posted April 09, 2008 10:53 PM              

ELDORADO, Texas (AFP) — A Texas polygamist compound emptied of more than 400 children was the site of pervasive sexual abuse where girls were groomed to accept sex at puberty and boys were indoctrinated to perpetuate the cycle, officials said in court records released Tuesday.

Girls as young as 13 were "spiritually married" to men who claimed several wives and were forced to have sex with their significantly older husbands "for the purpose of having children," according to an affidavit by an investigator with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Children were deprived of food and locked in closets as punishment, and severe beatings were also reported on the sprawling YFZ (Yearn for Zion) Ranch outside of Eldorado, Texas owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

A number of young girls who were pregnant or had recently given birth were discovered on the ranch after a desperate call for help was made by a 16-year-old girl.

In a series of whispered calls on a borrowed cell phone, the girl told a local family violence center that she was being held against her will on the compound and was told she would be "found and locked up" if she tried to leave.

The girl said she began to be abused soon after she was left at the ranch by her parents about three years ago and at age 15 became the seventh wife of a 49-year-old man.

She said she is pregnant again just eight months after giving birth to her first child by a man who would force himself on her sexually and beat her "whenever he got angry," the affidavit said.

Other women in the home would hold her baby while the man identified as Dale Barlow beat her.

Barlow would choke her and hit her in the chest and she was once beaten so badly that she was taken to the hospital with several broken ribs.

The girl said she had no contact with her parents but knew they were preparing to send her 15-year-old sister to the ranch.

While she was anxious to escape, she was worried about what would happen to her if she left the confines of the ranch.

"She reported that church members have told her if she leaves the ranch, outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear make up and clothes and to have sex with lots of men," investigator Lynn McFadden wrote in the affidavit.

The girl has yet to be identified among the 416 children and 139 adult women removed from the ranch in a raid which began Thursday.

A number of the children interviewed in the course of the investigation were "unable or unwilling to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers."

A judge has temporarily placed all the children into state custody as a result of what investigators found when they entered the ranch in an attempt to find the girl.

A hearing is set for April 17 to determine if the children should be permanently separated from their parents.

"There is a pervasive pattern and practice of indoctrinating and grooming minor female children to accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ (Yearn For Zion) Ranch resulting in them being sexually abused," McFadden told the court.

"Similarly, minor boys residing on the YFZ Ranch, after they become adults, are spiritually married to minor female children and engage in sexual relationships with them, resulting in them being sexual perpetrators," she said.

"This pattern and practice places all of the children located at the YFZ Ranch, both male and female, to risk of emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse."

The 1,700-acre (688-hectare) ranch was purchased in 2003 and built by Warren Jeffs, who considers himself the sect's prophet and was jailed for life for being an accomplice to rape.

The mainstream Mormon church -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- renounced polygamy more than a century ago as a price of Utah's admission to the United States.

It now excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.

posted April 10, 2008 12:45 AM            

This is not a political issue. Politicians are not afraid to come out against child about or abuse of women. This is a legal issue involving rape..because of the age of the girls and perhaps other crimes which will surface as the investigation cranks up.

posted April 12, 2008 01:17 PM              

What a bunch of sickos.

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The truth is ... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. ~ Countee Cullen

posted April 12, 2008 02:05 PM            

Because there jobs are going abroad their people are resorting to opium of the masses aka religion

Marx should have lived to see this day...
His time spent in british library didn't go waste after all. I thank him for his books. He gives a great perspective. Don't get me wrong. He is wrong as well. I still think every one should real Marx. Church and State should not have been separated the Church should have been thrashed as in China and Russia.

If I had a remote I would "click" and swap the governments of China and USA for one day- LOL

posted April 12, 2008 02:48 PM            

Don't worry so much about America Mannu. We'll do just fine if you decide to emigrate. Just give us a date so we can be there to see you OFF.

Come to think of it Mannu, I'll bet Castro has a machete just the right size for your hand. A job in Fidel's sugar cane fields would permit you to take full advantage of your intellectual abilities.

posted April 12, 2008 11:32 PM              

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Lisa's next stop in her investigation into the secret world of polygamy was Colorado City, Arizona—home to Warren Jeffs and his followers.

When his father, Rulon, died in 2002, Jeffs assumed control of the largest and most secretive polygamist sect, known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. Jeffs allegedly controlled the marriages of his followers, assigning wives to favored members and taking wives away from others.

In May 2006 Jeffs was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List—and was later featured on America's Most Wanted—based on charges that he organized "marriages" between men and underage girls. In August 2006 he was arrested near Las Vegas. And in September 2007, Jeffs was convicted on two counts of accomplice to rape. He now awaits sentencing and a second trial in Arizona on multiple charges of both accomplice to incest and sex with minors.

Lisa's guide in Colorado City is Carolyn Jessop. Carolyn was raised by three mothers and has 36 brothers and sisters. At 18, she says she was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader, Merril Jessop. Carolyn had eight of Merril's 54 children, but she says she was always desperate for freedom. Four years ago, she risked her life by taking her children and escaping Colorado City in the middle of the night.

.....There are thousands of families in the United States who are living in secretive and bizarre religious sects that force young girls to marry middle-aged men and bear dozens of children. And if anyone wants to leave, they have to literally escape.

At age 15, Luann was forced to become her first cousin's fourth wife. She was married to him for five years and bore two of his children before she was rescued. "When I got married, I felt like my life was coming to an end. I feel like I was robbed of my childhood because I was expected to start having babies as soon as I got married." The community Luann was raised in believes they are direct descendants of Jesus Christ and incest will keep their bloodline "pure."

...............

Pennie escaped from Colorado City, Arizona, at age 14 to avoid marrying a 48-year-old man. She is now on a legal crusade to prosecute these men she calls child molesters. "I've got two charges on two different men that were involved with my sisters. We've got one conviction already."

Polygamy was outlawed in this country over 100 years ago. Those who practice polygamy today are doing so illegally and are part of extremist groups—not the Mormon Church. If it is illegal, how does it still exist? Pennie says, "It is a taboo subject. Polygamy is a POLITICAL BOMBSHELL. Nobody wants to touch
it."

http://www.oprah.com/tows/slide/200710/20071026/slide_20071026_284_101.jhtml
---------------------------------------------

i have taken excerpts from that show, not in order but which i felt were really shocking. i remember watching that show and thinking, this is like those villages in India where there are no roads leading into. in our cities and towns, when a man takes another wife he HAS to keep it a secret for fear of prosecuation or social are some communities that permit a second wife when the first cannot bear children, but the present generation of women is in no mood to take cra%p. one such second iwfe who ws hidden actually tracked down the first one and they sued him together
wish it was the same in our villages, where however polygamy is not organised like that American Jeffs sect..its a random case here and there or so i believe. who knows unless they actually go down there.....

posted April 13, 2008 11:45 AM            

Laughter is the best medicine even in these hardship moments of theirs.

Let them apply it to themselves and testify.

I don't care about what your taste is - I can taste for myself and decide. As Socrates , says it so beautifully. But guess what he was poisoned 2500 years ago and people defending his ideas are still being banned and jailed.

And I am not here to win a populatiry contest by going with the crowd. It has happened for centuries. This madness. Sorry don't agree with you, TINK.

posted April 13, 2008 06:20 PM            

quote:

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But guess what he was poisoned 2500 years ago and people defending his ideas are still being banned and jailed.

---

posted April 15, 2008 10:48 AM            

Women who have managed to escape, many deciding to risk all when their own daughters reached puberty and thus "marriage" age, have reported just how abusive and dangerous a situation those women were living with ... many of them without any hope or understanding of something better. No newspapers, no books, no magazines, no TV, no radio, no internet, only private schools and clinics, no exposure to the "real" world ... nothing that wasn't allowed in by those in charge. And those in charge, those funding the operations and dictating the "lifestyle", those holding the money, building those huge dormitory style "homes" and preaching their lies and making threats and demands are all men.

In good conscience, I just can't put most of the blame on girls married off at puberty and forced to live this way. Clearly, the women who are beyond repair, who have bought into this degredation and believe it to be acceptable or good, need to be separated from their children and punished *added* once we know for sure what their fully aware contributions were to this tragedy and also to prevent any more tragedies like these from occurring or continuing.

But I honestly think that the women who have been suffering silently all these years, who now have a chance at freedom and a real life, shouldn't be jailed or separated from their kids though I really feel they should have proper training and an education. Certainly the children are going to need help, particularly older boys and girls who've been thoroughly indoctrinated already.

posted April 24, 2008 02:11 PM            

Some countries protect their children and others exploit theirs.
While America was watching authorities do their duty and seize children from a Mormon compound in Texas in order to protect them from potential underage marriage and sexual abuse, a single-minded girl with no police or legal protection bravely defied Sharia law and her country’s male-dominated culture to divorce her husband. And, she is just eight years old.

Born in the year 2000, Nujood Ali was married two-and-a-half months ago to a man twenty years her senior after she was made to sign a marriage contract, arranged between her father and her “suitor.” The contract, a strictly commercial transaction which usually involves the groom paying a “bride price,” was supposed to allow Nujood to reside with her parents until she was 18. However, only a few days later, those same parents forced their daughter to move in with her new "husband," who then brutally tormented her.

“Always, when I wanted to play in the garden, he hit me and said I should go with him into the bedroom,” Ali told the Yemen Times, adding that she would then run from room to room to escape him, but in vain. “In the end, he always got me.”

Finally, after two months of horrendous sexual abuse, in which Nujoud said her husband did “bad things with me,” the unwilling child bride turned to her father and an aunt for help. The aunt did nothing while the father, who had also been physically abusive towards her, told his daughter in response to her plea for assistance in getting a divorce: “I can’t do anything for you. If you want, go to the court alone.”

And that is exactly what the eight-year-old did. Facing what appeared to be a hopeless situation in such a male-dominated society and armed with nothing but her courage, Ali ran away to a maternal uncle and then bravely appeared before a court in the Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, to file cases against both her father and husband, demanding the dissolution of her marriage.

In her overwhelming desire to escape her marital hell, Nujood gave as grounds for her divorce: “My husband was very harsh with me and when I implored him to have pity, he would hit me, box my ears and abuse me. I want a decent life and the divorce.”

The judge took pity on what a reporter described as a “sweet but sad” child, who “knows and comprehends so many things,” and had both her father and husband taken into custody. The judge also allowed the little girl to reside in his house for several days before turning her over to the sympathetic uncle.

The husband was furious that his “wife” had the audacity to seek a divorce. However, this is an attitude all too common in countries where wives are bought as slaves and thus regarded as a husband’s commercial property.

“I will not divorce her, and it is my right to keep her,” said the outraged spouse to the Yemen Times. “…It is not a matter of loving her; I don’t. But it is just a challenge to her and her uncle who think that they can keep me in jail and also the judge has no right to put me here. How did she dare to complain about me?”

Nujood is not Yemen’s first famous child bride. Zana Muhsen was a 15-year-old English schoolgirl of Arab-British descent when her Yemenite father sold her in England in 1983 for $3000 dollars to a countryman as a wife for his 14-year-old son. Her sister, Nadia, also 14, was sold for the same purpose and bride price to another Yemenite, whose son was 13.

The two sisters were detained against their will in Yemen for eight years with husbands they did not want, having babies they did not want, before diplomatic pressure and assistance from the international media finally freed Zana. Nadia stayed behind because of her children, who, due to the bride price, always remain with the father in case of a divorce.

In her best-selling book, Sold: A Story of Modern-Day Slavery, Zana outlined the two British sisters’ years of suffering, physical abuse and primitive living and working conditions in Yemen, during which time the authoress met child brides as young as ten.

The 2007 UNICEF photo of the year also made the world aware of the millions of girls sold as child brides every year, denied forever the opportunity to determine their own lives. In it, a forty-year-old man is seen sitting beside 11-year-old fiancée, named Ghulam, who appears to be giving him a contemptuous look on the day of their engagement.

When asked by American photographer, Stephanie Sinclair, what she felt that day, the slightly confused girl, whose answer Nujood would probably have matched word for word (had she been asked) upon meeting her husband, responded: “Nothing. I don’t know this man. What should I feel?”

According to UNICEF, there are more than 60 million underage brides worldwide with half of these living in South Asia. The parents, like Ghulam’s and Nujood’s, are most often poor and marry their daughters off, sometimes while still children, for the bride price. Once married, the task of these infants, almost as soon as they reach puberty, is to bear their husband children.

Nujood’s divorce became final this week. The spurned husband, who at first rejected her divorce demand, accepted a pay-off from an anonymous donor to agree to the end of the “marriage.” Incredibly, neither he nor Nujood’s father will face any charges over their cruel treatment of the innocent girl, since there is no law in Yemen against child marriages. They have legally committed no crime.

According to the International Center For Research On Women, Yemen ranks thirteenth on a list of twenty countries where marriages of female minors (girls under 18) are common. In one area of the Middle Eastern country, according to the Yemen Times, new brides average ten years of age while in another girls usually marry at age eight. The ICRW states that about 50 percent of the Yemen’s marriages involve underage girls. Niger tops the list with 76 percent.

But Nujood’s courage may change things for hundreds of other girls in Yemen facing the horrific fate of a child marriage. Her brave act in coming forward against tradition, family and the will of her husband to seek a divorce, probably the youngest girl, it is noted, ever to have asked for one in that country, is viewed by women’s groups and sympathetic politicians as a good opportunity to enact legislation designating 18 as a minimum age for marriage for all.

However, the Yemeni Parliament’s Jurisprudence Committee says “there are no legislative grounds to impose such a law based on its understanding of Islam.” Well, there you have it. Forget the barbarity of rape and thirteen-year-olds having babies, plus all the subsequent psychological and emotional damage, it just is not religiously correct for some.

“Those who approve of girls marrying at 13, 14 or even below 18, are barbaric men who abuse childhood and are irresponsible,” correctly noted Yahiya Al-Najar, a former Yemeni government minister and religious scholar in the Times of those who oppose a minimum age.

Nujood is still concerned about her younger sisters suffering her cruel fate, as her two older sisters did before her. Nevertheless, the resolute youngster, who used to “hate the nights” because of the unwanted sexual encounters, is looking forward to the bright days of a husband-less future.

"I am so happy to be free and I will go back to school and never think of getting married again,” she told the Times. “It is a good feeling to be rid of my husband and his bad treatment.”

To which one can only add: it is heartening to see that even within the horrifying and obscene structures of Islamic gender apartheid, women, even as young as eight, can sometimes triumph over injustice.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=74C9186E-F2AE-42CC-85E6-9225D0610A81

posted April 24, 2008 02:27 PM            

If you can find some clips or the transcript online, watch/read what she has to say.

posted April 25, 2008 10:41 AM              

but then wait a second if she DID get a legal Reprieve JW, i dont see how ur startup holds true.