Christian Polygamy

The modern Pharisee had a few words to say about all of this…check it out.

Source: Deseret News

Texas Rangers are investigating 20 cases of sexual assault and about 50 bigamy charges involving members of the FLDS Church, the Deseret News has learned.

Texas officials on Monday confirmed the number of open cases but would not say how many suspects were involved.

“We are working with several other agencies on this investigation, and I do not know what ultimately the team will decide to do as far as possible charges filed,” Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said.

The investigation has already prompted five indictments, including one against the church’s leader, Warren Jeffs. A Schleicher County grand jury will convene again next week and may consider further indictments.

Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney acting as spokesman for the Fundamentalist LDS Church, was surprised by the sheer number of sexual assault and bigamy cases.

And he insists there aren’t enough men practicing plural marriage at the Yearning For Zion ranch outside Eldorado, Texas, to come up with 50 bigamy investigations.

“I think they would have a problem coming up with 50 bigamy charges without charging the women,” Parker said.

Mange would not go into specifics on suspects.
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Read the full article at: Newsweek.com

When Flora Jessop answered her phone on the morning of March 30, a female caller spoke in a meek and frightened whisper. She said her name was Sarah, a child bride trapped on a polygamist compound in Texas. She had apparently sought out Jessop because of the woman’s work with abused kids as executive director of the Child Protection Project. Sarah claimed she had been assaulted by the older man she was assigned to marry and was often locked in a room with boarded windows. She described details, like names of elders, that only someone in the sect would likely know.

Around the same time, Sarah was also calling a shelter in San Angelo, Texas. After counselors there forwarded her abuse reports to law enforcement, authorities responded with a massive April 3 raid on the property where Sarah claimed to be held, the Yearning for Zion ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Eldorado, Texas. In the course of the operation, officials said they discovered such a troubling pattern of sexual and physical abuse that they forcibly removed more than 400 kids. (All of them have since been returned to their families by court order; last week sect leader Warren Jeffs and four of his followers were charged with sexually abusing underage girls.) But Sarah was never found.

The reason, according to law enforcement: Sarah was not the blond, blue-eyed teen bride she claimed to be, but rather a 33-year-old African-American woman living in Colorado Springs, Colo., named Rozita Swinton. It’s not the first time Swinton has been accused of duping authorities. She’s been arrested for false reporting in two separate cases in Colorado, allegedly setting off frantic manhunts by repeatedly impersonating abuse victims. But even as she now faces possible charges in Texas, Swinton remains an elusive and enigmatic figure. As one woman who cared for her believes, Swinton might well be a victim of sexual abuse who fractured into multiple personalities to cope with the trauma. Others who’ve known her view her as a masterful manipulator with an insatiable appetite for attention. In a brief conversation with NEWSWEEK, Swinton only added to the mystery. “There are so many lies about me that have been published,” she said without elaborating.

The daughter of a convicted murderer, Swinton had a turbulent upbringing in Nashville. By the age of 14, she had run away from home so many times that she became a ward of the state. In her senior year in high school, Rozita accused her father, Clarence Swinton, of sexually abusing her—an allegation she would repeat throughout her life. Though he was never charged with abuse, a restraining order against him—which cites Rozita’s allegations—was issued in 1992. In a recent conversation with NEWSWEEK, Clarence described Rozita as “the world’s greatest con artist,” and denied her accusations. “If there is any victim, it is me,” he said. (Rozita didn’t address the abuse allegations with NEWSWEEK, and her attorneys did not return repeated calls for comment.)

When Swinton was 19, she went to live with Mary Nelson, a social worker who gave shelter to foster kids. Writing under the pseudonym Kate Rosemary, Nelson authored two books that mention Swinton. In “After Disclosure,” Nelson wrote that the girl “had been tragically abused” and “had been diagnosed as having developed multiple personalities, each of which experienced part of her abuse.” When news of Swinton’s arrest broke, a newsletter put out by Nelson’s publisher featured a story meant to defend Swinton. Citing a “source very close to her,” the article claimed that “Rozita has flashbacks to a time when she was an abused child and teenager, and to times when she had been locked up and kept hostage.” (Nelson, who is exceedingly private, declined to comment.)

After leaving Nelson’s home, Swinton headed west, eventually settling in Colorado Springs in the mid-1990s. She became a Mormon and worked in the insurance industry, first as an agent and later in the claims department at State Farm.

Soon, Swinton came to the attention of authorities. Around 1997, she filed the first of some 15 police reports claiming that her father or some other man was sexually assaulting her (Clarence denies he ever visited Colorado). But “we could never corroborate information because she would never do any follow-up,” says Det. Terry Thrumston of the Colorado Springs Police Department.
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Source: Deseret News

Court hearings in Texas on whether to place eight children taken in the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church’s YFZ Ranch in foster care are now slated to begin later this month.

Clerks in a San Angelo court said Friday the hearings were rescheduled for Aug. 18, and could last the entire week. They were previously scheduled for Sept. 25.

“We will present evidence that we believe will justify the non-emergency removal of the children and the attorneys and parents will be represented and can plead their case to the court,” said Texas Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. “The judge ultimately decides if CPS gets temporary custody again.”

CPS filed court papers earlier this week seeking to place the six girls and two boys, ages 5 to 17, in foster care, claiming their mothers refused to limit the children’s contact with men involved in underage marriages. Included in their evidence were documents detailing child bride marriages, including a pair of 12-year-old girls sealed to FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

An FLDS spokesman has said that CPS still hasn’t proven the eight children are in any immediate danger.

Source: clippertoday.com

For many, living a polygamist lifestyle seems almost impossible to comprehend. For former members of the Davis County-based Kingston clan, however, it was simply the structure on which most of their lives have been based. “You don’t just give up your religion all of a sudden,” said former Kingston member Christy Tucker, who left with her husband and children in 2001.

For members of the Kingston clan, which started in Bountiful in the 1930s and has since spread to other parts of the state, religion is the controlling force in everyone’s daily life. Behaviors are determined by what group leaders call heavenly “directions,” and can cover everything from marriage to schooling to the foods that members eat.

“You already know what you can and can’t do — it’s been ingrained in you since birth,” said Rowenna Erickson, a former Kingston member who is now leader of Tapestry Against Poly-gamy. “You struggle, but you think you’re sacrificing so you can gain eternal salvation.”

Money and food are common subjects of the directions that come from church leaders. According to Brian C. Hales, noted Davis County author of several LDS books and books on polygamy, the leaders retain tight control over their members’ finances.

“We all turned in money we’d earned, even if we were only five years old and it was only five cents or a penny,” remembers LuAnn Cooper, a former Kingston who left the group 10 years ago.

This financial focus is sometimes reflected in the cost-consciousness in the approved menus. An example of this is an emphasis on raw oats, which can be bought cheaply and in large quantities and can feed a large group of children for quite some time.

“The church leader’s favorite wife would get up in church and say that you can feed your children two meals of raw oats and one normal meal, and they’ll do just fine,” said Tucker with a laugh. “Now my kids won’t eat oats on principle.”
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Source: NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Texas Child Protective Services has effectively admitted that 32 of the children torn from their families on the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado never needed to be thrown into foster care.

That’s not how they put it, of course. Rather, they say they dropped the cases because, according to news accounts, CPS found no evidence of underage marriages or the families “agreed to take appropriate actions to protect their children.”

This is a perfect illustration of why state laws generally say that one should not take a child first and ask questions later unless CPS has strong evidence of imminent danger – and why it is so tragic that such language routinely is ignored.

There never was any indication that if a child was not taken from the ranch today, she’d be married off tomorrow. And, it should be recalled, CPS took infants, toddlers, and other children nowhere near puberty. There was time to find out that these families were innocent without subjecting their children to the trauma of separation from everyone they know and love. There was time to find out these families were innocent and/or willing to “take appropriate steps…” without interning the children in their own private Guantanamo during the first days after the raid. There was time to find out that these families were innocent without inflicting emotional scars that may never heal.

“My little guy was just a baby,” the law guardian for a child believed to be among the 32 told the Deseret News. “There was no reason for them to be in the system.”

Unfortunately, this news was buried in stories that focused on the fact that CPS is trying to put eight FLDS children back into foster care. But those cases also illustrate how CPS got it wrong the first time. In these cases CPS took the refreshingly novel approach of doing the investigation first. In most cases, they zeroed in on specific instances where they allege mothers “allowed” underage marriages and declined to sign “safety plans.” The plans required the mothers to promise not to allow underage marriages and to limit children’s contact with men allegedly involved in such marriages.
… Full article at NCCPR Child Welfare Blog