“A cult of authority”

Posted by Marc Hodak on April 19, 2008 under Scandal | 4 Comments to Read

What began as a story about an abusive Mormon sect is quickly turning into a one about abusive Texas authorities. So far, 416 children have been shorn from their mothers on the rationale, or perhaps pretense, of protecting them. The state says the children were abused; the adults and the children say they weren’t. The judge, in a court proceeding that unflatteringly evoked the Wild West, ordered the children be placed into foster care.

Here is what a psychiatrist testifying on behalf of the state had to say:

He also conceded that the children, taught from birth to believe that contact with the outside world will lead to eternal damnation, would suffer if placed in traditional foster care.

“If these children are kept in the custody of the state, there would have to be exceptional and innovative programmatic elements for these children and their families,” he said. “The traditional foster care system would be destructive for these children.”

CPS (Child Protective Services) spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the department was pleased with the judge’s ruling and believes that the children will now be safe.

This kind of self-satisfaction is what gives fuel to CPS critics, undermining public confidence in the whole system.

BTW, as soon as the story broke, I was skeptical about “Sarah,” the 16 year-old girl who made the call from the ranch triggering the Texas raid. The size and scope of the raid seemed disproportionate to the nature of the call, even as bad as that was. Once the raid was completed and they claimed not to have found “Sarah,” it began to smell like the WMD justification for Iraq. At this point, it’s becoming ever clearer that “Sarah” was a hoax. My bias against conspiracy theories tells me it’s unlikely that the hoax was perpetrated by the state, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, like the WMD justification, neglect combined with an itchy trigger finger such that proper skepticism–or any sense of restraint–failed the authorities.

Finally, I tend to give more credence to reports about the action from people close to the action:

Local opinion on this is kind of mixed. By and large, people are in support of breaking up a group that was engaged in the systematic sexual abuse of teenage girls. People also have some real qualms that the state went too far in taking all the kids.

I can’t imagine why the state took all the boys. I haven’t heard anything indicating any boys were abused, but the state argues that they were being raised to be abusers. I’m not sold that this meets the legal standard for “harm or imminent risk of harm.”

I don’t know why the state separated the kids from their mothers. I haven’t heard anything indicating the mothers were abusing anyone.

Its rather odd that we now have the purported victims suffering and/or in custody (mothers and kids) while the perpertators (the men) are still walking around free.

There are almost certainly severe due process problems going on in the hearing on all this. The kids aren’t getting individualized hearings and the hearing itself are a total clusterfuck.

The gossip is that the judge is pretty much taking the state’s side in all this.