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Willie Jessop Hand Delivers Letter, asks Bush to help FLDS kids
By joshuah | May 11, 2008
Somehow I doubt very much if George Bush would touch this issue with a 10 meter cattle prod. Anyway, I particularly like this part of the letter:
Records will show that crusading politicians and ex-FLDS members have exploited the FLDS faith by participating in sensational media productions and lucrative book deals. Officials have promoted and encouraged as part of their political agenda a flagrant disregard for the truth and have focused on sensationalism, sex, and vile accusations of every kind designed to promote prejudice and hatred.…Even on the federal level, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is seeking Federal money from every tax-paying American to carry out his agenda of hatred toward the FLDS church.
Via the Deseret News
A hand-delivered letter to President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch asks the new father-in-law to intervene in the plight of hundreds of FLDS children and their parents.The 10-page letter was written and delivered on Saturday by FLDS member Willie Jessop to staff members at Bush’s ranch. The president and his family were at the ranch for daughter Jenna’s wedding to Henry Hager.
Topics: Eldorado, FLDS, YFZ, polygamous sects |
May 12th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
While I don’t necessarily agree with your beliefs, I do have to agree and take issue with how this was handled. The big question is, if there are no criminal charges being filed against any members of this sect, why is there a custody hearing? If authorities are not able to find any wrong doing, then the children should be returned to their families immediately. While there has been abuse in communities like this and maybe even in this community at some time, unless they can find evidence of this and have enough evidence to press charges, then they need to re-unite the kids with thier families. Otherwise, they are causing harm and trauma to these kids. Investigate away, but ti should be done in a manner that causes as little collateral damage as possible. It is one of the big issues that i have had with child protective services anywhere. They seem to act like they are above the law and above the constitution. I do appreciate thier need to protect children and support them in that regard, doing so in a manner that violates criminal procedures and constitutional rights is not he way to go about it. In many cases that i have seen they act no better that hitler’s Gestapo.
I do hope that there is nothing going on and that this will play itself out. If that is the case, i do hope that charges are files agaisnt the people who organized this for violation of people’s rights. If there is wrong doing found, then those people should be prosecuted, but just because one or more people are abusing children, doesn’t mean that everyone is….or should we prosecute every Catholic priest because some are molesting/have molested children in their care?
We need to return this country to a rule of law and away from the crusader attitude our politicians and law enforcement agencies seem to have.
Eric
a concerned Veteran
May 12th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I have to say, this truly enrages me. We have our soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan protecting democracy and peoples freedoms, yet here in the US we are not practicing what we preach. I have a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and no where in any of my studies did I learn any police official had the right to enter a home without a search warrant unless in “Hot Pursuit”. I understand that the authorities got a report of abuse and went in to investigate it. But since when does an investigation require M-16 machine guns and armored vehicles. Then after all was said and done the initial abuse call was proven to be a hoax. This is the point the authorities should have apologized, returned the children, and arrested and prosecuted the person who called in the hoax for filing a false police report. From what I can see, the Texas authorities are now trying to justify using all that force and spending all that money, when no crime was present. I don’t agree with Polygamy, just like I don’t agree with the Catholic religion installing rules and then justifying select people to break them. I do agree that everyone out there has a right to due process and if the state does not file charges or return these children, then I think the people of the US need to decide how much we are going to let authorities bully us before we take action. From the wedding day killing in New York to the kidnapping of children in Texas, how far are we going to let them go. As Shay’s Rebellion proved, some times government goes too far and the people have to stand up for what is fair and right.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Interesting how all the outrage of the two men above is reserved for the protection of the rights of men who were sexual gigolos with multiple illegal concubines, ages pre-pubescent and up. “Whoaa…we should take our time, here. Let’s get a committee and study the sexual nature of this problem while kids who can’t help themselves are physically abused by feeling the full weight of grown men sweating and laying upon them nightly, at their leisure. That’s what America is all about. There is no place for the government to step in when men have their own ranch, and excellent defense contracts to fund their lifestyle.”
Is this REALLY what our soldiers in Iraq are fighting to protect, gentlemen?
Try putting yourself in the place of a frightened 11 year old girl who is going to have to make love to her uncle tonight. Put yourself in the place of the brainwashed and helpless mother that aids and abets. You can’t can you? Neither really can I. So perhaps you won’t be so quick to judge the techniques which were used to separate these “families.”
May 12th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Helen:
Your comments perfectly illustrate how easy it is to manage the perception of others. How effectively the media is able to sway the thoughts and opinions of the desperate mass of society, and how it only takes repeating a lie often enough to convert it into truth.
We have “progressed” from 14 year old girls and 50 year old men to 11 year old girls and their uncles. Next will be the revelations of blood drinking and child sacrifice, I’m sure. And of course we cannot possibly believe that any “normal” woman would want to live that way, especially the dreadful fashions and the out of date hair. It must be brainwashing! Well Helen, perhaps you’re the one who has been brainwashed.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
1. 14 year old girls are bad enough.
2. The girls were “married” and raped by men who were married to their “sister-mothers.” You figure it out.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Helen:
1. If 14 year old girls are bad enough, why do you feel the need to exaggerate to make a point?
2. I can’t. Please elaborate.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Helen,
The point that needs to made, and the one that you are overlooking is whether you agree with how they live or how they believe they still have rights. You may think that they don’t but they do. If we as Americans do not step up and take a stand for the people’s rights that we don’t agree with; it will only be a matter of time before the government steps on some of your rights that I don’t agree with, and if that happens why would anybody step up for you. Remember every can pass judgment and say they should have no rights. Not everybody agrees though. Are we wanting to become like those we are fighting overseas and say that if you don’t agree with us you have no rights and should perish.
The only thing we need to remember is there was no abuse that can be proven, and the call was proven to be a false accusation. Innocent until proven guilty seems to be something that is going out of style her in the United States of America. Let’s just hand over all control to the Christians and the Republicans and let them abolish all of us heathens to live elsewhere. I seem to remember a bunch of pilgrims who had to leave England and found a new Country because of talk like that.
Remember don’t believe the hype read between the lines it is the only way to get the truth. Long live Bill Maher.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Get real. It has already been well established that these underage girls were having coerced sex in illegal “marriages” to men who were not just 50 years old, but also their relatives in most instances. You are living in a fairy tale of your own design if you believe that Texas law enforcement just made this up and now is perpetrating a vast hoax.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I don’t see how police storming in with m16s and grabbing children protects anybody. And as for abuse, don’t you think the act of invading their homes and taking them away is abusive to those children?
There was no call for this kind of behavior. I really hope to see some sort of charges files against the ‘authorites’ there.
And just for the record, I am female.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:07 am
I came to this blog from CNN.com and I wish the masses could see the fervor with which the posters here and in other places defend the so-called rights of the YFZ residents. I must admit that on BOTH sides there is a lot of slippery slope logic. That can’t be helped considering the level of emotion and the subject matter at hand. Nevertheless. Where is it in our laws as a country that it says you can set up your own city-state without the legal nod of any level of government and then proceed to live outside of the very laws that some of these posters are now saying must be used to defend them? Part of me wants to scream loudly, “Pick a side, people!” while the other part is just saddened. I am saddened by the fact that these “families” (and I call them “families” because they are a farce of what one should be) that the scenes described by the letter occurred. I’m sure they did, but not in the bleeding heart fashion told there. Who are going to be the people that keep these children, boys AND girls from being mistreated sexually and told that it is right (”spiritually”)? Who is going to stop the forced marriages and pregnancies of girls no older than our young daughters, sisters, cousins?
There is evil on both sides of this thing. However, consider this in this situation: Whose rights matter more? The little girls who become women who are forced to have sex and children? The little boys (some of whom are sexually abused as well) who become young men who either grow into this lifestyle or are exiled from the group (to maintain the numbers of men to women)? Or the men who get to hide behind religion to feed their hedonistic desires of having their sexual pick?
For whom does our country stand for then?
May 13th, 2008 at 5:13 am
I find nothing amusing about this fiasco at all. You were one of 439 visitors from CNN yesterday, so I hope the masses do indeed get to see the other side of the story.
“The little boys (some of whom are sexually abused as well) ”
Again, it becomes clear that something only needs to be repeated a few times for it to become fact. The news reports of abuse amongst the boys at YFZ were such as this:
“In a written update provided to lawmakers Wednesday, the state Child Protective Services division says it is looking into possible sexual abuse of boys based on interviews and journal entries.”
Not much more was ever said about this afterwards, except for this headline: “FLDS adults not suspected of abusing boys”, because the point was to simply inject it into the discussion. Perception management.
As another commenter was so kind to point out, all this says is that the possibility was being investigated, nothing more, and yet it becomes a “well documented” fact very quickly.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Helen:
Perhaps what has been “well established” has actually been blown way out of proportion, by people who feel a need to exaggerate the facts of a case in order to further an agenda, or to make a point.
I’ll give you an example:
“Try putting yourself in the place of a frightened 11 year old girl who is going to have to make love to her uncle tonight. ”
It sells books, makes for titillating headlines, and causes some people to blindly rally around the cry of “save the children” but it’s not necessarily truth. Some people just cannot allow irritating things like the facts to get in the way of their opinions. Unfortunately, its groups like the FLDS in Eldorado, and especially their children, who suffer for it most.
I suppose it’s entirely possible that I am living in a fairy tale, but if so it is indeed of my own design and not one that has been manufactured for me.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Helen,
If the cases you are speaking of are true and not just alleged. Then why are they still looking into it and not pressing charges? I will tell you why; because our media and the authorities involved are busy building up propaganda. Which is the same process by way that a mad man almost got the entire world to follow him during World War II. Simply because people wanted to believe what they had read in the local paper, and on the news rather than finding out the truth themselves.
Once you allow one religious faction to get judged and persecuted. Then you are opening the door for all religions to become illegal and abolished. You have to decide which is more important freedom as a whole, or freedom for only those that believe as you do? If you pick the latter please go over to the middle east where they believe the same type of gibberish, and actually preach it.
So please don’t talk facts until you can prove what you are speaking of. And please, please, please don’t use the 700 Club or Rush Limbaugh as viable news sources.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I consider Rush Limbaugh a weird buffoon and certainly would never value him as a news source. Don’t know much about the 700 club. Thanks for allowing all opinions to be expressed in this forum. Civilized debate and dialogue on such issues is absolutely necessary.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Dear Helen,either take another antidepresent or,for gods sake,stop reading papers!
The age of consent to sex in the rest of the world sits anywhere between 12 y. of age and 18 y. When are you going to ask yourself the question - why does anything what even remotely suggest anything sexual make my head spin ? The guilt you feel inside of you has been artificially introduced into your ancestors ,study it and ease your fear of sex , then your life may start to
make some sense.Good luck,honey!