Briefer update on yesterday's post:
update May-22-09, 8:36 AM: Of the 31 FLDS children 14-17 years old and pregnant as claimed by the CPS, 11 have been found to be 18 or older and their youngest, the 14 year old, is not pregnant. the total was 9 adults when I was posted last night. Keep in mind that these updated numbers are not the final total. All the children's hearings for this stage of the legal proceedings will conclude on June 2nd, at which point we'll get a better, though not necessarily completely accurate, picture of which of the accusations of the CPS still stands. Outside the just mentioned less-than-31 pregnant minors, no specific allegations of abuse have been pointed out, just general statements of widespread abuse. (All specifics are being withheld by the CPS to protect the children)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Brief ? FLDS Update
I know I haven't posted any more information on the Texas raid on the FLDS ranch lately, so I thought I would do a quick update. I haven't decreased my reading on the news articles, but after the last post on the FLDS, there didn't seem to be much point to posting until something started to change, which could only happen if the CPS started returning children, or the court cases started to be heard. This Monday was the start of the one group of court hearings.
Since the last post, the CPS figures for the number of children in custody by Texas Child Protective Services continued to rise. The number has been staying steadier for longer and the popular figure seems to be 463, with only one number jump in the last week.
Mom, since you wanted me to keep you updated on what I was seeing, I'll try to post at least one article for each point. Over the last three weeks, I've seen at least a dozen or more articles outlining each point, so if you search on google news, you should find more. Call if you have questions. :-)
First (not so recent) development. All the children have been placed into foster homes at this point. As stated earlier and research further, foster care seems to be universally, across the US, a TERRIBLE situation when compared with the general public (which isn't a stellar example in the first place). And what does the CPS, put these children into foster homes that would normally not be allowed to host foster children again because of physical, sexual, or verbal abuse. My suggestion is to not look much further into this, because it gets very depressing, very fast. These children have been ripped from loving homes (more on this later) into a culture that is far worse than the national average.
Second development. The CPS keeps being surprised when these children just keep being found to be older than they look! Both of the underage "children" who gave birth while in custody, were declared adults within hours of giving birth. From what I can pick up from the newspaper articles, I think the CPS accepted their birth certificates at that point just so they could take they children away, which was attempted... also within hours of giving birth. Apparently the mothers were generously given a few months to wean the children after a judge slapped one of the requests down. A lot of these "underage" pregnant children have already presented birth certificates, but as I said a few weeks ago, the CPS is ignoring evidence in favor of a "looks like" policy. This week, the oldest one to be cleared as an adult is almost 28 (as declared by a judge, not the CPS who still insisted that the "looks like" policy is the valid way to go... after all, birth certificates can be faked on a very short noticeway (that was sarcasm guys))
Mental Health professions that were present during the initial raid and care of children (by the police and CPS mostly) blasted the CPS for their poor conduct, lack of care for the children, and dishonesty in their monthly report to their board. This what was said all along by the women taken by the CPS. (1) No-one believed them when the raid took place; (2) the FLDS had their cell phones removed after a few videos of living conditions were sent by cell phone; (3) so far nothing the FLDS has said has been disproved.
According to the CPS, the whole reason this raid took place in the first place was because the CPS workers saw a broad base, a culture, of underage marriages. The number of those "underaged children" who are married or pregnant and underage has been dropping steadily, mostly due to the fact that now there are outsides in this loop determining the fate of these children: specifically, there are judges that accepts birth certificates as a reasonable indication of age!
Consider this: If the count of the number of children started out in the high 300's and has steadily risen to over 460 almost two months later, what recourse does a family have if children disappear? The CPS never kept records. The count is still not constant. Who knows if children were kidnapped, killed, abused, or tried to run away from their new situations? Only the parents will bear the burden of knowing they will not see their child again. Almost two MONTHS later, and children are still unaccounted for. Yeah. Not a pleasant thought.
In one instance, one of the husbands who has one wife ( 5 children by the same wife ), was not charged or accused of anything by the CPS, and was willing to move away from the ranch to regain his children but was denied his request. ( Mostly because he was appealing to a wrong court ) The sad part of this story is that he, his wife, and his lawer has only been able to find three of his children in state custody. Two of them are lost in the system somewhere.
Moving onto my final two points, I don't want to say that all the FLDS members are innocent, but I will say that even if all the CPS is still claiming at this point remains true, the FLDS ranch is a haven of peace and tranquility when compared to the rest of the world. Go ahead. Do some work for yourself and compare the claimed rate of underage/unmarried pregnancies in the general population to what the numbers of children the CPS is claiming to have gotten pregnant while under 18 (while married) at the FLDS ranch.
My second point is this: the legal age for marriage in texas is under 18. The numbers the CPS throws around is a smoke screen. The lowest age of marriage In Texas is 16 years of age with parental consent. The big problem that the FLDS members will have is that marriages are religious and not civil, so that if any man married a girl at 16, he could be legally charged with rape because the state does not recognize the marriage, even if he only has one wife. This is the issue that got Jeffs (the FLDS prophet) put in jail. The lowest legal age in Utah to marry IS 14, but it has to be a civil union, not a religious one, so when Jeffs helped arrange a marriage for a 19 year old and a 14 year old (yeah... that is really young), he was held responsible for accomplice to rape because it was not a civil union.
The violations perpetrated by Texas' child care services is not unique to the FLDS. Do a bit of searching on CPS, Child Protective Services, foster care, and the number of innocent lives broken and destroyed is too long and to painful to consider. Pray for children taken unjustly from their parents whether in Texas, Maine, or any other state of the union. The best therapy for the harms against children is the protection and healing available through the Grace of God.
Since the last post, the CPS figures for the number of children in custody by Texas Child Protective Services continued to rise. The number has been staying steadier for longer and the popular figure seems to be 463, with only one number jump in the last week.
Mom, since you wanted me to keep you updated on what I was seeing, I'll try to post at least one article for each point. Over the last three weeks, I've seen at least a dozen or more articles outlining each point, so if you search on google news, you should find more. Call if you have questions. :-)
First (not so recent) development. All the children have been placed into foster homes at this point. As stated earlier and research further, foster care seems to be universally, across the US, a TERRIBLE situation when compared with the general public (which isn't a stellar example in the first place). And what does the CPS, put these children into foster homes that would normally not be allowed to host foster children again because of physical, sexual, or verbal abuse. My suggestion is to not look much further into this, because it gets very depressing, very fast. These children have been ripped from loving homes (more on this later) into a culture that is far worse than the national average.
Second development. The CPS keeps being surprised when these children just keep being found to be older than they look! Both of the underage "children" who gave birth while in custody, were declared adults within hours of giving birth. From what I can pick up from the newspaper articles, I think the CPS accepted their birth certificates at that point just so they could take they children away, which was attempted... also within hours of giving birth. Apparently the mothers were generously given a few months to wean the children after a judge slapped one of the requests down. A lot of these "underage" pregnant children have already presented birth certificates, but as I said a few weeks ago, the CPS is ignoring evidence in favor of a "looks like" policy. This week, the oldest one to be cleared as an adult is almost 28 (as declared by a judge, not the CPS who still insisted that the "looks like" policy is the valid way to go... after all, birth certificates can be faked on a very short noticeway (that was sarcasm guys))
Mental Health professions that were present during the initial raid and care of children (by the police and CPS mostly) blasted the CPS for their poor conduct, lack of care for the children, and dishonesty in their monthly report to their board. This what was said all along by the women taken by the CPS. (1) No-one believed them when the raid took place; (2) the FLDS had their cell phones removed after a few videos of living conditions were sent by cell phone; (3) so far nothing the FLDS has said has been disproved.
According to the CPS, the whole reason this raid took place in the first place was because the CPS workers saw a broad base, a culture, of underage marriages. The number of those "underaged children" who are married or pregnant and underage has been dropping steadily, mostly due to the fact that now there are outsides in this loop determining the fate of these children: specifically, there are judges that accepts birth certificates as a reasonable indication of age!
Consider this: If the count of the number of children started out in the high 300's and has steadily risen to over 460 almost two months later, what recourse does a family have if children disappear? The CPS never kept records. The count is still not constant. Who knows if children were kidnapped, killed, abused, or tried to run away from their new situations? Only the parents will bear the burden of knowing they will not see their child again. Almost two MONTHS later, and children are still unaccounted for. Yeah. Not a pleasant thought.
In one instance, one of the husbands who has one wife ( 5 children by the same wife ), was not charged or accused of anything by the CPS, and was willing to move away from the ranch to regain his children but was denied his request. ( Mostly because he was appealing to a wrong court ) The sad part of this story is that he, his wife, and his lawer has only been able to find three of his children in state custody. Two of them are lost in the system somewhere.
Moving onto my final two points, I don't want to say that all the FLDS members are innocent, but I will say that even if all the CPS is still claiming at this point remains true, the FLDS ranch is a haven of peace and tranquility when compared to the rest of the world. Go ahead. Do some work for yourself and compare the claimed rate of underage/unmarried pregnancies in the general population to what the numbers of children the CPS is claiming to have gotten pregnant while under 18 (while married) at the FLDS ranch.
My second point is this: the legal age for marriage in texas is under 18. The numbers the CPS throws around is a smoke screen. The lowest age of marriage In Texas is 16 years of age with parental consent. The big problem that the FLDS members will have is that marriages are religious and not civil, so that if any man married a girl at 16, he could be legally charged with rape because the state does not recognize the marriage, even if he only has one wife. This is the issue that got Jeffs (the FLDS prophet) put in jail. The lowest legal age in Utah to marry IS 14, but it has to be a civil union, not a religious one, so when Jeffs helped arrange a marriage for a 19 year old and a 14 year old (yeah... that is really young), he was held responsible for accomplice to rape because it was not a civil union.
The violations perpetrated by Texas' child care services is not unique to the FLDS. Do a bit of searching on CPS, Child Protective Services, foster care, and the number of innocent lives broken and destroyed is too long and to painful to consider. Pray for children taken unjustly from their parents whether in Texas, Maine, or any other state of the union. The best therapy for the harms against children is the protection and healing available through the Grace of God.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
A Sad Lack of Pictures
Writing a programming language is the BOMB! Woot!
I was going through my pictures yesterday because I wanted to post a few pictures of my last visit to PA, but as I opened up the pictures, I realized that I hadn't taken the camera out of my bag until the last day of my trip. The only two pictures I got were very quick snapshots of my wonderful older sister and myself - and they didn't turn out well. :-( Sorry M. Next time we'll have to get some good pictures.
I went to Taekwondo last night and there is a new white belt joining. I am not the lowest ranked person there anymore!
I was going through my pictures yesterday because I wanted to post a few pictures of my last visit to PA, but as I opened up the pictures, I realized that I hadn't taken the camera out of my bag until the last day of my trip. The only two pictures I got were very quick snapshots of my wonderful older sister and myself - and they didn't turn out well. :-( Sorry M. Next time we'll have to get some good pictures.
I went to Taekwondo last night and there is a new white belt joining. I am not the lowest ranked person there anymore!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Quick Update
I managed to get through another successful weekend of taking care of dogs. When a friend is out of town, I go over to her house and let the dogs out thrice daily, but they don't listen very well, so if one goes running I end up chasing the dog down. (While it is a fenced in area, the enclosed area contains several blocks. After the second time the dogs got loose, I decided all future walks would be with a leash. Voila, problem solved!
Aikido is going pretty well. After my wrist injury in gymnastic years ago, it is nice to finally have flexibility back in my right wrist. Since I'm only planning to be in Florida a few more months, I went ahead and signed up for Tae Kwon Do classes at the same school I take Aikido. Tae Kwon Do (TKD) has a philosophy where your body is your tool, and practicing forms, kicks, punches, blocks are a part of developing that tool to respond to any action in a forceful and irresistible manner. Aikido has a more roundabout philosophy in that Aikido doesn't do blocks or punches to overpower the opponent. Aikido prefers to let the opponent do what he wants and then I redirect the motion into doing what I want. Aikido is very much a martial art of training fluid responses to an opponents aggression. Tae Kwon Do is very much a form for attacking and Aikido is very much for defending (or more accurately, Aikido is for avoiding the attack so there is no need to defend.)
My visit home went wonderfully well. I was definitely a help to Mom and Data at their craft show, and I was happy to help. I got to have long visits with Mom. During craft shows, Dat stays very busy in the back taking care of products or loading or preparing for the next show, so I didn't see as much of him as I would have liked this visit, but I still got to spend some time with him. Before I leave for Japan or Korea, I'll have a few months at home during the off season, and I'm looking forward to seeing dad more then and seeing what science projects he's been working on since I moved to Florida.
Margaret seems to be doing well. She seems happy at her job, although I do sense a certain slowness of reaction in dodging pokes. I guess Mom and Dad don't keep up her reflexes by poking and pushing as fast as her mostest favoritest brother does. ;-)
For work, I just finalized the installation of the Inventory module and updated the released ones. I think I just have to wait a week or so and see what happens in sales before I know if I'm going to be staying for the next three months (or so). Programming accounting software is fun, and there are always new problems that have to be solved, but I think I'm ready to see a new area of programming with a lot of new problems to solve. Even so, I hope the inventory module is a success!
Aikido is going pretty well. After my wrist injury in gymnastic years ago, it is nice to finally have flexibility back in my right wrist. Since I'm only planning to be in Florida a few more months, I went ahead and signed up for Tae Kwon Do classes at the same school I take Aikido. Tae Kwon Do (TKD) has a philosophy where your body is your tool, and practicing forms, kicks, punches, blocks are a part of developing that tool to respond to any action in a forceful and irresistible manner. Aikido has a more roundabout philosophy in that Aikido doesn't do blocks or punches to overpower the opponent. Aikido prefers to let the opponent do what he wants and then I redirect the motion into doing what I want. Aikido is very much a martial art of training fluid responses to an opponents aggression. Tae Kwon Do is very much a form for attacking and Aikido is very much for defending (or more accurately, Aikido is for avoiding the attack so there is no need to defend.)
My visit home went wonderfully well. I was definitely a help to Mom and Data at their craft show, and I was happy to help. I got to have long visits with Mom. During craft shows, Dat stays very busy in the back taking care of products or loading or preparing for the next show, so I didn't see as much of him as I would have liked this visit, but I still got to spend some time with him. Before I leave for Japan or Korea, I'll have a few months at home during the off season, and I'm looking forward to seeing dad more then and seeing what science projects he's been working on since I moved to Florida.
Margaret seems to be doing well. She seems happy at her job, although I do sense a certain slowness of reaction in dodging pokes. I guess Mom and Dad don't keep up her reflexes by poking and pushing as fast as her mostest favoritest brother does. ;-)
For work, I just finalized the installation of the Inventory module and updated the released ones. I think I just have to wait a week or so and see what happens in sales before I know if I'm going to be staying for the next three months (or so). Programming accounting software is fun, and there are always new problems that have to be solved, but I think I'm ready to see a new area of programming with a lot of new problems to solve. Even so, I hope the inventory module is a success!
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