An unsurprising photo in the Texas polygamy case.
Whoops. I guess there’s more than a “scintilla” of evidence of what would legally constitute child abuse amongst these cultists, as some have suggested does not exist. Nope, there’s evidence of widespread child abuse (or what would be legally defined as child abuse, anyway) in this cult as a general everyday practice, which is why authorities moved on them in the first place.
This all raises a number of philosophical problems that polygamy presents to modern society. The Bible, which forms the basis of most morality in the Western world, pretty much sets the acceptable age of marriage for a girl at 13, although some readings put it at age 12 and a half, and some sects will read various verses in such a way to suggest that marriage is fine as soon as puberty kicks in, which in some cases is as low as age 9, and this is the stuff that Fundamentalist Christian radicals and/or Mormon radicals often use to justify common practices in polygamy–they feel that scripturally, not only are multiple wives allowed but that marriage can and should take place soon after girls hit menarche (i.e. get their first period).
Interestingly enough, you can make a pretty strong case that girls that age* are actually better equipped to handle the physical rigors of pregnancy than even women in their 20s, let alone 30s or 40s. You can also make a case that by encouraging marriage late in life (10 or 20 years after menarche) we’re actually encouraging sex outside of marriage, by expecting sexually mature young adults to go without sex for one to two decades; even the apostle Paul, in the New Testament, suggests that that’s not wise thinking.
This is all why the phrase “hard cases make bad law” apply. When looking at the Texas Polygamy case, we can see the complexity that comes when morality, law, and custom all clash at once. Do you sympathize with the 13 year old girls being pushed into marriage and pregnancy? Do you sympathize with the right to free practice of religion? Do you ignore extremist cults, or do something about them? None of this is easy, and I’m often surprised at people who think it is.
(And no, in case anyone wonders, I’m not advocating that we start encouraging 13 year olds to get married. I merely think cases like this make us confront certain beliefs and customs that we don’t usually think much about.)
*Update: Excuse me for very careless phrasing. When I said “that age” my brain thought I said “teenagers.” I did not intend to imply that girls age 9 or 10 are physically ready for having babies. They most certainly are not. I just meant teenagers, and even that’s not clear. More in-depth discussion of that question here.
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Well, this is the obvious smoking gun. I can see her birth certificate right through her dress.
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Unless I’m mistaken kissing someone isn’t usually considered abuse, otherwise I have a grandma who should have been sent away decades ago.Â
I don’t think that anyone is arguing though that there very likely is some abuse in that community. The question is, is very likely some a good enough reason to take everyone, and if so, who is safe?Â
I tend to think that there should be actual evidence of who, when and what variety before kids are taken from their parents.Â
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The authorities in this case have insisted from the beginning that the abuse is widespread and, because it is a tight-knit cult community with a small charismatic leadership, any children in it are threatened and any efforts to investigate family-by-family will result in other cult members covering for the investigated members and/or simply fleeing the state. Thus they made their case for immediate intervention.
I think it’s important that people understand that "one man’s cult is another man’s religion" is complete bullshit, and look at what the actual social organization is like in these hierarchical and fanatical cults.
I’m not sure that the data I’ve seen supports your contention that early teens have more successful pregnancies than older women, quite the contrary in fact I have seen assertions that pregnancies in women under 20 are riskier. I seem to remember the optimal age as early twenties, certainly not right after menarche.
Here’s a reference:
http://www.infoforhealth.org/pr/j41/j41chap2_3.shtml
So what makes the pretty strong case that girls that age are better equipped to withstand pregnancy?
Dean,
I have never seen anything indicating that girls of 12 or 13 have more successful pregnancies than women over twenty, quite to the contrary. (I tried to post a link to some data but was denied). What have you seen that indicates that this is true? At such a young age most girls don’t have their full growth yet which makes pregnancy more risky.
To see the report I saw and others, search on health risks of early pregnancy.
Elizabeth: Well, let me back off a little and say that I agree 12 or 13 is probably not ideal. I’m also not advocating a return to people getting married at that age (although in some parts of the United States, even age 14 is still allowed with parental consent). And, I was only generalizing; teenaged girls are, like teenaged boys, just more flexible and physically robest in general than they are as they approach their 30s.
I’m assuming that this here is the site you had in mind, and the information on there looks good to me. (By the way, in future, just paste your URLs straight into the comment without trying to code them. I don’t know why but that works better. When we do a WordPress upgrade and server move I’ll look more deeply into the problem, for now please just be patient.) All that data looks solid to me. I don’t want to overgeneralize.
I would expect that the social circumstances of teen pregnancy in the United States to be accompanied by poorer living conditions and less rigorous prenatal care than women in their 20s and 30s typically get, so, they would probably as a rule have greater risk of complication. I assume it’s mostly going to be poorer girls (inner city or rural) who are more likely to be carrying pregnancies to term as teenagers. If a young girl is in a community designed around the presumption of early pregnancy that makes sure to get her the best available care, then, a lot of that wouldn’t apply. (I’d be curious if anyone’s looked at the question by equalizing socioeconomic factors, do you know Elizabeth?)
Obviously, our bodies are designed to start reproducing by the early teen years, although there’s substantial evidence that girls reach menarche earlier these days than they did in generations past. I’m pretty sure a pregnancy at age 9 or ten would be massively more hazardous than one at, say, age 16 or 17, and girls closer to 12 than 19 would probably blow the curve. Also, the paper in question clearly suggests some reasons for the higher numbers that would be consistent with socioeconomic factors–they’re more often first births which are always more hazardous, they’re more often involved in unsafe abortions, they don’t get as good prenatal care, etc.
All I was saying is that a younger body is better able to stand up to the rigors of the process. Does that make sense?
So if I call the state police up in Michigan and tell them there’s a wacko named Dean Esmay that abuses his children, you’d be okay with them taking them away from you and Rosemary on *no other evidence*?
Because that’s what Texas did, and then after the fact used evidence seized under the warrant obtained from an anonymous tip from an angry neighbor to justify their actions.
I’m sorry, it does not work that way. That is the exact opposite of how our legal system is supposed to work.
Everyone from the Judge on down to the cops that participated in this need to be fired and replaced with people that understand the presumption of innocence. And if people like that can’t be found, then our culture really is dead.
Further, suppose it was a cop that made the anonymous tip that got someone to okay this raid instead of a neighbor who was squicked out by a guy boffing two different women in his lifetime? Is that okay?
While I’m ranting, isn’t Jeffs already in prison? How do pictures showing him kissing someone relate *in any way* to what 400 other people are doing?
Is it somehow now your personal burden that all those Priests diddled little boys? You should be locked up, child molesting catholic! Your priest or someone he knew touched little boys!
What? That doesn’t fly? Then those pictures of Jeffs don’t fly as evidence of anything for the Texas ranch.
Let’s have pictures of emaciated children, like state authorities like to leave to starve to death. Let’s have pictures of bruises, corpses. Let’s have marriage certificates filed with the government to show that there was any legal bigamy going on. Anyone?
Are there even reports filed with any government office of statutory rape there? For all you know, those girls were doing the few teenage boys there and having their kids. Or are we going to compel every man in this country to give DNA samples so the government can check every baby born to make sure there was no statutory rape going on?
(Yes, I realize I was ranting. Authorities abusing their power sends my into a blind rage, and it should you as well.)
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I read an interesting essay in a typically banal women’s magazine a couple of years ago, about a woman who was prone to preeclampsia and had trouble carrying a child to term. Her doctor, in trying to set her situation in perspective, pointed out how incredibly wasteful nature is with reproduction–look at all the acorns on the forest floor, most of which will never become oak trees. Back when it was common for girls to be married off as soon as they "hit puberty" (this is really a misnomer; a lot of girls, including many I grew up with, start menstruating before they develop breasts or hips), the chances of both the mother and her baby surviving the birth and incurring no lasting harm (such as uterine infection) weren’t much better than 50/50. Some historians think that during the European Middle Ages more women died in childbirth than men died on the battlefield. This might very well be "as nature intended"–only the strongest survive to reproduce again.
But civilization is not nature. Civilization is an agreement to protect the weak along with the strong. Now that we know premature pregnancy can cause lasting physical damage to a girl, we have a duty to protect her from that damage.
All my friends who’ve had babies in their early to mid twenties bounced back far more easily and completely than women I know who’ve had babies in their thirties. It’s true that we’re a little bit silly in this culture with regard to "waiting until the right time". (My doctor in Egypt always used to chide me about wasting my best childbearing years.) But there’s a world of difference between saying we wait too long and saying a girl of 13 with an underdeveloped pelvis is ready to have children. It was one thing to think so 1,000 years ago when we knew much less about human development, and there was a good chance you’d be dead by fifty no matter when you had kids. Today there’s no excuse.
Elisha: Your description of how the accusations got made, what evidence was presented, and what went on are at odds with how I know the authorities usually act in these cases, and with what I’ve read so far in the mainstream press of this case. It is entirely plausible to me that they are as much the innocent victims that they’ve been portrayed as, but that’s far from clear.
As I’ve already noted, a cult is not just a small mainstream religion and people need to stop ranting like they are. Cults more closely resemble mafia operations or other racketeering groups; they’re going to have a very small tight-knit group of leaders, with followers completely under their thrall. Think Manson Family or Jim Jones–and why is it, by the way, that I’m certain that if this turned out to be a cult that was regularly abusing children, the first thing a lot of folks would be doing was accusing the authorities of being irresponsible for not moving sooner to save all the children under the oppression of the cult leaders?
Willow: I don’t disagree with much of that, and I did generalize a bit when I said "girls that age" when I should have said "teenaged girls."
As you indicate, a thousand years ago, a marriage at age 10 would be unusual but probably not scandalous. Today it rightly would be. On the other hand, a girl who’s developed breasts and hips by age 13 is probably going to be just fine if she gets adequate care. My own guess would be that if you equalize for all socioeconomic circumstances, the "ideal" physical specimen for having a baby is probably aged 15-25, on average. They’re at an excellent state of development, highly flexible, and at the peak of their healing powers.
Boys that age are, obviously, all geared toward being extremely sexually active, too.
Civilization definitely changes things, and it has to.
Well, her description is backed up by the Texas Supreme Court, who just threw it all out. Nothing but conjecture and rank speculation was presented to the court, and no valid probable cause was established.
They aren’t just small mainstream religions — they are constitutionally protected rights.
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So I loaded the link and THERE they were… when I clicked for photo 2…. Error. Now the page reloads with no pics.  Hmmmm.
They aren’t just small mainstream religions — they are constitutionally protected rights.
In return for those rights they have to abide by the law. Polygamy and marrying children is against the law.
That’s correct. So is drug use, which is why the Supreme Court has said religious groups can’t use things like Peyote or Ganja (pot) even if it is part of their way of worship.
People who haven’t studied cults don’t know what "cults" are, in my experience. [shrug] Not much to be done about it I guess. People who insist that all religions are cults, or that a religion is a cult just because it’s small, don’t seem to want to be dissuaded from that view.
In the meantime, I note that the court was not unanimous by any means:
"Justice Harriet O’Neill dissented, in part, believing that the "record demonstrates that there was evidence to support the trial court’s order as it relates to pubescent female children" and their removal from the compound. Her opinion can be read here. Two other justices agreed with her on that point, but that was not enough to garner a majority of the court’s members."
Actually, Dean, several states have enacted Peyote Exceptions under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.Â
I understand the difference between a Cult of Personality and a splinter religion. This is where the rubber meets the road on civil liberties, though. Do you, or don’t you, believe in freedom of religion? Because it doesn’t just apply to religions that you think are OK. If it doesn’t apply to the unpopular or distasteful ones, then it doesn’t really apply at all.
(And the decision was unanimous as to the boys and the prepubescent girls, which was the majority of the people kidnapped. The dissent was only as to the pubescent girls. And the dissent was, of course, the dissent, not the ruling.)
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Folks, this post of Dean’s was aimed mostly at me. Do I really need to rebut or add anything to it?
Not really. Because the fact is, the Texas appellate and supreme courts agree with me.
Dean,
The picture of the situation as presented by mainstream media outlets is not that reliable. From this distance it’s probably very difficult to know what the details and context of this story is. That being said, let’s assume the worst for the cult group – a mafia that is abusing its children. This is the downside risk if we fail to act. Now let’s consider the worst for CPS and the Texas authorities. They grabbed hundreds of children out of the custody of their parents for no proper reason and with no due process. The downside – all parents in the US are now that much more at risk of having the same happen to them. Given the dangers of an out of control beauracracy of ‘do gooders’,  a Mafia seems like a much more acceptable risk. Need I remind you what these people did to the Michigan college professor that mistook Mike’s Hard Lemonade for a soft drink? Since we don’t really know, we are reduced to weighing risks. I think the social workers are easily more of a clear and present danger to society than a very small number of cult members/mafia.Â
If a guy wants to trouble himself by trying to keep 5 women in his family happy that’s his concern. I could care less if people are polyamorous or not. Now banging and marrying kids… it’s time to put freedom of religion aside and throw his ass in prison. There’s a big difference between peyote or mistaking a Mike’s Hard Lemonade for a soft drink, and baby raping. I don’t care what his religion says. We can go into the finer aspects of civil liberties and how far do we go to foster freedom of religion and all, but in the end this guy is a baby raper who marries babies. Stop! Jail Time!
jrogge: Apparently you have evidence that the actual police don’t have. Maybe you should provide it to the Texas supreme court?
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How ’bout it, jrogge. If I call your local CPS authorities and *claim* that you’ve been raping babies, would you be on board with "Stop! Jail Time!" then? How ’bout they just seize your children or grand children then?
No? If not, why not?
There are a lot of people on here that can’t see the difference between an *accusation* of criminal wrong doing, and actual *evidence* of criminal wrong doing. Just because someone says it, doesn’t make it so.
All of the bogus comparisons to the mafia, the Jim Jones cult, and some fictitious cult that preys on Hispanics, does not change that.
"Cults more closely resemble mafia operations or other racketeering groups; they’re going to have a very small tight-knit group of leaders, with followers completely under their thrall. Think Manson Family or Jim Jones"
I once heard about a radical jewish fellow with a hard core group of 12 close followers. Luckily for everyone, this guy was caught by the authorities and taken care of.Â
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If you did that, the police would come out and find no children to be married off or anyone around at all and leave. The Texas authorities did find something there and if there’s reports of children being abused they can take the children away until it is deemed safe.
The F.L.D.S. leader, was convicted last year on a rape charge for imposing marriage between an under-age girl and older man in Utah. This is still a fact and unless you have decided that a society that raises 13 year old and 16 year old brides is acceptable I suggest you get off your high horse and see this guy for the perv he is.
DetroiVB picked up on the other side of this. Dean described what the media has claimed the authorities did and added said that it wasn’t "at odds with how I know the authorities usually act in these cases." Well, what people assume that CPS does and how they actually operate are two things completely alien to each other.
CPS decides what they are going to do based on gut feelings, and then they later gin up whatever legal justification the judge will buy. "That’s our story, Your Honor, and if you don’t like it, we have others." In really obvious cases, the gut reaction is the right one. There are a lot of situations, though, where the social worker just doesn’t like the situation, but they still follow the same MO — act now, and figure out some way to make it stand up in court later.
That isn’t how a free society handles taking children from their parents at gunpoint.
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Yeah, and he is in prison now in Utah. That makes it kind of hard for him to be raping girls in Texas. Are you really proposing that we declare the entire religion outlaw? Really? Like I said, this is where the rubber meets the road on civil liberties and the Bill of Rights.
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The post wasn’t addressed to anybody, although I did mention something one person in an earlier thread said in passing.
As for the rest: the "rubber meets the road" on religious liberty when you have to decide where the limits are–as we do on all other rights, including free speech, free press, the right to bear arms, and every other important right.
I can only repeat again that the only way the authorities typically have for evaluating cases of child abuse is testimony by neighbors, and it’s always very difficult and tricky for them in such cases; if they don’t act soon enough, they’re pilloried for being worthless people who don’t protect children, and if they act too soon, they’re accused of oppressing innocent people.
It’s probably all the people I’ve known in law enforcement, but I tend to sympathize with cops and prosecutors when I recognize and mention the complexities involved.
The fact that some states have enacted laws to allow religious minorities to use peyote has something to do with the fact that the courts have rejected the notion that it’s a 1st amendment right. Otherwise there would be no such laws as they wouldn’t be needed. [shrug]
Actually, that’s backwards. The court decided that it was a right, and therefore gave Congress two choices: either put a safety value in the Controlled Substances Act for this situation, or we will be forced to strike down the Controlled Substances Act entirely. Congress decided to allow for the exceptions and keep the rest of the act.
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"Yeah, and he is in prison now in Utah. That makes it kind of hard for him to be raping girls in Texas. Are you really proposing that we declare the entire religion outlaw? Really? Like I said, this is where the rubber meets the road on civil liberties and the Bill of Rights."
Hmmm, so you’re saying these people changed their religion because this guy can no longer rape babies because he is in prison? Would you change your religion if you found out your religious leader got arrested for soliciting a prostitute or that he does drugs? What if he was in prison and you truly believe he was a prophet of G-d? Would you truly do so?"How ’bout it, jrogge. If I call your local CPS authorities and *claim* that you’ve been raping babies, would you be on board with "Stop! Jail Time!" then? How ’bout they just seize your children or grand children then?"
Sorry, no dice. How about this, Elisha since you throw personal stuff at me by saying you’d call the police under false pretenses. What of these people lived down the street from you would you let your precious little girl join their religion? How about live with them? Would you trust them with her livelihood knowing what has happened in the past? I wouldn’t, and if a kid called me and told me about abuse from that compound I would investigate it.
Phelps: That’s not what I’ve read. What I’m familiar with is the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Supreme Court determined that peyote use is not a 1st amendment right. If you’re familiar with another case that’s more relevant, you let me know. So far as I can see (and IANAL and all that) the laws were passed specifically so they could protect something the courts wouldn’t protect.
jrogge: No, because I think they’re fucked up and the accusations are almost 100% likely to be true. However, what I would do as a private citizen, and what the government should do are two completely different things.
The burden of proof is on the government to come up with any kind of evidence other than an anonymous phone call and people being squicked out. The government failed to do that, so now those kids will go home to their pedophiliac families instead of being saved from them – and I think that all of that evidence the government just seized is now inadmissible in court, because it was obtained illegally. Way to support the government shooting itself in the foot.
If you want the government ignoring the Constitution just because you have suspicions of something icky happening, well, I’m sure you won’t mind if the police come over right now and illegally search your house, beat you, and cart off all of your electronics as ‘evidence’.
Alternately: So you’re saying that Dean is a child molester just because he’s Catholic and there were hundreds (or more?) Catholic priests in trouble for child diddling? Are you supporting that CPS take away the children belonging to every Catholic in this country? Afterall, they didn’t change their religion away from Catholicism so they obviously support 100% the raping of 8 year old boys.
P.S. I didn’t throw personal stuff at you. I threw it at Dean way up in my first post. You want Greenwell.
P.P.S. I’m not attacking you, or anything, Dean. Catholic priests are just the handiest blunt instrument to use in an argument about child molesting.
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"P.S. I didn’t throw personal stuff at you. I threw it at Dean way up in my first post. You want Greenwell."
Bah, sorry I admit these posts blur together for me sometimes. At any rate the problem here is this is the only way that these cases can be investigated. Just like they opened up the rules for the investigation of terrorism, these cases also need somewhat open rules because the victims won’t come forward or people are protecting the perpetrator. Often your ONLY piece of evidence is the child’s testimony. If this was not the case and you could mount a traditional investigation that gathers evidence then I would be more against this method of search.
Yes, if that happened to me I would be pissed off. I would be outraged and shaking my fist as I show I am innocent. They would find no evidence and let me go to resume life. However, this is a price I pay to ensure that our authorities are keeping children safe. Until there is a better way to catch these people this is what we have. Like it or not.
Nope not saying Dean is a molester. There’s a difference between an established religion, one that does not state that molesting children is okay that has a priest going against the wishes of his community and his chruch to satisfy some base urge, and another that establishes that this type of behavior is okay so sayeth the prophet. A BIG difference.
Yup — one doesn’t need protection by the constitution, and the other does. You are calling for a religion to be outlawed. I can’t support that. If you aren’t part of a small minority here, I am very disappointed.
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Elisha: No offense taken. As I’ve noted many times, you cannot find a branch of Christianity where things like that don’t happen. It’s just that the Catholic Church is by far the largest in the United States and the world. And, they insist on being one organization. So, you know if your average fundamentalist preacher turns out to be a sicko, you’re just not that likely to hear about it, or it’ll be on the local news only. It turns out, though, that a lot of churches (Catholic and non-) keep insurance policies to cover this sort of thing. It was infuriating that these priests were doing what they were doing and despicable that the Bishops didn’t take a firmer stance against it sooner, but, the church goes on with the same flawed people it’s always had in it.
Phelps: The definition of "cult" is not "small religion." I’ve been to a ton of religious services (mostly Fundamentalist, Bible-Only christians) with congregations of 10 or 20. They aren’t cultists.
Insiting that every religion is a cult is, in my view, a fooliish thing to say, and it allows dangerous cults to hide themselves behind the 1st amendment.
But as I’ve noted all rights–all of them–have limits.
JRogge pretty much said the rest for me above.
"How about this, Elisha since you throw personal stuff at me by saying you’d call the police under false pretenses."
Jrogge, it was an analogy and was not meant to be personal. I would never call the police under false pretenses on you or anyone else.
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