5 indicted FLDS men appear before judge

Ben Winslow
Deseret News

July 30, 2008

Five members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church indicted by a Texas grand jury made their first appearances before a judge.

The men were arraigned before Schleicher County Justice of the Peace James Doyle late Tuesday afternoon, where they were handed papers spelling out their rights and told not to contact their alleged victims.

"All I do is an admonishment," Doyle told the Deseret News. "I read the warrant so they know what's been charged by the grand jury. I go through their rights."

One man, Dr. Lloyd Hammon Barlow, 38, posted a $15,000 bond late Tuesday and was released from jail pending his next court appearance. The rest remained in jail pending the posting of $100,000 bail, Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said. The men's next court appearance will then be set by the district court judge, who is based in nearby San Angelo.

Raymond Merril Jessop, 36; Allan Eugene Keate, 56; Michael George Emack, 57; and Merril Leroy Jessop, 33, are all charged with first-degree felony sexual assault. Merril Jessop is also charged with bigamy, a first-degree felony. Barlow was indicted on misdemeanor counts of failure to report child abuse.

Also indicted is FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, who remains in an Arizona jail. Jeffs, 52, is accused of performing child-bride marriages there. -->Texas authorities have said they will seek to have the FLDS leader extradited as soon as possible to the Lone Star state to face a sexual assault charge -->. Jeffs was convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice for performing a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin and was sentenced to a pair of 5-to-life sentences.

In April, child welfare authorities and law enforcement raided the YFZ Ranch outside Eldorado, Texas, after a phone call from someone claiming to be a pregnant 16-year-old in an abusive marriage to an older man. On site, authorities said they saw other signs of abuse, prompting a judge to order the removal of all of the children.

The ranch's 440 children were ultimately returned to their families when two Texas courts ruled the state acted improperly and there was no imminent danger of abuse. The original calls that sparked the raid are still being investigated as a hoax.

Hundreds of boxes of evidence were seized from the ranch, including diaries, photographs, thousands of pages of dictations by Jeffs and other FLDS records. These are believed to have contributed to the indictments, which may be the first of a series. The Schleicher County grand jury will meet again next month.

Raymond Merril Jessop is believed to have married Teresa Jeffs (now 17) a day after her 15th birthday in July 2006. Jeffs repeatedly has gone public denying she was a sex abuse victim but was subpoenaed to testify before the Schleicher County grand jury anyway. In the indictment, he is accused of sexually assaulting a girl under 17 in November 2004.

Merril Leroy Jessop is charged with sexual assault involving a girl in August 2006. The indictment also charges him with bigamy, stemming from a ceremony the same day Raymond Jessop married Teresa Jeffs.

"I was mouth at performing the marriage sealings," Jeffs said in a July 27, 2006, dictation filed with a child-advocate's court report and obtained by the Deseret News. "Merril Leroy Jessop received (the girl), and Raymond Merril Jessop received my daughter Teresa Jeffs."

According to the dictation, the FLDS leader himself married a girl in the same ceremony. Texas child welfare authorities believe she was 12 at the time.

A Bishop's Record seized by law enforcement indicates Allan Keate had a 17-year-old wife, and may have fathered an underage child with her. The indictment accuses him of sexual assault in April 2006.

Emack, according to the Bishop's records, has a 19-year-old wife and had a 1 1/2-year-old son with her. The indictment accuses him of sexual assault in October 2004.

Barlow is an FLDS community physician. The indictments accuse him of delivering babies in October and December of 2006 and May 2007, knowing their mothers were children and having cause to believe they were abused or neglected.

With the news of the criminal charges, Utah licensing officials said they will monitor the Texas case before deciding if they will take any action against Dr. Barlow.

"I cannot confirm or deny if we have an investigation going," said Jennifer Bolton, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing.

E-MAIL: bwinslow@desnews.com

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700246826,00.html

5 indicted FLDS men surrender to Texas authorities

Pat Reavy

Deseret News

July 29, 2008

The five FLDS men indicted last week by a grand jury in Schleicher County, Texas, surrendered to authorities Monday afternoon at the Schleicher County Sheriff's Office.

The 12-member jury indicted a total of six men, including FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, on July 22. At least nine jury members must vote in favor of an indictment for one to be issued.

Five of the men, including Jeffs, were indicted on first-degree felony charges of sexual assault of a child. But the names of the other men were withheld until they were in custody.

Monday afternoon, the Texas Attorney General's Office announced the other men charged with sexual assault are Raymond Merrill Jessop, 36; Allan Eugene Keate, 56; Michael George Emack, 57; and Merrill Leroy Jessop, 33. Merrill Jessop was also charged with bigamy, a first-degree felony.

The sixth man, Lloyd Hammon Barlow, 38, was indicted on three counts of failure to report child abuse, all class B misdemeanors.

The sentence for a sex assault conviction is five to 99 years in prison, or five years to life in prison.

Bond for the men other than Jeffs was set at $100,000 per charge for the felonies and $5,000 for the misdemeanor.

The arrests "reflect nearly a weeklong effort by the Texas Rangers and Texas Attorney General's Office to arrange for the defendants' arrests," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement.

Diaries of an FLDS member submitted as evidence in connection with the case of Teresa Jeffs, now 17, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, mentioned Raymond Jessop.

Teresa Jeffs allegedly married Raymond Jessop on her 15th birthday in 2006, according to her diary.

Raymond was described in Warren Jeffs' diary as being part of the faith's priesthood.

Jeffs is in custody in a Kingman, Ariz., jail awaiting trial on charges of sexual misconduct as an accomplice, accused of performing underage marriages. He was convicted in Utah in 2007 of rape as an accomplice for marrying a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin. He was sentenced to two sentences of 5-years-to-life in prison.

E-mail: preavy@desnews.com

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700246728,00.html?linkTrack=Email%2DGME

5 from West Texas polygamy sect to be arraigned today in sex assault case

Emily Ramshaw
Dallas Morning News
July 29, 2008

AUSTIN — Five men from a West Texas polygamist sect will be arraigned this afternoon, a day after they turned themselves in on charges related to the sexual assault and “spiritual” marriage of underage girls.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said law enforcement officials and an attorney for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints negotiated the surrender, which came sooner than expected, officials acknowledged.

A sixth sexual assault suspect – sect prophet Warren Jeffs – has already been convicted of similar charges in Utah, is in jail awaiting trial in Arizona, and could still be extradited to Texas.

The arrests follow child welfare investigators’ seizure of 440 children and about two dozen women from the polygamist community in April, over allegations the sect permitted a culture of sexual abuse and marriages between young girls and much older men.

State courts overturned the decision to take children and some young women into state custody months later, and most children were returned to their parents.

Attorneys for the sect, who have expressed outrage over the raid and subsequent criminal charges, declined to comment on Monday’s arrests. Willie Jessop, who has been speaking on behalf of the West Texas community in Mr. Jeffs’ absence, could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Jeffs and four other men — Merril Leroy Jessop, 33; Raymond Jessop, 36; Michael Emack, 57 and Allan Keate, 56 — were charged with first-degree felony sexual assault of a child. The younger Mr. Jessop, who uses his middle name, is also charged with first-degree felony bigamy, which means one of his alleged wives is younger than 16. A sixth man, Dr. Lloyd Barlow, 38, faces three misdemeanor counts of failing to report child abuse.

A grand jury received DNA evidence drawn from members of the sect before issuing the criminal charges.

All the men but Mr. Jeffs are in custody in Schleicher County, where their Yearning For Zion ranch is located. The men charged with felonies are all being held in lieu of $100,000 bond and face sentences ranging from 5 years to life in prison. Dr. Barlow’s bail is $5,000, and he faces a sentence of up to six months in prison.

It’s unclear whether the men will post bond today. Mr. Abbott, acknowledging the deep financial pockets of the Mormon breakaway sect, said that he still thought the $100,000 bail was sufficient and that authorities would keep close watch over any of the individuals who are released on bond.

Dr. Barlow is known as the chief physician at the sect’s compound outside Eldorado and is thought to have had information about young mothers there.

At least three of the other men, including Mr. Jeffs, are believed to have taken underage wives. A 2006 “dictation” from Warren Jeffs submitted as evidence in the case details the prophet choosing another wife for himself, as well as arranging the marriage of his own 16-year-old daughter to Raymond Jessop. He also chooses a bride for Leroy Jessop.

In the dictation, he refers to another man arrested Monday, noting that an FBI agent had “called Mike Emack right on Mike Emack’smobile phone, asking him if he would testify against me.”

“I don’t deserve any of my ladies,” Mr. Jeffs says in the dictation, “but I thank the Lord for every one of them, and yearn for every one of them to succeed, and all to be gathered.”

The Dallas Morning News does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.

Despite sect members’ vows last week that they would turn themselves in, state law enforcement officials had refused to estimate how long it would take to apprehend the men. They feared they had already fled to the FLDS’ home base — the Utah-Arizona border — or worse, left the country.

On Monday, Mr. Abbott confirmed that an attorney for the sect facilitated the surrender of the men, who arrived at the Schleicher County jail in two shifts. He said he didn’t know if the men had to be summoned from another state to turn themselves in.

Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said the men were booked peacefully.

The grand jury meets again next month, and Mr. Abbott said the “investigation of this whole issue is ongoing.”

Gerry Goldstein, a San Antonio-based attorney for the sect, said he was “not in a position to discuss the case.”

But as recently as last week, Mr. Jessop said he was confident in the “character of the people from the ranch,” and that they would “certainly step up to the allegations.” He said the idea that any sect members would flee the state in fear of indictments was outrageous.

“I’ll tell you right now,” he said, “anyone under these indictments will step up and answer the charges, to show the judicial system that we’re not guilty of what they’ve accused us of.”

eramshaw@dallasnews.com

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/073008dnmetpolygamy.14277b19.html

Transcendental Meditation "Holy Tradition"

Song: "Holy Tradition" from Guru Purnima 2008
Rick , Stanley

July 18, 2008

5th District Court will take up the actions against residents who don't want to pay $100 a month fee

Brooke Adams
Salt Lake Tribune
July 17, 2008 

FLDS: Judge won't block evictions

A 3rd District Court judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order that would have halted plans to evict hundreds of people from their homes in the polygamous Utah-Arizona border communities of Hildale and Colorado City.

    Judge Denise Lindberg ruled Tuesday there were factual and procedural problems with a request from attorneys for the families. Those facing evictions are current or former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

    Lindberg said that any eviction proceeding would be heard in 5th District Court, not by her. She also said the attorneys had not given proper notice of the action nor filed a bond required for all restraining orders.

    The judge said, however, that she would look at allegations of improper conduct by the accountant overseeing the sect's United Effort Plan Trust if brought before her separately.

    "The good news to our clients is that there is not imminent danger of them being removed without further litigation in the 5th District Court," said Bret Rawson, an attorney who, with Peter Stirba, represents those who received eviction notices. "We now have to determine [if] we ask the court to rule on the remainder of last night's filing or raise the issue again referencing facts in that filing."

    Jeff Shields, attorney for court-appointed fiduciary Bruce R. Wisan, said some residents have already moved to avoid eviction.

    "We're working with them if they're genuine and have issues," Shields said.

    On Tuesday, the attorneys charged that Wisan, appointed three years ago by Lindberg to manage the United Effort Plan Trust, was harming the beneficiaries of the trust.

    The trust holds virtually all land in the towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., as well as property in Bountiful, British Columbia. The communities are the traditional homes of the FLDS sect.

    Wisan had given demand notices to residents of 57 dwellings in the twin towns that gave them until Tuesday to pay or make arrangements to pay a $100 a month assessment fee.

    brooke@sltrib.com

Side Bar:

UEP at a glance     
       
    The United Effort Plan Trust was officially organized in 1942 by a fundamentalist Mormon group known at the time as The Work - now the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

    It was designed to protect property holdings and, through a communal effort, support members with plural families.

    The property trust holds virtually all land and buildings in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., formerly known as Short Creek; it also includes property in Bountiful, British Columbia. The holdings have an estimated value around $110 million.

    The UEP Trust was placed under court management in May 2005 after the FLDS failed to defend its assets against several lawsuits that alleged wrongdoing by trustees and church leaders. Salt Lake City accountant Bruce R. Wisan has managed it since then.

    In March 2007, Wisan received a $8.8 million default judgment against the FLDS church and former trustees, a debt he has partially satisfied by seizing a farm formerly operated by the sect. Still owed: $5 million or so, with interest.

    Wisan now works with an appointed advisory board that includes: Carolyn Jessop; Seth Cooke; Don Timpson; Katie Cox; Deloy Bateman; Robert Huddleston; and Margaret Cooke. With the exception of Huddleston and Timpson, the rest are former FLDS members.

    - Brooke Adams  

http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_9890163

Aleister Crowley lived a life of rebellion

Aleister Crowley lived a life of rebellion
Victoria Advocate (TX)
July 11, 2008

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was perhaps the most controversial personality to figure in the new era of modern day witchcraft. Born in England, the son of Emily and Edward, he was brought up in an atmosphere of strict religious piety. His parents were devout Christians and staunch members of the Plymouth Brethren sect. His whole life seems to have been a revolt against his parents and everything they stood for. (Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia)

He was educated at Trinity College at Cambridge where he first became interested in the occult. In 1899, Crowley is reported to have become a member of a coven, but was dismissed after a time due to his contemptuous attitude toward women, his personal ego and his sexual perversion.

Crowley travelled much, especially in the East studying Eastern Occult systems including Buddhism and the ‘I Ching.’ As he delved deeper into the occult, he became infamous as a Black magician and Satanist. He openly identified himself with the number 666, the biblical number for the antichrist.

Toward the end of his life, a friend introduced Crowley to Gerald B. Gardner. A certain Leo Ruickbie has said that Crowley played a crucial role in helping Gardner establish a new pagan religion called Wicca. Wiccan initiation rituals are lifted directly from Crowley’s “Gnostic Mass” written for the Ordo Templi Orientis in 1913.

The sordid details of his life are far too lurid to repeat here, but suffice it to say that the British press dubbed him the “Wickedest Man in the World.”

His philosophy of life was: “Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

Crowley died penniless and a drug addict. Unrepentant and unbowed, he left this world with a final snub at the society that he had rejected. He left instructions that he was to be cremated and instead of the usual religious service, his “Hymn to Pan” and other extracts from his writing were to be proclaimed from the pulpit.

Wilbur M. Smith once said, “Men who are going to be disciples of these lords of naturalism must expect never to come into the experience of joy for which their very hearts were created.” Crowley undoubtedly had times of pleasure in his sinful way, but real joy surely eluded him.

For much more on this influential Satanist, type in Aleister Crowley in Google or some other search engine. It is said that Crowley’s ideas had a part in the throwing off of moral restraints in the 1960’s as many musicians and popular personalities, including the Beatles, picked up on his ideas.

How to account for such aberrant behavior? Unfortunately, there are some who rebel against the Christian religion for any number of reasons. Then there just seems to be a group of people who want to be different and spout some esoteric ideas in order to impress people. Then, there are unstable, disordered and unthinking people who are taken in by these weird ideas.

Raymond F. Smith is a deacon at Fellowship Bible Church in Victoria and President of Strong Families of Victoria.

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/features/faith/story/278075.html

5 Investigates: From Polygamy To Stripping

KPHO CBS News (AZ)
July 10, 2008

PHOENIX -- When Kathleen Mackert was 16 years old, her father took her out for a birthday dinner.
That night, he instructed her "of the physical demonstrations of how a woman's body responds to a man's," Mackert said.

On her 18th birthday, her father forced her to marry her step-brother.

"I thought, 'Thank God, at least I know him, and he doesn't have another wife,'" she said.
Mackert grew up in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, where polygamy is a way of life.
Nevertheless, she, her husband and her four children eventually escaped the church.

Soon after, she and her husband split up. To support her children, Mackert worked as a firefighter, a police dispatcher and in health care -- but it wasn't enough.

So she turned to stripping.

"I was 31," she told 5 Investigates. "I had four children, and there were 21-year-old girls that I was competing with on stage for that dollar."

The profession gave her a sense of power, she told 5 Investigates.

"You were in a sexually charged environment, but you were in control of it," she said. "They couldn't touch you."

She said she never took advantage of the offers of drugs and sex she received; she did not want to risk losing her children.

She eventually left stripping, finding it "damaging."

"I was becoming more and more unhappy," she said.

And after years of counseling, Mackert now works as a bartender.

She likes "making people feel welcome and at home and like they belong," she said. "And I guess for me I always wanted to feel like that."

http://www.kpho.com/news/16842870/detail.html

5 arrested in Rainbow Family clash with feds

Ben Neary
Associated Press

July 5, 2008

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — About 400 members of the Rainbow Family threw rocks and sticks at 10 federal officers as they tried to arrest a member of the group, the U.S. Forest Service said Friday.

Five members of the group were arrested and one officer was slightly injured. A government vehicle was also damaged.

About 7,000 members of the Rainbow Family are camping this year on Forest Service land near Big Sandy. The Rainbow Family is a loose affiliation of eccentrics, young people and hippie types who choose a forest each year in which hold a weeklong national gathering.

Ten Forest Service officers were patrolling the main meadow of the Rainbow Family's camping area Thursday night and apprehended one person described as being uncooperative, Rita Vollmer, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service, said in a statement Friday.

"Officers began to leave the gathering site with the subject and were circled by more Rainbow participants that began to physically interfere," Vollmer said.

About 400 Rainbows surrounded the officers trying to leave, she said.

"The mob began to advance, throwing sticks and rocks at the officers," Vollmer said.

Mary Cernicek, spokeswoman for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said Friday that more officers arrived to help. Officers fired "pepper balls" — similar to paint balls but containing a pepper solution — to control the crowd, she said.

State troopers have also arrested two people this week on felony drug charges for allegedly possessing 96 hits of LSD, said Sgt. Stephen Townsend of the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

The Rainbows and federal officers have clashed repeatedly in years past, and the Forest Service in 1998 established a national response team to deal with the group. Officials have complained that the gathering can ruin forests, with the group saying members clean up and reseed afterward.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hN-c-3eoJ10eVh0oueH7birn-AJAD91N66O00

A hectic, and happy Father’s Day

Dan Ferguson
Surrey North Delta Leader (Canada)
June 15, 2008

Scott Grant will be enjoying a wonderfully ordinary Father’s Day today, one free of court appearances and press coverage.

He will spend it with his two children, having a nice dinner at his sister’s place.

Like they often do, 14-year-old Max and 13-year-old Josephine will probably tease their single father about being both a mom and a dad to them.

“They’ll tell me how old old I look, how badly I dress,” he says.

He will laugh along with them.

And as he often does these days, he will think he is a truly fortunate man.

“If I never had any money, and only had my children, it would be okay,” the financial planner says.

“It’s a gift to raise children.”

Since he won a long and bitter court fight two years ago to get his children back from France, Grant has been living the hectic life of a single parent, juggling family responsibilities with his career.

The hours can be long when there are both clients who need to sort out their fiscal affairs and kids who need to get to school, when you are cooking meals and doing laundry (with the kids’ help) and making early morning runs to ice arenas.

He admits he gets a little sleep-deprived sometimes.

Grant is still digging out from a mountain of legal debts accumulated over the five years he fought to have his ex-wife Nathalie Gettliffe bring his children back from France after she fled the country with them in defiance of a court order.

In 2006 she was arrested during a visit to Vancouver and convicted of kidnapping her own children.

Shortly after her arrest French police returned Max and Josephine to their father.

Things were tense at first, but the kids have settled in.

They’ve completely regained the English language skills that had rusted away during their time in France.

They live in the rooms their father kept waiting for them.

Max has repainted his space orange, because he likes the colour.

Josephine has redecorated her room in more subtle shades of blue.

Max, much to his delight, is finally taller than his sister.

On the ice, the avid hockey player is a ferocious competitor, who once got his linemates sent to the penalty box because of a confrontation over a cheap shot by an opposing player.

All five players on the ice ended up in what Max began referring to as the “party box.”

Josephine is an honours student who appears to have inherited her father’s skill with numbers.

She likes going to school dances, but not in the same outfit twice, which is how her dad has become familiar with some local dress shops.

Josephine hopes to become a surgeon one day, while her brother would like to become a judge.

Money may be tight, and the legal squabbles are far from over, but none of that matters as much to this dad as getting to be with his children and watch them grow.

“It’s the best gift in the world,” Grant says.

“It’s worth everything.”

That’s really all he needs as a present this Father’s Day.

dferguson@surreyleader.com

http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/surreyleader/news/19924924.html

143 FLDS kids are back at YFZ Ranch

Brian West

Deseret News

June 13, 2008

One third of the FLDS children seized by Texas officials have returned to their original homes on the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado.

Of the 440 children who were returned to their parents earlier this month, 143 children are living in 30 households on the 1,700-acre Yearning For Zion Ranch, said Texas Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins.

Most of the children from the Fundamentalist LDS Church — 178 children — are living in 33 households in the San Antonio area. The rest of the children are living in different areas of Texas.

No other details about those locations were released by CPS.

The information was gathered as the parents picked up their children from various foster facilities. Each parent or guardian was required to be photographed and fingerprinted. They also filled out forms listing their addresses and telephone numbers, as well as a list of names of adults and children who would be residing in the same household with the children.

Judge Barbara Walther released the children back to the custody of their parents after the Texas Supreme Court upheld a Court of Appeals decision saying the state had acted improperly by seizing the children from the ranch. All were returned by June 4.

Some parents who are renting homes and chose not to return to the YFZ Ranch, at least for now, told the Deseret News they wanted to avoid additional scrutiny from CPS that might occur if they moved back.

CPS officials say they have no preference about where families live, but attorneys for the agency have repeatedly argued since the raid that the ranch was an unsafe environment for the children and was a single-household community that fostered a dangerous pattern of abuse.

Some attorneys have also advised the parents not to return to the ranch.

Crimmins said CPS is continuing to investigate allegations of abuse and neglect. As part of an agreement, child welfare workers can make unannounced visits to the homes between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. each day. During such visits, medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations can be conducted, according to the agreement.

CPS has also received "partial" DNA results from the maternity and paternity testing that had been ordered from the children and parents. "The results are being reviewed and analyzed to determine if the DNA results can help investigators in the multiple investigations to determine if abuse occurred," CPS officials said in a statement on its Web site.

Many believe that DNA evidence will also be used in ongoing criminal investigations against the sect.

E-mail: bwest@desnews.com

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700234395,00.html

A Child's Death And a Crisis for Faith

Suzanne Sataline
Wall Street Journal
June 12, 2008

The recent death from untreated diabetes of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl has invigorated opposition to obscure laws in many states that let parents rely on prayer, rather than medicine, to heal sick children.

Dale and Leilani Neumann of Weston, Wis., are facing charges of second-degree reckless homicide after their child, Madeline Kara Neumann, died on Easter after slipping into a coma. The death, likely preventable with insulin, has renewed calls for Wisconsin and dozens of other states to strike laws that protect parents who choose prayer alone in lieu of medical treatment.

The case also has frustrated the Church of Christ, Scientist, the main promoter of prayer as therapy, which says a few tragic cases have unfairly tarred a practice that can restore health. The Neumanns, a Christian couple who run a prayer group out of their coffee shop, are not Christian Scientists. The National Center for Health Statistics, a federal agency,
estimated in 2004 that more than 2% of the population uses prayer rituals.  "No one should be presumed to be guilty or innocent ... because they've chosen spiritual care," says Phil Davis, a Christian Science church spokesman.

Lawyers nationwide say they are eager to see if the Neumann case sparks more changes in state laws. It raises a "national discourse as to whether children can be medically neglected legally," says Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York who writes about children's rights. In another recent case, a 15-month-old child in Oregon died in March from a form of pneumonia and a blood infection after her parents opted to try to heal her with prayer. Oregon law provides no defense for parents charged with causing the death of a child through neglect or maltreatment, and the couple has been charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminal
mistreatment.

There's been a small, steady pushback against state provisions protecting spiritual healing. A Massachusetts bill that would have protected parents who used prayer in lieu of medical treatment stalled in committee last year, despite the measure's broad sponsorship by 33 lawmakers.

In Maryland, lawmakers in 2005 repealed part of a law that had protected parents from losing custody if they withheld medical treatment because of religious belief. And in Maine that year, legislators amended several laws regarding religious treatment, and repealed part of its family law that stated that children couldn't automatically be considered abused
solely because they were treated "by spiritual means by an accredited practitioner." Evert Fowle, the district attorney in Augusta, Maine, said the amendments would now allow him to bring charges against guardians should a child be harmed after being treated with prayer alone.

The Wisconsin case against the Neumanns also highlights an obscure area of child-protection law that will force judges to weigh seemingly conflicting laws: If a state permits people to employ prayers for healing, can it then hold a parent criminally liable if those prayers fail?

The recent deaths of children have spotlighted the little-known lobbying work of the Church of Christ, Scientist, a denomination with anywhere from 60,000 to a half-million members, according to various estimates. The group believes that health can be restored through a stronger connection with God -- in effect, willing the body to be healthy. The
church is the largest that supports relying on prayer for healing, though other small sects do, as well. Of course, many religious denominations advocate prayer in conjunction with medical treatment.

The Christian Science church doesn't provide guidance on whether members may seek medical care, says Mr. Davis, the church spokesman. He says the church does not bar members from getting medical care, nor does it advise members when they should do so.

Church founder Mary Baker Eddy believed it was "fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body." Spiritual practitioners, who are trained by the church to heal through prayer, get patients to think differently about their relationship with God, says Mr. Davis, who also is a spiritual practitioner. "It's an affirmation [of truth],"
Mr. Davis says. "It's that understanding that restores harmony."

The church's Christian Science Journal prints monthly testimonies that prayer has wiped away prostate cancer, a breast lump, leukemia and other illnesses. Brian Talcott, a practitioner in Berkeley, Calif., says he has seen cases of glaucoma and cataracts disappear.

But a 2006 study in the American Heart Journal concluded that prayers for patients recovering from bypass surgery had no effect. The study was led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Every state forbids child abuse and requires parents to provide health care. But in the 1970s and 1980s, many states added provisions offering legal protections to parents who used prayer treatment. Many of these statutes were passed after Congress in 1974 began offering money to bolster child-protection agencies. But there were strings. Federal health
and welfare officials, pressed by Christian Scientists, made the funding contingent upon the requesting state legislating legal safeguards for those opting to treat with prayer.

In all, 45 states offer some legal accommodations in child-protection laws for parents who use spiritual healing, according to the Christian Science church. The laws vary widely, with some states protecting parents or guardians from felony abuse or murder prosecutions, while others exempt prayer practice only in misdemeanor cases, according to Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty Inc., a nonprofit group based in Sioux City, Iowa, that opposes such laws.

Wisconsin has three statutes providing religious healing exceptions: one in the child-abuse laws, one in the laws concerning crimes against children, and one that bars the state from forcing medical care on someone who chooses Christian Science prayer. The state's child-abuse laws were amended in 1987 to say: "A person is not guilty of an
offense ... solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing." The wording was requested by the local Christian Science government-relations office, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Council, a state agency.

A 1998 study in the journal Pediatrics, by Rita Swan, president of Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, and Seth Asser, a Rhode Island pediatrician, reported that 172 children died with no medical care because of religious reasons in the two decades after states began exempting faith healing. Of those, 140 children had a greater than 90% chance of survival
if they had been treated medically, the researchers found. "Some of the religious defenses to felonies are a chilling betrayal of children," says Ms. Swan, a former Christian Scientist who lost a child to spinal meningitis in 1977 after initially relying on church practitioners before finally seeking medical help.

Although many states allow medical personnel to seek court orders to provide emergency care if a sick child is denied treatment, parents who rely on religious healing often don't inform doctors and hospitals of their children's condition.

Since 1982, states have filed criminal charges in the deaths of 65 children whose parents practiced faith healing, according to Ms. Swan's count. The prosecutions have had mixed results.

In California, the state Supreme Court in 1988 upheld the conviction of a mother found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and felony child endangerment after she used a Christian Science healer to care for her 4-year-old daughter. The child died of meningitis. The justices found that the religious-healing clause in the state child-neglect statute was not a defense in a felony death case.

But three years later, Minnesota's Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion. The court dismissed second-degree-manslaughter charges against Christian Scientists William and Kathleen McKown. Her son, Ian Lundman, died at age 11 of diabetic ketoacidosis, or severe, untreated diabetes. The justices ruled that the government couldn't allow someone
to "depend upon" Christian Science healing methods "then attempt to prosecute them for
exercising that right."

The court will have to wrestle with a similar legal dilemma in Wisconsin. The judge will have to decide if the Neumanns believed they were acting lawfully in choosing to treat their child with prayer. The district attorney's office declined to comment and the lawyer for the Neumanns didn't return phone calls. The judge has imposed a gag order in the case.

Christian Science church members nationwide have lobbied lawmakers not just to allow spiritual healing, but to exempt members from mandatory health insurance and to allow insurance carriers to reimburse spiritual healers. And believers in spiritual healing have chalked up some recent wins. Iowa last year allowed parents for religious reasons to opt out of mandatory childhood screenings for lead poisoning.

Massachusetts, the only state that requires residents to have health insurance, allows residents to opt out of buying medical insurance for religious reasons.

Church lobbyists are now asking that the state allow insurance plans to reimburse prayer practitioners, who can charge $20 to $50 for a day's worth of prayer, says Wanda Jane Warmack, the church's legislative manager.

A Sect’s Families Reunite, and Start to Come Home

Gretel C. Kovach

New York Times

June 6, 2008

ELDORADO, Tex. — The cows still get milked each day by machine here at the Yearning for Zion ranch, although the raw-milk cheese is stacking up uneaten. The onions in the garden are as big as grapefruits, ready for harvest, with few people to pick them.

But a woman in a pink prairie dress, surrounded by a stack of boxes on a porch, is one of the first signs that life is slowly returning to normal.

Just a handful of families have returned to the ranch, the home of a polygamist sect that was raided in West Texas in April in an investigation of possible sexual abuse. The rest of the members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have heeded their lawyers’ warnings and moved to other cities while criminal and child-abuse investigations continue.

All of the more than 460 children seized in the raid have been returned to their parents.

“It’s getting better,” said Zavenda Young, 43, who returned to the ranch at sunrise Tuesday after driving all night to pick up her children scattered in group homes across the state. “I notice a few more people coming home. It was lonesome when they were gone.”

Ms. Young’s husband, Edson Jessop, 51, said, “It will be a long ways to get back to normal,” as he and his brother, Guy, 48, took two reporters and a photographer on a tour of the ranch on Wednesday in their dusty sport utility vehicle.

But it will happen, they said.

“It’s been really hard to understand why people say this is not a safe place to raise children,” Edson Jessop added. “To me, this is the safest place in the world to raise children. Isn’t home where children should be?”

The Jessops usually work in the furniture shop. But with so few people to work the land, Guy Jessop has started helping out in the garden.

“We’ve got 300 pounds of cabbage out of there already, and a couple hundred more coming,” he said, driving by the green stalks of a garden plot waving in the hot wind. “It’s getting really weedy on that end, we’re so short of help.”

Residents of the ranch are largely self-sufficient, but they have to stop at the nearest Wal-Mart now and then. “We don’t make watches,” Guy Jessop joked.

In the schoolhouse, all the calendars are stuck on April. The chalkboard bears a handwritten date — April 3, 2008 — when state troopers and child welfare workers came through the gates, after a caller to a domestic abuse hot line said she was a 16-year-old girl who was being abused by her 50-year-old husband.

The caller was never found, and the authorities now say that the call might have been a hoax. Two courts, including the Texas Supreme Court, have ruled that the children who were taken from the ranch by the authorities in April had to be returned to their parents because there was insufficient evidence that they were in imminent danger of abuse.

The criminal investigation, led by the state attorney general’s office, is continuing, and government officials are still expressing reservations about the court rulings.

“The governor is troubled that the children, especially those most at risk for abuse, the young girls, are being sent back to the compound in a situation riddled with uncertainty and the potential for harm, while it remains at the center of a very serious criminal investigation,” said Krista Piferrer, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry.

The sect is trying to put the pieces back together. “We’re trying to find that safe little town in Texas where we can be in peace,” said Willie Jessop, a sect spokesman.

Church members have been through this before. Most of their parents tell the tale of the 1953 Short Creek raid, when the authorities rounded up the women and children from their historic homeland on the Utah-Arizona border, only to return them after a public outcry over pictures of screaming children being ripped from their mothers’ arms.

“Our progenitors all the way down have been persecuted for their religion,” Edson Jessop said. “Now we get to have those one-on-one conversations with our fathers about what it was like.”

At the ranch, the purple petunias and white alyssum were still blooming next to the strip of green lawn and the rose bushes outside the schoolhouse. But life has been “totally disrupted,” Edson Jessop said.

Sometimes, residents of the ranch have to throw out the milk from their black and white Holsteins and the brown Swiss cows.

“You have to milk them, whether you do anything with it or not,” Guy Jessop said. “You’ve got to maintain them, so when the people come back, you’ll have something to feed them.”

Edson Jessop’s children — Zachery, 9; Ephraim, 7; Russell, 5; and Anne, 3 — have been reunited with one another and with their parents. Mr. Jessop and Ms. Young are thankful to the strangers who invited them to stay in their homes, “total strangers, very sweet people,” while they went from group home to group home across the state to visit their children.

Back at their apartment near the furniture shop, Mr. Jessop’s daughter scoots around the pavement on her purple plastic tricycle.

“Anne, come over here so we can take a picture,” Mr. Jessop calls, but she says “No!” and makes her father laugh. “She got sassy; they must have taught her that,” he jokes.

Watching her children play, Ms. Young, said, “It’s wonderful, wonderful to have them all here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/us/06polygamy.html

4 incest charges against Warren Jeffs dropped

New York Times

June 5, 2008

KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) -- An Arizona judge dropped four of eight charges against Warren Jeffs, even as authorities in Texas looked into whether the polygamist sect leader had relationships with four girls at the west Texas ranch raided in April.

Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn dismissed the charges at the request of the defense, finding that a state incest law does not apply to the arranged marriages of two teenage girls and their older male relatives.

Conn ruled the law only applies if both participants in the sexual activity are older than 18, and that the law does not apply to half cousins.

In both of the marriages Jeffs is accused of arranging, the girls were under 18 and were their husbands' half cousins. He was charged with incest as an accomplice.

Prosecutors said the law could lead to absurd results, such as an uncle having sex with two nieces, one younger and one older than 18, and being subject to harsher punishments for his conduct with the older one.

But the judge said the statute's language was clear and unambiguous, leaving no room for interpretation.

''We're obviously very pleased with the court's ruling,'' Jeffs' attorney, Mike Piccarreta, told The Associated Press. ''You can see we've chopped these things down considerably.''

In his ruling, Conn wrote that Arizona's incest law initially was enacted without reference to participants' ages. In 1985, it was amended to apply only to people who were 15 years or older, and in 1998, it was changed to its present form, applying only to those 18 or older.

Conn also wrote that because the incest law specifically mentions half brothers and sisters, it arguably excludes all other relationships of the half blood by not mentioning them.

Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith, the prosecutor in the Arizona case against Jeffs, did not return a call or e-mail request for comment Wednesday evening.

If convicted of all charges, Jeffs could face anywhere from probation to eight years in prison. Before the incest charges were dropped Wednesday and two others were dropped in March, Jeffs faced up to 27 years in prison.

Jeffs, who was already prosecuted in Utah, is still charged in Arizona as an accomplice with four counts of sexual conduct with a minor stemming from the marriages of the two girls.

Last week, investigators at the Texas attorney general's office took DNA from Jeffs, saying they were looking for evidence of relationships between him and four girls from the Yearning For Zion Ranch ages 12 to 15.

All 440 children seized from the ranch April 3 were returned to parents by Wednesday, Child Protective Services spokesman PatrickCrimmins said.

Jeffs, 52, was named president, or prophet, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 2002. Members of the church live in the twin border towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.

Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of rape as an accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. He was sentenced to two terms of five years to life in prison.

Jeffs remains jailed in Kingman as he awaits his Arizona trial. No date has been set.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Polygamist-Leader.html

Mankind Project of Houston settles wrongful death lawsuit; some mental health oversight required

Warren Throckmorton
wthrockmorton.com/
June 4, 2008

Some months ago, I reported extensively on the Mankind Project with attention to their signature program, the New Warriors Training Adventure. My interest in MKP and NWTA was provoked by a Houston Press article detailing the suicide of Michael Scinto. Mr. Scinto had attended a NWTA and reported distress thereafter. His parents Kathy and Ralph Scinto believed his death was linked to his experiences on that weekend and filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of his estate in August, 2007.

In April, 2008, the case went to mediation and was settled. Although the parties to the dispute have signed a confidentiality agreement, the terms of the settlement are available for review on the Harris County, Texas District Court e-docs website. You will need to register (name, email address), verify your email and then change your password but the process is free. Once registered, search the name Scinto as Plaintiff and you will find all documents related to the case.

The terms of the settlement are found in a 20 page, May 20 document titled, Defendant's Motion to Enforce Settlement Agreement. The Scintos and their attorney won $75,000 split roughly three ways. Furthermore, MKP of Houston is required to make some changes in procedure. The changes involves screening of applicants, disclosure of activities and means to exit the weekend. Anyone who registers can preview all of the court documents for no cost. I summarize the highlights here:

MKP of Houston agreed to have its pre-New Warrior Training Adventure Adventure questionnaire reviewed by a licensed mental health professional for recommendations about how it can be improved. However, the MKPH board must approve changes before they can be implemented.

Each application for the NWTA must be screened by a mental health professional who has personal knowledge of the weekend. The screener shall determine whether the applicant shall be accepted or not with the decision written on the application.

The following changes will be made within 30 days of a required MKP of Houston Board review of the website:

Change the website to provide adequate information from which potential applicants can make an informed decision about whether to attend the NWTA.

The website shall disclose that a mental health professional will screen applications to determine suitability for participation.

The website will need to disclose that people who wish to leave the NWTA are free to do so.

Applicants will be told that the NWTA may involve optional nudity and certain elements of Native American traditions.

MKPH agrees to develop a written protocol which will allow any participant to leave NWTA safely with MKPH assistance. Participants requesting to leave shall be allowed to do so immediately unless the action would result in further risk of harm. Once a request is made, the participant is not required to do any other activities unless the participant changes his mind.

As far as I can tell, this settlement is only applicable to MKP of Houston with no requirement that MKP elsewhere implement any of these points. Given the lawsuit involved a wrongful death charge as well as claims of performing psychotherapy without a license, I would say these changes are minimal, but important. I think they are valuable and provide recognition that some form of oversight, minimal though it is, is important. While I suspect that MKP of Houston will have no problem getting a mental health professional to perform this screening function, I would recommend any mental health professional performing this duty check first with his/her liability insurance carrier to make sure such a review is covered activity

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2008/06/

A new deal on FLDS offered

Ben Winslow
Deseret News

June 2, 2008

SAN ANGELO, Texas — A new order to return hundreds of children taken in the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch will be put before a judge today.

Lawyers representing FLDS mothers, children and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services met for several hours Sunday at a state office building, hammering out a new order for Judge Barbara Walther's consideration.

"We reached consensus on some things and other things we really didn't. We're just making an effort to try and get this worked out as soon as possible so we can get the kids home," said Brad Haralson, a San Angelo lawyer representing three FLDS mothers.

If Walther signs the proposed order, the children could be reunited with their parents as early as Tuesday. Texas child welfare authorities indicated the order would apply to all of the children in state custody — not just the children whose mothers successfully appealed the judge's decision to Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals.

Attorneys have been trying to figure out what to do after Walther abruptly left the bench on Friday, refusing to sign an order to return the children to their mothers.

The Texas Supreme Court and the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin both ruled that Texas child welfare authorities acted improperly in removing more than 450 children from the YFZ Ranch while they investigated allegations of abuse. The courts ordered Walther to return more than 130 children to their parents — but allowed her to set conditions. It also allowed Child Protective Services the ability to continue its investigation.

Negotiations broke down in court on Friday, leaving parents and attorneys unsure of when they will be reunited with their children.

"The judge has a right to enter an order, whether or not the parties agree," said Andrea Sloan, a lawyer representing a group of young women Texas claimed were underage. "At the end of the day, because of time constraints, I would expect she will just enter the order."

Lawyers declined to detail what the new order would say but said the language that was tweaked was a compromise. There will be no hearing today; the order will be dropped in the judge's box for her to sign.

"I think she's going to sign whatever order she wants to sign," said Kirk Hawkins, a lawyer representing four FLDS mothers. "It's closer to her version."

The sticking point still appears to be a disagreement over whether the judge has the authority to impose broad conditions giving Texas CPS authority over the families, or whether the judge should just free the children.

Julie Balovich, an attorney for the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid Society (representing 38 FLDS mothers), argued in court that the judge should just release the children. She left Sunday's meeting without commenting.

Proposed orders have required parenting classes, access to homes at various times, interviews and medical evaluations, travel restrictions — and how long CPS can be involved in the families' lives.

"It's not an agreed order," Hawkins said. "It's the judge's order. We're just hoping she'll sign an order. You can't get 400 lawyers to agree. We just went over her order and tried to clean up the language some."

Some attorneys complained they weren't in on the discussions at all. Deborah Keenun, a court-appointed attorney representing 11 children in state custody, arrived as the meeting was breaking up. Others found out about the meeting from news reporters.

"There's a lot of general frustration from attorneys who have not been part of the process, when under the law we're supposed to be," Keenun said.

If the order is signed, the children will not be bused en masse to the YFZ Ranch. Instead, parents will go to foster care facilities that have sheltered the children and pick them up. Once they are reunited with their children, some families may not return to the ranch.

"Many of them will be getting independent housing," said Laura Shockley, a lawyer representing a group of young women Texas believed were underage.

She declined to say why they would not return — citing attorney-client privilege — but said some parents are trying to respect the concerns of Texas child welfare authorities and remain with their children.

"They're going to listen to what they think CPS is requiring and try to respond that way," Sloan said.

Texas CPS has claimed the YFZ Ranch is essentially "one household," with a culture of sexual abuse that grooms girls to be child brides, and boys to be sexual perpetrators.

The YFZ Ranch was raided April 3 when Texas child welfare workers and law enforcement responded to the FLDS property on a report of a 16-year-old girl who was pregnant and in an abusive, polygamous marriage with an older man. The girl was never found, an arrest warrant for the alleged husband was dropped and Texas authorities are still investigating whether the original call was a hoax.

Once on the ranch, authorities said they found other signs of abuse, prompting Walther to order the removal of all of the FLDS children.

Texas child welfare authorities had claimed to have as many as 31 pregnant or underage mothers in custody. They were young women the FLDS insisted were adults. On Sunday, Shockley told the Deseret News that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has declared all but "four or five" to be adults.

"We're happy that our 29-year-old client is now an adult," Sloan said.

A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services could not immediately confirm the status of the "disputed minors" on Sunday.

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700231020,00.html

A malady with no treatment?

Tom Blackwell
National Post (Canada)

May 12, 2008

When a judge in Hamilton ordered a young cancer patient to undergo chemotherapy last week, she triggered a bitter confrontation between the child's parents and hospital staff.

By the end of it, the irate father was reportedly in handcuffs, and the Children's Aid Society, which requested the court order, criticized as draconian.

The dispute underlined a rare but emotional scenario confronted by child welfare authorities across the country: parents who clash with doctors over whether their children, often deathly ill, should receive medical treatment.

Some caregivers insist on home or natural remedies over those of medical science, while others turn down vaccinations they consider dangerous or decline blood transfusions on religious grounds.

At any moment throughout the country, there are probably eight to 10 such disputes underway, says Peter Dudding, executive director of the Child Welfare League of Canada.

And they present a unique challenge to everyone involved. Unlike the majority of child-welfare files, in which the parents are accused of blatant neglect or abuse, medical-treatment cases often involve loving, responsible guardians who believe they are acting in their children's best interests.

"It is one of those very difficult situations where a court-ordered intervention is going to be seen as a last resort," Mr. Dudding said. "In virtually every other respect," he said, "this is probably not a child in need of protection."

Earlier this year, a judge in the Toronto area ruled that a newborn must get a hepatitis-B vaccination, though his mother believed--contrary to most research -- that it might make him autistic.

Child-welfare officials obtained similar legal authority last year to allow sextuplets born to parents in Vancouver who are Jehovah's Witnesses to receive blood transfusions.

Last July, Quebec youth-protection officials were asked -- but refused -- to intervene in the case of a three-year-old cancer patient whose parents wanted him on a special diet of raw vegetables instead of chemotherapy.

The most celebrated case came in the late 1990s, when the family of a Saskatchewan 13-year-old, Tyrell Dueck, fought a long court battle for the right to seek alternative treatment in Mexico instead of chemotherapy for the boy's bone cancer.

In the recent Hamilton case, the Children's Aid Society was approached by the oncology department at Mc-Master Children's Hospital when a couple refused to let their 11-year-old son continue his chemotherapy. The side effects had been punishing, and the boy himself asked for the treatment to end.

Doctors, though, said he had a 40-50% chance of going into remission and leading a normal life if he kept receiving chemo, said Dominic Verticchio, the society's executive director. If he discontinued the therapy, he would die within six months, they believed.

The prognosis was confirmed by the head of oncology at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, Mr. Verticchio said. The society even had a psychiatrist determine if the boy was capable of deciding the matter on his own. He was not, the therapist concluded.

Unable to convince the parents, the organization went to court and obtained an order.

"It's a very difficult, emotionally trying situation for everyone involved," Mr. Verticchio said. "[But] there is a very good chance he can overcome this disease."

When the hospital tried to implement the order, though, the father objected, while the boy cried out repeatedly, "I don't want this." The father told local CHCH-TV that hospital security staff put him in handcuffs when he tried to call his lawyer.

Peter Kormos, an NDP MP, was quoted as calling the society's response "heavy-handed."

The father could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Dudding argued that child-welfare authorities have no choice but to intervene in such situations, since legislation requires them generally to act in the best interests of children -- and specifically to ensure they receive needed medical treatment.

Most common are cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses, who will often refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds.

Doctors also contact child welfare when parents insist on using natural health products or home remedies, while refusing medical treatment, said Jeanette Lewis of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies. Emergency departments sometimes call when parents take their children home before they get needed treatment, she said.

Usually, the authorities can negotiate an agreement between parents and doctors, but when they cannot, they resort to the courts, Ms. Lewis said.

"Witholding treatment is a form of neglect," she said.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=508407

A Fiery Theology Under Fire

Michael Powell
New York Times

May 4, 2008


BLACK liberation theology was a radical movement born of a competitive time.

Language, too, has defined the black church from slavery to liberation theology. Pastors, whether prophetic or fundamentalist, drew unambiguous inspiration from the diamond-hard words of the Old Testament, in which little store was placed in talk of man’s innate goodness. God might love, but He was a deity of forbidding judgments and punishments.

By the mid-1960s, the horns of Jericho seemed about to sound for the traditional black church in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. was yielding to Malcolm X. Young black preachers embraced the Nation of Islam and black intellectuals sought warmth in the secular and Marxist-tinged fire of the black power movement.

As a young, black and decidedly liberal theologian, James H. Cone saw his faith imperiled.

“Christianity was seen as the white man’s religion,” he said. “I wanted to say: ‘No! The Christian Gospel is not the white man’s religion. It is a religion of liberation, a religion that says God created all people to be free.’ But I realized that for black people to be free, they must first love their blackness.”

Dr. Cone, a founding father of black liberation theology, allowed himself a chuckle. “You might say we took our Christianity from Martin and our emphasis on blackness from Malcolm,” he said.

Black liberation theology was, in a sense, a brilliant flanking maneuver. For a black audience, its theology spoke to the centrality of the slave and segregation experience, arguing that God had a special place in his heart for the black oppressed. These theologians held that liberation should come on earth rather than in the hereafter, and demanded that black pastors speak as prophetic militants, critiquing the nation’s white-run social structures.

Black liberation theology “gives special privilege to the oppressed,” said Gary Dorrien, a professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. “God is seen as a partisan, liberating force who gives special privilege to the poorest.”

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Senator Barack Obama’s former minister, is one of the foremost adherents of this theology. A man of capacious learning and ego, Mr. Wright stands condemned of late as a incendiary radical for his views that the American government may have created AIDS and that the Sept. 11 terror attacks were payback for the sins of American foreign policy.

But many black theologians (even those who take strong exception to Mr. Wright’s views and argue that black liberation theology is a politicized artifact of an earlier era) defend him and say that the news media and Obama’s foes have caricatured him and misunderstood the intentionally provocative role of a liberationist pastor. “Deep down in all of us is that Malcolm X who cries out in such strong language,” said Dr. Cone, who is a professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary.

Perhaps so, but probably no more than a quarter of black pastors today describe their theology as liberationist, say many theologians who have studied the movement.

Bishop Harry Jackson, a Pentecostal who presides over a 3,000-member church in suburban Washington, D.C., stands at the far pole from Mr. Wright. He defines himself as ultraconservative on matters of theology and politics and allies himself with conservative Republicans. He preaches a Prosperity Gospel, which holds that God wants black Americans to experience material success without guilt.

Most black liberation theologians revile this philosophy. Still Mr. Jackson would not deny the powerful currents of liberation theology; even his congregants put their toes in those waters from time to time.

“Most black church members want to see their ministers involved in defending the race and improving civil rights,” Mr. Jackson said. “The anger and bitterness that bleeds through in Reverend Wright’s comments are something that many blacks can sympathize with, even if they don’t want to hear it in the pulpit.” Black liberation theology may have taken modern flower in the 1960s, but its roots (no less than those of more conservative black theologies) extend deep into America’s historical cellar and its legacy of slavery.

In that context, the revolutionary message of the Bible seems inescapable, most notably in the story of the Exodus. “If you read that God told the pharaoh to release the slaves, you’d have to be pretty dense not to see the connection,” said James A. Noel, a professor at the San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Slave masters kept a wary rein on worship, fearful blacks might find inspiration in the Bible’s insurrectionary content. Black worshipers sought refuge in ravines and woods, building the “invisible church” that became the modern black church in all of its manifestations.

“The black church has always existed along a continuum, from a focus on healing to a focus on liberation,” noted Dwight N. Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. “The liberationists emphasize this earth and the more fundamentalist emphasize the resurrection and the life after.”

Language, too, has defined the black church from slavery to liberation theology. Pastors, whether prophetic or fundamentalist, drew unambiguous inspiration from the diamond-hard words of the Old Testament, in which little store was placed in talk of man’s innate goodness. God might love, but He was a deity of forbidding judgments and punishments.

“The Old Testament God is a God who addresses nations, and judges nations and holds them to account,” Professor Noel said. “The prophets are concerned about social sin and God judges nations for their unrighteousness.”

Nor can black liberation theology be divorced from its historical moment. Throughout the 1950s, black church leaders like Dr. King, often steeped in white liberal Protestantism, led the fight for civil rights. But as the struggle turned violent, as black leaders perished and riots swept American cities and revolutions upended third world nations, black religious leaders sought new answers.

Even as Dr. Cone and others such as the Rev. William A. Jones at Bethany Baptist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, crafted a theology of black liberation, Catholic theologians in Central and South America crafted their own liberation theology, arguing that God placed the impoverished peasants closest to his heart.

There is little evidence that one liberationist talked to another; rather, these were cornstalks rising in a fertile and revolutionary field. “These were remarkable similar arguments, that oppressed people have their own way of hearing the Gospel,” said Dr. Dorrien of the Union Theological Seminary.

Each of these forms of liberation theology engendered a stern counterattack. Prominent Vatican theologians attacked the liberationists for flirting with Marxist doctrine, just as black critics have argued that a black liberation theology tends to be a political rather than theological construct.

Still, Mr. Wright heard the liberation gospel loud and clear.

He has confounded much of white America, not to mention his own congregant, Mr. Obama, these past few weeks. The Chicago pastor with the gleam in his eye and the multiple denunciations of America has stood for many as the very symbol of an outdated black militant.

His image has been fixed in large measure by remarks that replay in a seemingly endless loop on YouTube and on cable television. Those videotaped snippets have focused on his most provocative moments in long sermons, in particular, one in which he said: “The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’. No, no, no. God damn America.”

BUT one can hear strains of such language nearly every Sunday in black liberation churches, not to mention some more centrist congregations. There are few sins greater for a black pastor than to forget the suffering of the less fortunate. Dr. Hopkins, who is a member of Mr. Wright’s church, frames his pastor’s statements within this context. As Moses “damned” his own followers for worshiping the Golden Calf, Dr. Hopkins said, so Mr. Wright, in the language of the prophets, damned his own country.

“The judgment damnation is to turn the country back to love; it’s not to blow it up,” Dr. Hopkins said. “That’s what the Bible is about, people struggling, and growing weary, and prophets forcing them back to the path of righteousness.”

Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright notes, correctly, that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.

“I don’t believe that,” Dr. Cone says. “But I will say that when blacks look at what government has done to black people, the eugenics and the syphilis, it’s easy to get angry.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/weekinreview/04powell.html

9-year-old made first moves, sex-crimes defendant says

Sue Montgomery
Montreal Gazette

May 1, 2008

What I did was out of love, he insists. Child's mother approved of relationship and 'marriage,' accused tells court

Daniel Cormier, on trial for a series of morals charges, claims it was a precocious, sexually awakened 9-year-old girl who made the first moves on him, not the other way around.

"She was the one who initiated holding my hand or giving me a kiss," Cormier, who is 39 years older than the girl, told a police investigator in 2003. The girl's real name cannot be published.

"I never, ever forced anything," Cormier added. "I'm not a pedophile, I'm a Maria-phile," he said. (The girl's name has been changed.)

"I don't love children, I love Maria," he insisted on the videotaped interrogation, shown yesterday in Quebec Court. "I loved her at 9, at 11 and if she was 80 years old, I'd love her.

"The older she gets, the more I love her."

The girl began spending weekends at Cormier's apartment after he helped the girl's mother get off the street and kick her drug habit.

The mother has testified that Cormier was like a father figure and that she trusted him completely with her two daughters, who were 8 and 6 at the time.

Cormier, a self-described minister of a now-defunct downtown church, told Montreal police Det.-Lt. Alain Lépine that he wouldn't go into details about his sexual contact with the girl, because it was "sacred" and he wanted to protect her.

The girl "used every trick in the book to win me over," Cormier said, but everything he did with her was out of love and for her benefit.

"She was very sexually aware at 8 years old," he told police. "I don't know if she was abused before.

"She loved me a lot and had certain needs," he continued. "I'm convinced that what I did with her was for her and was good for her."

Cormier, who is defending himself, is on trial for sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, sexual assault and two counts of sexual exploitation of two girls. Yesterday, he admitted he might use a lawyer to conduct his defence.

Cormier, 57, claims he legally married the girl when she was 10. When he told the girl's mother of his intentions to marry, she agreed.

The mother's consent, he said, could be taken two different ways. Either it was a former prostitute wanting to make money off her daughter, "or she was a woman who saw her daughter in love with an older man and a chance to have what (the mother) never had.

"This mother made the right decision because she chose what was best for her daughter."

Cormier said the other girl he is alleged to have sexually exploited wasn't like the girl he "married."

"She was a manipulator and a liar," he said.

"She said you put your hand on her vulva," Lépine told Cormier on the video.

"It's true that I put my hand on her stomach and said one day there'll be a baby in there," Cormier replied. "The body of a woman is damned sacred."

The trial continues today with the testimony of Cormier's so-called "wife."

smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=cc09335f-768f-46f0-af7f-4691664946d0

Teen Abuse Hearing: Jon Martin-Crawford

House Committee on Education and Labor

April 24, 2008

Jon Martin-Crawford, Former Program Participant at the Family Foundation School in Hancock, NY, testifies at a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor hearing concerning child abuse and deceptive marketing by residential programs for teens on April 24, 2008.

https://youtu.be/dr47O5OjC_A

A day in court: Highlights of the FLDS custody hearing

Trish Choate
San Angelo Standard-Times

April 19, 2008

Modestly dressed men and women from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints listened quietly as intimate details of their lives marched forth matter-of-factly in Day 2 of testimony in a hearing to set temporary custody for 416 of their children.

W. John Walsh, an FLDS expert, said he hoped he wasn't embarrassing sect members, before launching into an explanation of their family values, and attitudes toward sex and underage marriage as he sees them.

"Most FLDS men have never seen their wives naked, no matter how long they've been married," said Walsh.

He was testifying on behalf of parents during the custody hearing.

All eyes in the dimly lit San Angelo Auditorium focused on Walsh, whose slightly blurry on-screen presence filled the cavernous room.

This was a new wrinkle in proceedings to determine whether 416 YFZ Ranch children will go back to their parents. Child Protective Services took them into custody this month after suspicions arose of sexual abuse.

Lawyers, media and law-enforcement officers froze, distracted from fatigue, frustration, confusion, anger, boredom or all of the above.

An unspoken agreement formed not to eyeball FLDS members sitting toward the back of the auditorium. They have been constant subjects of sideways glances, stolen looks and outright stares during the two days of the hearing, the women's old-fashioned dresses especially a novelty.

Here are excerpts from a rolling log of events from Day 2 kept on gosanangelo.com by Standard-Times reporters:

§ "What's important to the court at this point is what do I need to know to know whether or not the children can be returned," Walther says. "That's what I'm focusing on. You all focus on whatever you want."

§ "If the situation could be proposed that the men would leave the community and not have contact," and the same supervision provided as at the San Angelo Coliseum, would (Child Protective Services supervisor Angie) Voss be willing to allow the children to return?

No, Voss answers: "The ranch is 1,700 acres. It's huge. There is no way to secure that I'm aware of."

§ A parents' attorney complains that her mothers haven't been served proper legal documents.

The judge notes the problem of identifying the parents, and that names are "being switched back and forth" in the case.

§ "Up to this point in the investigation, there are over 20 girls in the investigation who have conceived or given birth at the age of 16 or 17," Voss says. "What I'm telling you is that there is a culture of young girls being pregnant by old men."

§ Under questioning from the parents' attorney who's pursuing his objection, the psychiatrist says he has gotten much of his information from the media. Guffaws break out.

§ "What can a parent say to a judge that could be helpful in getting that child returned?" the parents' attorney says.

The witness replies, "What would make me feel comfortable is if a parent came forward and said, 'I don't think a girl should get married as a young teen. We need to know more about the outside world and be more transparent about their beliefs.'" It also would be a good sign if the parent asked for some advice about creating a healthy environment for their children, the psychiatrist adds.

"Believe me, so much of what they do out there is wonderful," he says.

§ "We started this process with over 400 attorneys. Unfortunately, we have a number of attorneys who have had to leave town and have appointed co-counsel," the attorney says. She inquires about perhaps taking lunch so they can get organized.

No, lunch "would only embolden you all," the judge says.

All laugh.

§ The FLDS has been subject to persecution, an FLDS expert says: Law enforcement officers have come in and asked the children, "Who is your mommy, and who is your daddy?" When the children answered, then mommy and daddy went to jail for bigamy.

"Most FLDS men have never even seen their wives naked, no matter how long they've been married," the expert offers under questioning from yet another child's attorney.

They wear religious garments at all times, long-john type garments, he says. They don't take them off during sex.

The FLDS members also have conservative family values, the expert says.

http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2008/apr/19/a-day-in-court-highlights-of-the-flds-custody/

A hearty welcome, a contrite tone

Michael Paulson
Boston Globe
April 16, 2008

Benedict decries abuse by priests as cause of a 'great suffering'

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. - Pope Benedict XVI, his white robes billowing in a cool breeze, arrived yesterday for his historic first visit to the United States, setting a contrite tone before he even touched down by telling reporters aboard his plane that the Catholic Church is "deeply ashamed" by the abuse crisis that has roiled American Catholicism.

The pope's remarks, in which he also said that "for me personally" abuse by priests "is a great suffering," were by far the most direct and emotional offered by a pope in the six years since the abuse crisis erupted in Boston. Benedict himself chose to address the issue en route to the United States, putting to rest questions about whether and how he might deal with the controversy.

He arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at 3:50 p.m., his chartered Alitalia Boeing 777, dubbed Shepherd One for the duration of his trip, descending from a cloudless sky to a round of cheers from a crowd of about 1,000 well-wishers who spent several hours waiting for a chance to get a glimpse of the spiritual leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics.

The pope, his head-to-toe white vestments punctuated only by his red loafers, was welcomed by President Bush, his wife, Laura, and their daughter Jenna. The pope's arrival marked the first time Bush traveled to the airport to welcome a visiting leader, and the warm welcome will continue today, as the largest White House crowd of the Bush presidency - more than 9,000 people are expected - is to gather on the South Lawn to welcome the pope to a meeting with the president.

At the air base yesterday, the pope smiled and wiggled his fingers as he waved toward the crowd, but he did not approach the stands packed with children and adults waving the yellow and white flags of the Holy See alongside the stars and stripes of the United States. The pope also did not kiss the ground, a practice of his predecessor, John Paul II, that Benedict has discontinued.

"I've lived to be 68, and I'm finally getting to see a pope," said Joyce Kearney, an Arlington native who now lives in Laurel, Md. "This is such a blessing to be here."

Air Force Tech Sergeant Jennifer Taylor, 29, of New Bedford, called the arrival ceremony "a once in a lifetime opportunity, to see the pope and the president," while Vincent Harrington, a 16-year-old high school junior from Maryland, was delighted with the photos he had snapped on his cellphone, saying, "It was amazing, and I got so many good pictures."

As the pontiff walked along a red carpet rolled up to the forward door of the plane, he greeted a variety of prelates before walking with Bush into a terminal where he waited for the 24-vehicle motorcade that whisked the pope and his entourage into Washington. The pope, who will celebrate his 81st birthday today, was to spend the night at the Embassy Row residence of the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who is the Vatican's ambassador to the United States.

The pope is to remain in the country through Sunday. He will say two Masses for large crowds, at the new Nationals Park in Washington tomorrow and at Yankee Stadium in New York on Sunday. He will also make an important speech to the United Nations on Friday.

At the White House today, the pope and the president are expected to talk, at least in part, about extremism, "especially in the Muslim world," terrorism, and religious freedom, as well as about problems in Africa and in Lebanon, White House spokeswoman DanaPerino said at a press briefing yesterday. Perino acknowledged that the president and the pope disagree about the Iraq war and capital punishment - both of which Bush supports and Benedict opposes - but said "there is much more agreement between these two leaders than there is disagreement."

The question of how Benedict would handle the abuse crisis has lingered over the trip, the first papal visit to the United States since the crisis exploded in 2002. That summer, John Paul II conspicuously skipped over the United States during a trip that took him to Canada and Mexico; in planning this year's trip, Benedict rebuffed repeated invitations to come to Boston, apparently in part because of a concern that the city's close association with the abuse crisis would dominate coverage of his visit.

But Benedict's aides had made it clear that he would address the crisis, possibly more than once, during his visit, which includes stops only in Washington and New York. The apostolic nuncio also has said it is possible that he will meet with abuse victims, although no such meetings are on his official schedule.

Benedict did choose to address the issue head-on yesterday, as the plane winged its way from Rome's Fiumicio airport across the Atlantic. Benedict agreed to answer four questions on board that had been pre-submitted by members of the Vatican press corps traveling with him. Abuse was the first issue the pope addressed, and the only one in English; he also fielded questions in Italian about immigration, about the comparative roles of religion in the United States and Europe, and about the themes for his visit. Reporters aboard the plane filed stories based on his remarks from midair, so the abuse comments arrived hours before the pope did.

"It is a great suffering for the church in the United States, for the church in general, and for me personally that this could happen," Benedict said. "If I read the histories of these victims, it's difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing and to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed, and we will do all that is possible that this cannot happen in the future."

His remarks did not satisfy victims and their advocates, who said they wanted him to take more steps in response to the crisis. DavidClohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he would rather see Benedict take two steps: "discipline complicit bishops" and impose sex abuse prevention measures globally, rather than just in the United States.
"On the one hand, it's always beneficial when clergy sex abuse is discussed and not ignored, but on the other hand, no one should confuse talk with action," Clohessy said. "Sincere intentions, genuine remorse are good but inadequate. And for decades Benedict has been an extraordinarily powerful Vatican official with tremendous power to do good and protect kids, and that power remains largely unused."
Benedict is highly familiar with the abuse crisis, because in his previous post as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was responsible for reviewing the cases of abusive priests who the Vatican was considering defrocking. His record on handling abuse cases is mixed and controversial - at one point he dramatically underestimated the scope of the abuse - but he attracted notice by appearing to describe abusive priests as "filth" at a Good Friday liturgy in 2005, and as pope he barred from ministry the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was an alleged abuser who was not disciplined by John Paul II.

Benedict said yesterday that the abuse crisis should be dealt with on three levels: by barring abusive priests from ministry, by offering help to victims, and by better screening candidates for the priesthood. Although Benedict has been viewed as a critic of gay men as candidates for the priesthood, yesterday he made it clear that he was not equating homosexuality with abusiveness.

"I would not speak in this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, [which] is another thing," he said. "We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry, this is absolutely incompatible. And who is really guilty of being a pedophile cannot be a priest."

Benedict described the abuse scandal as a "wound," and spoke of the importance of "reconciliation," saying, "we hope that we can do, and we have done, and we will do in the future, all that is possible to heal this wound."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/04/16/a_hearty_welcome_a_contrite_tone/?page=1