are being subjected to.
Why focus solely on sexual abuse, which is difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute without the testimony of the victims? Why is no one concerned about the emotional/psychological abuse inherent in any organized cult that allows parents to literally imprison their offspring, prevent them from having contact with the outside world and require them to lie to authorities to protect their abusers? Any time a child is born into captivity and kept there, he/she is a victim of abuse. Why aren't we prosecuting them for that?

This behavior is well-documented and could easily provide the evidence needed to arrest fundamentalist perpetrators and rescue these children from their current family prisons. Yet the authorities focus solely on reported sexual abuses, for which they have no direct evidence. Hence, the debacle that recently ensued when dozens of children were uprooted, moved around and then returned to their unholy church--creating a major news event but bringing the abused children no closer to safety.

The only rationale I can find for failing to protect the children of the fundamentalist LDS Church from its elders, and it scares me to say it, is that our society still holds to the archaic and dangerous belief that children are the property of their parents. It is ironic to me that the same people who fight for the rights of an unborn child, seem oblivious to the rights of living children who are imprisoned by their own parents.

We have plenty of proof that over 400 children live in isolation and fear within the confines of fundamentalist camps. Yet Texas law enforcement officials saw no reason to rescue these children until they got a prank call reporting underage sex. Perhaps we should all stop looking for proof of sexual abuse and start working with what we can prove: polygamist fundamentalist sects that bring children into the world and force them to live in a confined environment, without any opportunity for self-development, self-expression or choice of living conditions, are abusive by nature. They should be outlawed. What's more, programs for debriefing their members should be created to assist the victims in learning to live in the real world, where each of us is free to decide how and where we live.

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