Apr 17


The first and only commandment - shelter the children

by Terry 17 April 2008


Like many other people, I’ve been hypnotized by the child custody case involving the 416 children removed from the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch in Texas. My heart has been broken by the faces of the mothers as the children are taken away, but fear grips my stomach at the thought of social services sending those little ones back to be beaten, raped, and forced into childbirth while still children themselves.

Today’s interviews have been unsettling; staring into the faces of these anonymous women and seeing the same matching expressions and void, vacant stares when asked about the allegations, I wonder how they can justify the trite euphemisms they offer. I’m furious with these women, many of whom might have been themselves exploited children, standing passively by while their children are abused and doing nothing to protect them. Yes, they’ve been brainwashed. Yes, they’re being manipulated. But they’re mothers, damn it, and nothing, NOTHING, not even God, should come between a mother and a child needing her protection. Nothing is more sacred than that.

You don’t allow someone to hurt your child. Ever. No matter what it costs you.

From time to time people have asked what the guiding imperative in my life is. That’s it, in black and white. I will protect my children and those I love, fiercely. Always.

That’s my first and last commandment. I will do better for mine than was done for me.

16 Responses to “The first and only commandment - shelter the children”

  1. wes on April 17th, 2008 9:42 pm

    I’d like to know when men lost there rights. Where is it the rights of the men are respected? A man’s home was once his castle. You come into his domain after you ask permission. By the grace of God the rights of Men will be restored in this country once again!

  2. Diane on April 17th, 2008 9:56 pm

    Mothers with a fourth grade “specialized” education…generations strong. Give me a break, these mothers know nothing about “what it is they need to do” to keep their children. If they have any hope at all,they need to ask for help to get out of the sect. Which of course they are unable to do since they have been cult-brainwashed their entire lives. These women need to wise up fast or their children will be assigned to foster care. They have no spine….thanks to the tactics of the cult. I really doubt they have any knowledge of US laws and that they were living an illegal lifestyle. Being seperated from mainstream society and spoonfed reality will do that after a century or two. They (the women) this week, are surely be questioning what they have been told all their lives…whether they listen and wise up will be up to them. Is someone telling these women that they will lose their children if they don’t leave the ranch? I am all for the children being ripped away from their present lives and parents (if they even know who they are). Those boys and girls are in mortal danger of abuse beyond the average american and deserve to be rescued from the likes of the FLDS CULT. It is but a human puppy mill using brainwashed adolesent girls and homegrown ignorant women for infant production to get welfare checks coming into the fold.

  3. Diane on April 17th, 2008 10:03 pm

    The next branch of this investigation should be welfare fraud, human rights violations such as slavery, and criminal consipiracy on the organized crime level….where is the money trail people?

  4. Ahistoricality on April 17th, 2008 11:01 pm

    Sara Robinson had a good discussion of the “brainwashed” question, including a very clear description of the physical and emotional threats used to keep these women in line.

  5. Becca on April 17th, 2008 11:10 pm

    This ranch just seens like it is a illegal place to have sex with Children. It is also a place where they take our money we have worked so hard for. As I understand that the welfare system does have people checking on these people who collect welfare. So who was doing the checking when the welfare department was cutting checks for so many at one address? These woman are all brain washed. I feel the children needs not to go back there to that ranch. And I feel our government needs to take all welfare off of anyone who lives there and force them to go out into the real world and get a job just like the rest of us.This crap has to stop! SO someone had better put a stop to it right now. Cut off the free money going into there. What the heck is wrong Texas? Someone must be sleeping. If this mess falls into the cracks of the courts there is no justice. I can not figure this out cops have the right to come onto my property to see what is going on if someone calls them out to check it out. Cops have the right to patrol our streets. SO why do they not have the right to patrol this ranch? They could be making moon shine or growing marijuana so is this right not to be able to get on this property? Well if this is all ok then I’m going to buy a ranch and move to Texas where I can do anything I want to on my ranch! SO move over Rapist I’m moving in next door to you all and I’m going to collect welfare for my animals asno one will check to see if they are people or not. I will name all my animals common names like Joe, Pete, Mike and what ever else I can think of. I will love to beat the system like these crazy people are doing. Well maybe they are not so crazy………. They are collecting a lot of money form all of use working people.

  6. Debra llllll on April 18th, 2008 4:06 am

    I think this is another Waco, these people are will end up like the one’s at Waco. the Government is always sticking it’s NOSE into everything. the U.S. run’s to outher countries, saying free the country, my GOD people, wake up!!, the U.S.A. is almost as bad, the people keep letting this go on. we are the one’s that will need help. leave those people/kids alone. they are making it with out the Government ruling over them and the goverment can not stand that. the government will run in and hurt a lot of kids. WAKE UP PEOPLE, THE GOVERNMENT LIES TO THE U.S. PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, think this is any different. this is just a bunch of crap they have come up with, so they can run in like always. remember WACO, TX. so many men/women and all those little kids that died an alful death just because of the big bad government wanting to rule over them. GIVE THE KIDS BACK,leave them alone.

  7. morgan on April 18th, 2008 5:32 am

    I just want to say this: I think that most people are missing the point, and the government is counting on it. How can the government go in and take out all of these children on SPECULATION. So far, there have been NO reports of any EVIDENCE that the abuse is taking place. According to the law, when Children and Youth services are called, they launch an investigation. If there is NO EVIDENCE backing an allegation, then the case is either monitored or closed. The kids don’t get pulled unless there is evidence or the kids are willing to admit to the abuse and accuse the abusers. There have been so many INDIVIDUAL cases where there has been actual evidence and the child(ren) weren’t pulled. (That is because social services typically do whatever they can to keep families TOGETHER, or so they say.) So, what I believe is that the government targeted this organization, once they got that call, knowing that the world would be appalled by the allegations of polygymy and child sexual abuse. Meanwhile, a case like this can set a precedent in the court system. That is: over time this case (if the government wins) will be the basis for other court cases where children are removed from the home simply because SOMEONE DOESN’T LIKE the way child(ren) are being raised. So, I ask: how would you like to know that if someone calls in to Children and Youth and tells them that you are raising your child in an immoral way, that you can have your child taken away, especially with ONLY circumstantial evidence? People, this kind of situation is one of the ways the government slowly takes away our rights without us recognizing it!!!! Go back 50 to 60 years and see what rights the people had then but don’t now. Ask an older individual, and they will tell you, we have lost so many rights it’s pathetic.

    With all that said, please know that as most people, the thought of polygymy and especially child abuse sickens me. I do not condone those behaviors. I just think in this situation, the government is counting on that so we don’t pay attention to what they are really doing…violating rights of people.

  8. Have Coffee Will Write » Blog Archive » WHAT THEY SAID… on April 18th, 2008 8:38 am

    [...] don’t allow someone to hurt your child. Ever. No matter what it costs you. Terry Kanago Posted in Blogging, Social Justice & Advocacy, Superstition & [...]

  9. Dee Murphy on April 18th, 2008 8:55 am

    The state of Texas has a legal and moral obligation to remove these children from these pedophiles. Sexual molestation has a longterm devastating effect on a child. Children have a hard time recovering from sexual abuse. Apparently,the children were not happy with this way of life because one of them called for help. It seems that these men are using these women,and children for their sexual pleasure, passing them around from man to man. They are also using them to bleed the welfare system dry for the men’s benefit. The children are not being educated. It appears to be simply a sex thing.

  10. Terry on April 18th, 2008 11:05 am

    That’s a great piece, A. Thanks for pointing me to it.

  11. Lindy on April 18th, 2008 6:44 pm

    I was a midwife in the Las Vegas, NV area for about 16 years. Many women came down from the FLDS communities in the Arizona strip to have me and other midwives deliver their babies. I spent many hours with the wives, husbands, sister wives, and children and never saw any evidence of anything like what the fools in Texas are claiming. One news report had a barely literate woman claiming to be an expert on the FLDS who said that the members believed laughter was evil. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anyone is taken advantage of, it would be the men. The wives don’t have exclusive relationships with their husbands and so there isn’t the degree of intimacy that our “gentile” marriages enjoy. My FLDS ladies all had clever senses of humor, enjoyed their lives and were open and I assume honest about their experiences. In fact, except for their unusual clothes and their plural marriages, they seemed absolutely no different to me than anyone else. By the way, I always like to ask my clients how they met and fell in love with their husbands and they all had sweet, shy, LOVE stories to tell. Several women told me of first offers of marriages that they refused and many said they went to their parents after deciding who they wanted to marry and asked their parents to arrange it.

    In Nevada, I know non-FLDS people who got court orders to get married as young as 13 and I’ve delivered many babies for girls in their teens. Teen marriage and pregnancy is NOT exclusive to the FLDS group and I sure don’t see babies being taken from the arms of other teenage mothers.

    What happened to freedom of religion? Isn’t this America?

  12. Gwen on April 18th, 2008 6:56 pm

    This isn’t about freedom of religion. This is about whether or not these children were in an abusive place. According to the article about this on MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24199519/), one woman admitted “that her sisters had children old enough to demonstrate they were married before age 18″ which is in violation of Texas law. CPS workers also testified that there were minors who were pregnant - also a violation of Texas law. Sex with someone under the age of 16 is statutory rape. By staying in these conditions the parents of these children were raising their kids in an society where rape and violation of the law were accepted practices. According the state’s psychologist they were raised to believe that no age was too young for marriage and the resulting intimate relations. That is an abusive situation and they should be removed. It doesn’t matter if these were religious beliefs. It matters that children were in danger and needed to be protected.

  13. hannahAr on April 18th, 2008 6:59 pm

    The laws of the land are to be enforced. Bigamy, or polygamy is against the law. So is incest, child abuse, child neglect and statuatory rape .BOTTOM LINE!
    Arranged marriages are not a part of our cultural norm, and I pray they never will be!
    One curious question, do you think there were any marriages of young girls to young boys there? I doubt it! The church elders got to pick the ” ripe” young girls for themselves and push their younger competition out of the ” tribe”. interesting!

  14. dENVer on April 20th, 2008 8:21 am

    to hannahAr. Arranged marraiges happen all the time in this country, and perpetrated by Americans overseas. I know several people who came from India, are now American citizens, and have an arranged marraige with a women in India. This is not always to the will of the women, and in many cases she is much younger. Another example is the “mail order-bride” business. Women from Russia to Asia are selling themselves for a U.S. citizenship.

  15. Listen up and take action…April is SAAM « Ifelicious Thoughts on April 20th, 2008 10:33 am

    [...] You don’t allow someone to hurt your child. Ever. No matter what it costs you. Terry Kanago [...]

  16. hannahAr on April 20th, 2008 2:35 pm

    denver..
    I didnt say it didnt exist. I said it is NOT part of OUR CULTURAL NORM. Traditional marriages are still the norm here, even though that concept is under constant attack from the liberal left who want to redefine marriage to include all kinds of deviancy .

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