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Shurtleff connects the FLDS dots

I'm glad Shurtleff isn't doing anything like they are in Texas. What a perfect example of religious intolerance we are witnessing. Do we now take the kids away from evangelicals so they can't raise the children to hate those who think differently than themselves? Where do we stop? Do you have to fit into mainstream religion to have freedom of religion now? It is a sad day for America...Who's next?

why is polygamy not considered bigamy.......??????
why is there so much emplasis on minor infractions in childcare, but huge unlawful practices are ignored or at best shuffled to the back burner because it is more difficult to prosecute or handle????
A cancer keeps growing IF you don't cut it clean out.
People assume they can continue abuses when so little strict enforcement.
There are women in jail for life for shop lifting a purse........why....??? Easier to crack down.
People as a whole need to support heavier proscecution and enforcement....
We all fuss about those who break laws...
but fuss about the cost to keep them enforced.

The AG says that the law is being broken concerning polygamy, but he won't act.

Hmmmmmm.

No wait. He said it was not clear if polygamy was illegal.

Hmmmmmmm.

No wait. He said that the good citizens of the state would have to take care of the kids, etc., like Texas is doing. Costs too much.

Hmmmmmm.

I would say that Utah needs a new Attorney General.

Focusing on child abuse and fraud but not addressing the underlying problem means Utah will be forever treating symptoms but never going for a cure.

It is a mistake to ignore illegal polygamy. It is living polygamy outside the law that renders groups like FLDS clannish and closed to outsiders. That circumstance leaves the children isolated and at the mercy of the adults. Any polygamous cult living outside the law is inevitably going to be an abusive environment for the children, the only question is the degree of abuse.

Shurtleff must quit tiptoeing around the fact that POLYGAMY IS ILLEGAL. He should not shirk from enforcing the laws.

Shurtleff is right and he has legal issues on his side. The US Supreme Court has already ruled that what consenting adults do in private is their own business. Child abuse is another matter and Utah goes at it one case at a time. Utah has passed Jessica's law which mandates 25 years to life in prison for the rape or serious sexual assault of a child. This is tough stuff patterned after Florida's law. The right course is to go after child abuse where it occurs not after a whole lifestyle. As soon as Texas learned that child sex abuse occurred in other religious schools and churches why wasn't there a big round up of other religious people. This is selective prosecution at its worse. Most of these kids will get sent back to their polygamous parents as happened after the Short Creek raid in 1953.

It's time to put some new none Mormon leadership in positions of authority in Utah that will enforce the law and protect helpless woman and children.

Go Brent!! I totally agree!!! couldn't have been better said!!!

I totally agree! It couldn't have been better said!!

Shurtleff is going to come out of this whole thing vindicated. It will only be a matter of time. The lessons of history (Short Creek raid) taught him that it is unwise to target an entire community; that it only strengthens their sense of victimization and turns them further inward. The prosecution of Warren Jeffs was the right direction. Demonstrate to the followers that the leadership of the faith was not what they believed. Put pressure on the top to lead their members against underage marriage and other abuses.

Texas authorities' blunder will undo the good Shurtleff has done. The only direction for them to go now is to place all of these children into foster care. Are we ready to see families ripped apart in that way? Texas authorities are beginning to see what a mess they've stepped into. That's a single small community. There is no way that Utah and Arizona's AGs could do more.

What if YFZ consisted of Muslims, Blacks, or Latinos? What if 400 of their children had been forcibly removed based on a phone call that contained false accusations? What would the media reports have been like?

Any way you slice it, the Texas raid did violate the constitutional rights of the parents, a fact which was hinted at by Utah's AG in this article. Why don't officials raid the barrios and projects where there is much worse child abuse, teen pregnancy, and welfare fraud?

I agree with Brent, that we need to go after the abuse and abuser. Otherwise it just becomes a cycle. The abused becomes the abuser, etc. I also agree with LeRoy. It's time for new leadership. To have the top attorney in the state confused as to what the law says and whether it should be acted on seems strange. I know I'm not an attorney, but as average Joe Citizen, can I choose which laws I want to live? Sweet!!!

The headline of the story and the fact that the AG seems to want to take credit for the roundup in Texas because of what he's done, or not done, is totally absurd. By his statements, seems they would have felt safer here, because his office wasn't going to do anything to them anyway.

However, I've seen the AG take a proposal and pass it off as his own when he sees the political benefit from it. If Texas goes really bad, wonder what he'll come up with. Won't want it to be in his ballpark then, I'll bet. I'm sure we'll all be watching this play out.

Can't believe it. Our do-nothing, no guts attorney general is taking credit for Texas. It is time for a non-Mormon to be a attorney general in Utah with the intestinal fortitude to do what is right.

Dutchman makes a good point: When the Catholic priests and bishops were (and continue to be) embroiled in child sex abuse cases with young boys, did state authorities go in and shut down the parrish, or the catholic schools where the abuse occurred? No, they went after the offender, identified by a known victim. Contrast that with rouding up an entire community in the name of finding the anonymous victim at this ranch. Why not look just for the one offender identified by the anonymous victim? Oh, maybe because he wasn't there? The sheriff's informant didn't even know there was underage sex and abuse going on at the ranch, so how exactly did probable cause get established for the original search warrant? And once inside, why not only take the pregnant young girls into protective custody, since they were obviously victims? Any young girl holding a child isn't necessarily a young mother or abuse victim, any more than my teenage daughter is automatically a young mother when seen holding her younger siblings. Flimsy probable cause at best.

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"As soon as Texas learned that child sex abuse occurred in other religious schools and churches why wasn't there a big round up of other religious people. This is selective prosecution at its worse"

Dutchman - why don't you give me an example? Tell me of a time when Texas learned of child sex abuse of other religious orgs and did not take action? They did attempt to intervene in Waco, but that went wrong. There are several pregnant teenagers in custody now. I don't think you understand that it is illegal in TX to marry anyone under 16 even w/ parental consent. So that is already against the law and considered child abuse.

Texas is wrong nad I hope they pay dearly for their intrusions on this community. Go after the pedophiles and the abusers. These people have rights too...its sad to see so many in favor of the government stripping the rights away from the people.

is it illegal for a man to get multiple girls pregnant at the same time? is it illegal for a man to "date" multiple women at the same time?
i've known a few men who do that and don't claim polygamy, infact i could name a few women who practice the opposite, have children by numerous men (just watch springer to see it live)
bigamy is the act of being married to multiple women, which is illegal and prosecutable by law, in the case of this there is no second lawful marriage and like shutleff said would be hard to prosecute in a court of law.
why aren't you people out there stopping the other people who are practicing serial monogamy (multiple divorce), multiple partnering, etc?
who's going to pay for all the displaced children?
it's pretty easy to say what you think is best for a child, but not so easy to determine it. Are all parents automactically abusing their children in this situation? What about parents who have children with multiple partners, are they also abusers?
utah went through this with their raid, ever wondered why it didn't happen again? maybe utah knows better

You are next. Transfer the blame, that's your thought process. That makes it OK. No, they brought this on themselves, 100%. Let it play out. If they're right we have to accept every perverse sexual belief in the Universe. This needs to be resolved and now.

Many commenters here are crying "Foul!" over the removal of every child from the Texas FLDS community, because it appears Texas is making a blanket statement that every child in any type of polygamous family is abused. That's not the case at all. Texas has determined that the lifestyle created by THIS SPECIFIC COMMUNITY results in an abusive environment for children; and that's true. Listen, dear folks, to the brave souls who have escaped from the FLDS sect, and any other sect that promotes the arranged marriages of underage females. They've lived it. They know. DO NOT listen to those still living in such sects; they are brainwashed and programmed to paint a rosy picture to the outside world, lest they be subjected to worse abuses. They are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. If you don't know what that is, look it up.

I agree with "Dutchman" here. My fear all along has been that the public uproar will be so ferocious that authorities will be forced to return all the kids to their homes, and another 55 years will pass! Dealing with one case at a time is the right way to go; dealing with individual cases of child abuse, rather than chasing the impossible task of changing an entire lifestyle! Look at the miracle(s) accomplished by Carolyn Jessop and Shurtleff, as they systematically dealt with one thing at a time in her case. I would be interested in hearing what she (and others who have experienced FLDS firsthand) thinks about the Texas situation!