Here is an excellent Op-Ed piece by Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe. Here's the link, the opening to the article, and the very well done conclusion.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/16/a_village_of_child_sexual_abuse/


A 'village' of child sexual abuse
By Ellen Goodman
May 16, 2008

DURING the Vietnam War there was a phrase that came to symbolize the entire misbegotten adventure: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." It was said at first with sincerity, then repeated with irony, and finally with despair.

I have heard similar thoughts in the weeks since Texas authorities invaded a ranch in Eldorado and rounded up hundreds of children from the polygamous sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Did they traumatize the children in order to protect them? Did they shatter their lives to rescue them?

Here's the end of the article:

Nobody can prosecute the FLDS for what they believe, says Marci Hamilton, author of "God vs. the Gavel." "They can stay together and believe what they want into eternity. What they can't do is illegal action." She compares their community to a crack house. "If you go into a drug den in a burnt-out rowhouse and all the adults are drug addicts, how can you leave the children there?" Hamilton calls this sect a "conspiracy of adults to commit systematic child sex abuse."

I understand the ambivalence toward this dramatic story. The uprooting of distraught children from pained parents strikes a primal core. And we are aware that many state foster care systems are flawed enough to amount to a second kind of abuse. But surely the call to understand this sect as just another unique corner of multicultural America is relativism run amok.

Individual hearings will begin next week. I hope that the children and mothers will tell the truth rather than follow the admonition to "keep sweet." I hope mothers will choose their children over obedience to their patriarchs.

But in the end, what we have on that ranch in Eldorado is not a lifestyle. It's a pedophile ring. If we cannot rescue children from that, we've already destroyed their village.

Well done, Ellen.