International Cultic Studies Association

As a self appointed child expert, I would have to disagree. The comments Marci Hamilton makes are idiotic, at best.

Read the full story at the Salt Lake Tribune

By sending the children in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints back home, Texas has opened up the doors to groups who want religious protection for abusing children, a leading church/state scholar said Saturday.

Marci Hamilton, a professor at Princeton and Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School, told a conference of the International Cultic Studies Association that the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to release the FLDS children from foster care paired with a ruling Friday that tossed out an award for injuries a teenager suffered during an exorcism made a dangerous statement.

“When you add yesterday’s decision to FLDS, the state of the Texas has just sent out an engraved invitation to any group who wants to abuse children,” Hamilton said. The two decisions make “Texas a very dangerous place for children.”

Hamilton, the author of “God vs. the Gavel” and a lawyer who has taken up several cases of child sexual abuse, addressed a packed house at the conference at the University of Pennsylvania. The conference of social workers, sociologists, psychiatrists and scholars is focused on studying cultic groups, and several forums this weekend plan to look at the FLDS situation.

Texas authorities raided the group’s Texas ranch on April 3, taking some 460 women and children into state custody based on allegations of sexual, physical
and emotional abuse. All were released in June 2, though investigations continue.

At the Philadelphia conference Saturday, Hamilton said placing the children into state custody “put them in really terrible straits.”

“They had to eat pizza. They had to learn to ride bicycles,” Hamilton said. “They had to live in a universe where abuse is not normal. They saw a window of information they would have otherwise not gotten.”

From the Deseret News

The raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church’s YFZ Ranch will be a hot topic at a conference under way in Philadelphia on cults.

Several seminars at the International Cultic Studies Association’s conference are devoted exclusively to polygamy.

“The conference was planned before the events that occurred in April,” said Mike Kropveld, director of Montreal-based InfoSecte, a cult-monitoring group. “It has become an issue of concern with people coming out of the different fundamentalist Mormon groups.”

Former members of polygamous groups and government representatives will give presentations, with the raid on the YFZ Ranch in the front of everyone’s minds.

“We’re going to be talking about the approach Utah and Arizona have taken in trying to solve problems and to create a safe environment for people in polygamous communities,” said Paul Murphy, the coordinator of the Utah Attorney General’s Safety Net Committee, a group of polygamists, government workers and social-service agencies working together to deal with abuse and neglect in closed societies.