by Janet Grischy

Created on: April 23, 2008

These children have been abused twice.

First, their birth families, which should have protected and nurtured them, sacrificed them to a culture that valued the desires of a few powerful men over the needs of over 400 vulnerable children.

Then the state of Texas brought its power to bear. Trailed by cameras, Texas troopers and social workers raided the ranch that was their home in response to a telephone call now believed to have been faked. They seized at least 416 children and took them to live at an old fort and a sports arena. Some of their mothers were allowed to go with them.

This is not a new sect that has sprung up lately in an unvisited backwoods or urban slum. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) got started in the 1930's. In 1935 its members were excommunicated by the genuine Mormon Church, which no longer practiced plural marriage. The FLDS is quite open about its doctrine of plural marriage, under which a man should have at least three wives, and its "law of placing", according to which the leader of the sect selects wives for each male member. This was the system that produced a male female imbalance impossible to rectify if men took spouses their own age. There were not enough to go around. So the system required that older men marry the innocent young, and the custom was that often they married their young relatives.

The FLDS was long headquartered in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, where polygamy has been practiced since the 1800's. Its leader there, Warren Jeffs, was hunted by the FBI for two years, before being captured, convicted, and sentenced for being an accomplice to rape. The compound in Texas, the Yearning for Zion Ranch (YZR), is not really new either. It's been in Texas since at least 2004, building its fortress-like temple and family "dorms". The information was available. Where were the social workers who should have supervised these cultists? Where was the public scrutiny that might have protected these children? How will these children fare, stuffed into the overburdened foster care system of a culture that is entirely alien to them?

Ideally, the laws of Texas would have been enforced all along. Not in a sudden sweep, but thoughtfully. Their religious school would not have been accredited, so that the children could have gone to public school, and at least seen modern ways. The parents of Yearning for Zion Ranch could have been told that child marriage, and incestuous marriage, would not be tolerated. Birth certificates could have been checked. Laws could have been enforced. DNA samples could have been collected in private, away from the hungry press. People at risk of transmitting fumarase deficiency, a dreadful genetic disorder commonly carried in the inbred population of YZR, could have been warned.

Instead, we have the current circus. The children are separated from their families and crammed into a strange new environment. Now the social workers interview them. We marvel at the odd appearance of the mothers, and lawyers swarm around. The children of Yearning for Zion Ranch have experienced twin cruelties, from the powerful predators of their archaic community, and the prurient gawkers of the modern world.

They'll get counseling, of course. Kind thoughtful people will speak to them, and listen to them. The young girls will be spared a marriage to an uncle, or to an old man. The boys will learn to live in the modern world. Plainly, they have been helped, at last. Nothing can make up to them though, for the abrupt destruction of their beliefs, along with a world that made sense to them.

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