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Thread: LDS Church critical of media reports on FLDS

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    David Copeland's Avatar
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    Arrow LDS Church critical of media reports on FLDS

    Once again, the media is somewhat misleading people.

    Here is a quote:

    LDS Church critical of media reports on FLDS
    Some news outlets fail to distinguish 2 faiths.

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is criticizing international news media outlets for failing to distinguish between the mainstream LDS Church and the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

    "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discontinued polygamy officially in 1890. More than a century later, some news reports, especially those outside the U.S., still fail to draw clear distinctions whenever stories arise about polygamy in the Intermountain West," the LDS Church said in a statement posted on its Web site.

    The LDS Church praised many news media outlets across the country for noting the difference between the two churches. However, church officials were critical of foreign media reports that ran photographs of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City next to stories of the polygamous compound raid in Texas and headlines that use the term "Mormon" without a distinction.

    "You would think that after over 100 years, media organizations would understand the difference," Elder M. Russell Ballard said in the LDS Church's statement on Friday. "You can't blame the public for being confused when some of those reporting on these stories keep getting them wrong."
    And if that's not enough, the media is reporting that beds were found in the temple. For the mainstream LDS Church, the beds in the Salt Lake Temple are only in the Men's Dressing Room and the Women's Dressing Room in case someone needs to lie down for a while. Many of the volunteer temple workers can use the bed (usually one per dressing room) to take a short nap before going back their volunteer duties.

    (At work, one of our offices has a portable bed to take a 20 minute nap during our lunch)

    Regardless of the truth, here is how one media newspaper is reporting what another news outlet is saying:

    Search: Were beds in temple used for teen sex?
    SAN ANGELO, Texas — A Texas Ranger serving a search warrant at a polygamist ranch says there are beds inside the FLDS Church's only temple.

    And those beds, according to newly released documents that support the reasons for a police raid on the compound owned by the sect, are in a part of the temple where "males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity" with underage girls.

    New portions of a second search warrant, which was issued Sunday, were unsealed Wednesday and provided the first glimpse of some of what law enforcement officers have encountered since raiding the church's 1,700-acre ranch.

    Inside the large limestone temple, ranger Leslie Brooks Long said she observed several locked safes, locked desk drawers, locked vaults, multiple computers and beds.

    "On one of the beds within the temple, (I) observed that the bed linens were disturbed as if the bed had been used," she wrote. The officer said she also noticed a strand of hair believed to come from the head of a female, the court document states.

    An unidentified former FLDS Church member, who has been advising Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran over the past several years, told the sheriff about the beds.

    The warrant specifically identifies several girls and women who were interviewed at the ranch by child welfare workers during the first two days of the search. The examples either identified underage girls who were pregnant or "spiritually married" to older men, or young adult women who had children when they were underage.
    Anyone under 17 is prohibited from marrying in Texas without parental approval.

    During an interview Friday with a child who appeared to be 16, the girl was asked how old she was. The girl's husband, who is approximately 33 and was nearby during the interview, looked at his wife and said, "You are 18," the affidavit states. The girl, who has a 10-month-old baby, then replied that she was 18.

    Long said she discovered a document indicating one man had more than 20 wives — "all of whom resided in the same residence."

    It was this information, together with other details, that prompted a judge to issue a second search warrant authorizing authorities to search for any and all records regarding the births of children to mothers under 17, parental information; photographs, especially family portraits; family Bibles or books showing marriages and birth information; fingerprints and hair and blood samples of men and women; plus any device capable of storing images.

    The first warrant only authorized authorities to locate evidence to help them identify a 16-year-old girl, whose calls to a family shelter claiming physical and sexual abuse prompted the raid and other court orders that eventually led to all 416 children taken from the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado.

    Additional details of her phone calls to a crisis hotline for domestic violence were also released Wednesday from the first search warrant.

    During the first call on March 29, which lasted 42 minutes, the girl said she lived on the ranch, was pregnant and had an 8-month-old child. She said her husband "hits her and hurts her" and said she would try to get help to get off the ranch, according to the court affidavit.

    During several calls to the hotline the next day, the girl described physical and sexual abuse from her husband and said she wasn't allowed to leave the ranch because a guard was posted at a guard tower near the gate. She expressed fear that if she was caught trying to leave, "she would be locked in her room and not allowed to eat as punishment for her disobedience," Long wrote in the court documents.

    The girl also said she feared the "outside world" away from the ranch, saying "she had been told that outsiders would hurt her."

    While officers continued gathering evidence as ordered in the second search warrant, a third search warrant was issued Wednesday — this time from a federal judge. No details were available, but late Tuesday a Department of Public Safety spokeswoman said only that "the FBI is not out there now."

    The 416 children, and 139 mothers who have "voluntarily" joined them, are expected to remain at the two shelters in San Angelo at least until an April 17 hearing.

    That means it's not likely the state will try to place the children into foster homes until after that hearing, Marleigh Meisner told the Deseret Morning News.

    "This is all decided on a day-to-day basis, but the children will remain for now in a shelter-type setting," the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokeswoman said.

    Parents will be notified of the hearing and they will be allowed to attend with or without an attorney. Each child will be appointed an attorney ad litem and a guardian ad litem, she said. Child Protective Services will then make a recommendation about what should happen to each child and a judge will decide whether the child remains in state custody or is returned to family members.

    "Then there are further court appearances over the next few months with a judge making a decision at each interval," Meisner said.

    In the meantime, she said 700 staff members are trying to make them "as comfortable as possible. We understand this is not easy for them."
    So someone claims: "beds . . . are in a part of the temple where "males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity" with underage girls."

    Questions:
    1. Where is the proof of this? (There is hair on my sofa. Do I use my sofa for teenage sex??)

    2. What does the DNA of the hair show (age of person or whether or not someone was just taking a nap?)

    3. Why did the law enforcement officers call another church to come in and transport the kids out?

    4. Why would the government involve another church (with a different religion) to be a part of a raid?

    5. Were the officers a member of that other church who brought their church busses?

    6. Why was the same girl reported to make the same phone call to the police in two different states (Texas and Arizona)?

    7. Why can't the police trace the phone call and locate the girl (who is now a ghost)?

    8. Was the female actually a member of another church?




    Do you have children?

    This story may not be so much about a church and more American Civil Rights and what the government can do.

    Read this:

    Nancy was at the ranch when Texas rangers and other authorities began taking away the children. She said they knocked on the door of her home, walked in, separated the children, began interviewing "and didn't give us an explanation of what they were doing," she said.

    She and other mothers declined to answer the officers' questions about which child belonged to who. "They told us we're going to take the children unless you tell us who are their mothers. But we still weren't saying anything," she recalled. Then she heard them call for backup.

    Nancy, who was holding a baby in her arms, said one officer "poked their face into our face" and loudly said, "Give me that baby!"

    "I said, 'I'm not going to do that,'" she said.

    Although child welfare workers allowed most of the mothers to accompany their children to the temporary shelters, Nancy said she was not allowed to go. She stood helpless in the doorway and watched as her children, grandchildren and family members were loaded onto buses.

    "The children would cry and hang onto their mothers," she said, trembling and wiping away tears.

    "I get my strength from my Heavenly Father, but I can't believe something like this could even happen in America.... How could they take families and tear the children away? They're mentally abusing those children."

    'Nowhere to go'

    Monica, a mother of five children between the ages of 11 and 3, said she wants the world to know her children were happy and safe at home.

    "We love our children. We love family life. Our children are our life. We do all we can to make sure they are cared for and have an education," she said. "They have manners and are trained well in loving and blessing others."

    She was out of state for an appointment when she heard that her home was being raided. She quickly returned to the ranch but wasn't allowed inside. "I had nowhere to go," said Monica, 34.

    Her sister is taking care of her 3-year-old at a makeshift shelter in San Angelo, about 50 miles away. A cousin is looking after the others. She tried to join the 139 mothers that were allowed to accompany their children, but the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services won't allow her inside.

    "I have driven past the area where they are, and it's completely surrounded by police," she said. "I'm sure I could walk up to the door and get arrested ... and then what's going to happen to my children?"

    When she was finally allowed to return to her home on the ranch, because of an ongoing search of the property by authorities, she said nothing was the same.

    "Can you imagine what it's like to come back to nothing? Empty, ransacked homes, many things were taken, no pictures left."

    She was able to find some pictures of when her children were younger, but all others were confiscated.

    "I want the world to know that there is a nothing stronger than love and there is an inborn, God-given love between a mother and her children, and all a mother wants for her children is the very best" Monica said.

    Despite her sorrow and frustration, she says she has faith that she will see her children again.

    "I know I can't give up. I have to stay at it," she said. "I know with Heavenly Father's help I will be able to get them back."

    'I couldn't believe it'

    Shannon, a mother who was also off the ranch when officers served the search warrants, said she's also tried several times to see her three children but has been refused.

    "Every day I've called them. They put me off saying they don't have the authority to let me in and there's no proof the children are mine. I tell them the children know who their mother is, and I know who my children are," she said.

    The 30-year-old says she provided child welfare officials with identification and even birth certificates proving she is her children's mother. She says she and other mothers were told those documents could have been fake.

    "I couldn't believe it. I wondered if we were in America or Russia," Shannon said. "I kept thinking, 'How can they do that?' They're breaking every rule. They're breaking every law."

    Shannon has been told that her youngest child, who is just 2 years old, clings to her caretaker in the shelter. "She's sick right now and needs her mother."

    Texas officials say they removed the children because they believe they're being abused or neglected. The raid was authorized by a judge after workers at a family domestic hotline reported receiving calls from a pregnant 16-year-old girl claiming she was being abused and was afraid to leave the ranch.

    Shannon insists the children were not in any harmful environment at the ranch and were well-loved and cared for.

    "We are not child abusers. We take very good care of them. These are innocent and sweet children," she said.

    "The only abuse my children have ever had is since they've been taken away."
    Someone once said, "Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater."

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    Re: LDS Church critical of media reports on FLDS

    This will be interesting to see how all this turns out.
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    Re: LDS Church critical of media reports on FLDS

    Quote Originally Posted by David Copeland View Post
    Once again, the media is somewhat misleading people....
    Imagine that. The media misleading people. We should call them "The Department of Confusion and Deliberate Misinformation"

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    Lynn E Payne's Avatar
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    Re: LDS Church critical of media reports on FLDS

    This is sad. I had 3 children myself and I can't imagine, even though my children are grown,and my son passed after an accident, having my children taken away from me and not be allowed to see them. If there was abuse maybe, and I dont know for sure there was, then I could see it. Someone said it right. There is no bond stronger than that of a mother and her child.

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