The Mormon Mafia

One characteristic of any community is the behavior of acting without thought. This inability to think before action results in behaviors like justifying wrong acts and blaming targeted groups rather than self‑introspection. This can be observed in professional communities as well as communities of us mere mortals.

When challenged, wrong behavior will be defended and the wrong doing will be transfered to others. The ready acceptance of many Europeans and Americans of claims that Jews were inferior or part of the international communist conspiracy was not a fluke of the times. The singling out and targeting of various groups to be responsible for the ills of society has continued. The Nuremberg trials have not cured that human failing.

In this countries’ past and present, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Moslems have been discriminated against by law enforcement and in courts. Americans who were Chinese, Mexican, or Portuguese have had their rights and liberty trampled upon by even the highest court of the land. The Texas Rangers have a solid history of lynching and summary executions.

The shades of brown that come with skin color have been a convenient excuse for authorities and citizens to burn homes, lynch, plant evidence, and falsely convict.

The Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) ranch near San Angelo Texas is a case in point. This was a case of extreme overreaction and resulted in a fiasco. Although the Texas Rangers fabricated evidentiary conclusions and the CPS found a rubber stamping judge, the agency overreached by such a large amount that it could not legally justify its actions.

After the debacle garnered bad publicity, the attorneys general of Texas and neighboring states found a need to protect their own communities from the onslaught of bad publicity.

Criticism was twofold and contradictory. The first was the problem that developed from the great State of Texas launched a massive kidnapping scheme that backfired. The raid on the ranch was based upon a hoax telephone call. The authorities did not attempt to do any very basic corroboration of the allegations made in the call. They also went judge shopping and found a complaint rubber‑stamping Judge Barbara Walther who had no problem with the overreaching and abuses of civil rights.

The second was based upon the concept of the inferiority of adult American females. This was that the FLDS women had been brainwashed. This group claimed that the males only were sexually abusing children and the only possible reason that the women would be part of a polygamous environment was that their freewill had been somehow stolen by the males. This bunch wanted even more action by Texas no matter what the legality of the action.

When the courts stopped the unlawful and unethical actions of forced dispersion of the FLDS children, the criticism of the Texas Child Protective Services mounted. The fact that court documents contained fabricated statements was bound to be noticed, and fabrication is often the lifeblood of prosecutors.

A proponent of the second criticism is Senator Harry Reid (D, NV). Reid claimed that authorities weren’t doing enough to protect women and children. People like Senator Reid assume that women are childlike. He and others of his ilk believe that women are easily brainwashed by the svengali gaze that all men have (except Reid, of course). There is no doubt that Reid was attempting to suppress a faction of his own Latter Day Saints religion just like other religions and faiths.

These people will praise adult females who jump through the proper hoops. For those females who do not, the claim of coercion or the impotence of the adult female (due to the male influence) is yammered around. If a woman likes sex, then she must be improperly influenced. If an adult female prefers a polygamous relationship, it must the fault of the man. I’m not clear how the good Senator would characterize a polyandrous setup.

The behavior of the Texas Social Services and law enforcement agencies was opprobrious. The management of the Great State of Texas deserves condemnation and ridicule. The insistence that women in their twenties were really young teenagers would be enough for that. The claim that young teens were mothers when they had never been pregnant would be enough for that. When the State kidnapped hundreds of children because of a bogus, uninvestigated telephone call the State became the criminal.

Now the aftermath is still happening. The State people are lobbying and using all their PR training to justify their own criminal behaviors. This is a too common behavior when law enforcement and associated agencies spend much time justifying action that would be criminal for us mere mortals.

An early CYA activity was to assign protection to Judge Barbara Walther. Authorities claimed that she was in danger from the FLDS without releasing anything substantial to back that claim.

Next, the attorneys general of Texas, Arizona, and Utah released a list of names with the claims that the named were a danger to society because of a godfather like organization. The names were of male FLDS members. No criminal histories were attached to the announcement.

If there were real crimes committed, competent investigators would be able to determine facts without resorting to wild accusations. If the Texas Child Protective Services and Texas Rangers had proceeded with a proper investigation, the mess would not have occurred. But, these organizations charged in and made false claims about pregnant teenagers and more. Ranger Leslie Brooks claimed a hair found in the FLDS Temple was proof positive of ritual involving teenage girl defloration which is more of a grade C movie kind of thing. And using one hair as an excuse for incompetence is scary because authorities would much rather put innocents in prison and destroy families than take responsibility for their own misbehavior.

Eventually, Texas authorities obtained a Grand Jury indictment against a few of the males associated with the FLDS, In the typical bigotry of prosecutors, females were considered exempt because in American jurisprudence, adult females are not capable of being responsible.

Already, some of the crime series such as Numbers* have jumped on the silliness bandwagon by using a crazed polygamist as a plot. Soon, a show of this kind will introduce the phrase the Mormon Mafia for one of their sensationalist and mindless presentations. The writers of these kinds of entertainments are incapable of presenting a different approach. In justification of the inanity, time constraints means only drivel is presented. Such is the state of television in America.

The State of Texas has continued obtaining indictments from the compliant Grand Jury. Various Agencies have given interviews to color their participation as benign despite the presence of snipers and an armored vehicle. The total incompetence involved with claiming adults as children, and falsely claiming pregnancies in underage females has been minimized away.

So, law enforcement and child protection people continue to use taxpayer time and money to paint themselves white and the FLDS black. Of course, this kind of behavior is not limited to the charnel State.

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