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History repeating itself. How effective are the FLDS raids?
The recent raid on a polygamist sect’s compound by child welfare investigators has been tried before - but only temporarily interrupted the sect’s way of life.
Authorities previously burst into the rural Utah-Arizona border home of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1935, 1944 and 1953.
Children were shuffled off to foster care and their parents imprisoned. But the families came back, time after time, more committed to their religion and to polygamy.
“It ended up strengthening them in the long run,” said Ken Driggs, an Atlanta attorney and polygamy historian.
Why can’t individual cases of abuse be prosecuted instead of ripping apart so many families? Is this supposed to stop the practice for good?
Messenger and Advocate is the go to place for coverage.
Tags: polygamy
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16 April 2008 at 10:20 am
David B
I’ll agree that the raid was done badly, but there really was a problem that called for some sort of intervention, in that they weren’t just doing the underage polygyny thing, they were *training* girls from birth to be cool with that.
Not sure how to best deal with it, though. It had seemed like they did a good job of dealing with it in Utah and Arizona, after all, but all they did in the end was get the most ardent participants to ship themselves off to someplace with laxer oversight.
16 April 2008 at 11:56 am
David H. Sundwall
I agree. It’s an awful situation that has been badly mishandled.
It seems like they could have targeted the individual cases of abuse in a more reasonable way.