I'm not advocating breaking the laws but rather stating a concern that child abuse seems more rampant in the FLDS societies than in the 1953 description provided. What was a questionable practice in 1953 involved 19 year old women now has seemingly crept into outright abuse of underage women. It seems that either the society has become more degraded or possibly saw a shortage of 'marry-able' age women and thus needed to marry younger. Whatever the reasoning it's certainly flawed.

The other concern I have is that the community still needs to make money. The men leave the communities to work and are thus exposed to outside influences and are aware of modern societies while the women are left completely in the dark. This amounts to a type of slavery, in my opinion. Inequality between the men and the women and children is very pronounced.

Whatever the actions taken by states I hope that the needs of those previously 'enslaved' groups are monitored. Just because society does not agree with the FLDS' beliefs we cannot treat them any less humanely than we would anyone else. Hopefully tolerance and care will prevail where the victims are concerned.

thank you for an article that needs to be read by the national media.

There is no doubt in my mind that the way this was handled will have similar repercussions to the 1953 raid in that they will be more secretive and seclusive than they were in the past. It was after the raid that they began wearing the restrictive clothing and they believed they were blessed because of this trial so in many ways they felt stronger for having endured it.

The women and children do need help. The men have controlled them and restricted their ability to see what a good relationship should look like. This is abusive even if there were not other atrocities, but the chance of this action having positive effect is extremely slim. They have botched it regardless of good intentions it will backfire.

A well-planned method to help women and children, after studying Short Creek and other actions from the past, along with working with groups designed to help people escape from FLDS control might have made a difference but Texan officials did not do their homework on this. And now they have further violated the victims. Just as other criminals get off the hook due to police error, haste and stupidity they likely will too.

Overall the Texan Governent would have been better off taking more time to verify information as well as researching who was really underage or not. Now that chance is lost as they have already violated rights, no matter what the FLDS have done history will look back on this and put Texas in a bad light.

Coming from a polygamist family myself I do not condone underage mariages or any other kind of abuse. However there are certain constitutional rights that when overlooked or refused even murderes and drug dealers have gone free. If I remember correctly Americans are innocent untill proven guilty, not the other way around