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	In the Name of Religious Freedom Children Are Raped By Annie Dawid Denver Post April 21, 2008 http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_8961237 Here in our own United States of America, in the home state of current president and world's only superpower, George W. Bush, young girls - some as young as 14 - are forced to marry men years or even decades older and to bear the children who result from those couplings - what would be called statutory rape in any of our 50 states. And yet, for reasons unclear to the American public, this kind of rape and childbearing forced on minor females is allowed to go on in the name of religious freedom. "We are aware that this group is capable of" sexually abusing girls, Texas Sheriff David Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry." The civil rights mentioned by Sheriff Doran belong to the adult males who are raping girls. The girls" civil rights - though they are minors under U.S. law - are evidently less important than those belonging to the men in question. If the same scenario were occurring in, for example, Afghanistan, President Bush would be voicing his outrage, as he appropriately did when Taliban treatment of women and girls came to light in 2001; he demanded and got American intervention. Many of the girls we have seen, heads bowed, in footage from Texas, are blond and blue-eyed; they were born here, to blond and blue-eyed Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, who own lots of real estate in Texas, Colorado, and Utah, among other places in North American, including Canada and Mexico. Why do we not defend these girls" civil rights? Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger who sometimes went with Doran to the compound, said a welfare check wouldn't have produced much. "They would allow us on the property to the extent that we could talk to the main three or four people" only, he said. This reader wonders who these "main three or four people" were, and suspects they were not 14-year-old pregnant girls. In this week's Denver Post, we learned that Colorado sheriffs in Delta and Montezuma counties conducted "flyover" surveillance of FLDS properties and "We didn't see anybody at all," said Sheriff Gerald Wallace. "We just wanted to make sure there was no obvious sign of illegal activity. is not visible from the ground." How would statutory rape be visible from the sky? This week the Pope visits the United States but can't find room in his schedule to address the victims of pedophile priests in Boston. A visitor from another country might get the impression that religious men in the United States can rape young girls and boys and get away with it, but those who do not wear the mantle of god cannot get perpetrate the same crime with impunity. "I think it's a form of pedophilia hiding behind a religion as a protection," said Carolyn Jessop, a woman who escaped the FLDS group with her eight children. "There's just a desire to control and manipulate and torture people, and religion is just used as the cover." Many in the Judeo-Christian world see polygamy as wrong, and look to Islam to demonstrate the dangers of multiple marriage. Osama Bin Laden, a Muslim, has as many as 24 children from 6 marriages, they say, as if we in this country were immune to such excess. But we need not point that finger overseas, for in FLDS groups such as those residing in Eldorado, Texas, Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, this sort of massive civil rights abuse of children's civil rights goes on every day. No one wants to see the horror of Waco, Texas reenacted, or the bombing of the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia, both of which caused the horrific deaths of dozens of children and adults. However, there has to be some measure short of dropping bombs or waiting four years for a phone call from a brave terrorized abused girl for the state to take action. According to numerous news sources, the sheriff had an informant for four years who was feeding him information about life inside the sect. But authorities say their hands were tied until last week, when they finally obtained the legal grounds to move against the group.
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