No easy answers May 30, 2008
I just finished the book (see post below) by Carolyn Jessop, a woman who escaped a lifetime within the polygamous FLDS sect by courageously defying her abusive husband and culture, and leaving with her eight children.
The book was fascinating, and makes it clear that this religious group’s overall culture is indeed one rife with physical, mental, sexual and emotional abuse for many of its women and children. But as I said when I blogged about the raid removing every single one of the kids in that Texas polygamous community from their parents, I do not believe the government has the right to swoop in and take hundreds of kids from their parents unless INDIVIDUAL parents are proved to be INDIVIDUALLY abusing or at risk of abusing their kids. The right to maintain our family relationships and to parent our own children is a sacred and fundamental liberty. The government must meet an exceptionally high standard before interfering with that liberty.
I was interested to read, after doing some background reading on Carolyn Jessop, that she has spoken out in strong agreement with the raid on that compound, and she says she agrees with the wholesale removal of hundreds of her former friends’ and family members’ children by authorities. I think this is more than a little hypocritical on her part. Would she feel the same way if this raid had occurred, say, one month before she left the group, and her own eight beloved children had been taken from her and sent to foster homes all over Texas? I rather doubt it.
She admits in the book that she allowed some very abusive things to happen to her children during the 15 years she was a mother raising children within the group, so should her children have been taken from her? She now says she allowed the abuse because she felt trapped and powerless in her role as a polygamous “wife” with no money of her own and nowhere to go. I suspect there are many, many other women in the same situation, and given options and opportunities for a different life for themselves and their children, they, too, would be able to parent effectively. But taking their children away doesn’t improve anyone’s situation, and it likely drives these women deeper into the cult, in the belief that authorities are not possible allies in their secret hope for a different life, but instead tyrannical thugs who want to prevent them from mothering their kids.
Effective social work practice focuses on maintaining family ties, while offering parents tools and options for improving their ability to parent their at-risk children. That’s the way this situation needed to be addressed, and now, with the new Texas Supreme Court ruling, will be addressed. Get these kids an education. Give their mothers an education. Offer the women legal assistance in freeing themselves from these common law “marriages” (many are afraid to leave because they will have no money to wage a custody battle to keep their kids from being taken by their fathers) Assess each family and figure out whether and when abuse has occurred. Separate abusive individuals from their children. Prosecute those individual adults if they have committed a crime.
That’s the way to approach this. It’s more time intensive than blasting in and collecting hundreds of children in one fell swoop, but if the state’s goal is to break the hold that this cult has over generations of women and children - which I support - it’s the way it has to be done.
It sounds like Jessup supports the children being removed because she realizes that the mothers who remain brainwashed and fearful are also allowing their children to be abused, as she did. Those parents are in denial because they see the world through the filter of the church/cult. If child protective services had done a comprehensive study BEFORE removing the children, the children would have been freed from the cult. I don’t agree with how they went about it, but I have no doubt that all female members of that group/cult are subject to pervasive abuse.
I heard an interesting NPR story on this about the judges involved in the case. Apparently, the female judges sided with the state (i.e. social workers who removed the children) while most (not all) of the male judges sided with the FLDS (?? sorry can’t remember the acronym) saying the state over stepped their authority. I thought the gender split was interesting (as I’m sure did the NPR reporter whose story it was) and I think they said a female judge would be making the ‘next’ final decision.