Column: Child Abuse Apparently Okay under the Law, As Long As It Takes Place Slowly over Many Years, by Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun, May 23, 2008

Column: Child Abuse Apparently Okay under the Law, As Long As It Takes Place Slowly over Many Years

By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
May 23, 2008

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=bfbc44ad-5a6d-4a15-91e3-cdd5f3603001

Polygamy is illegal. Sex with children is illegal. Abuse of children is illegal.

Still, the Texas appeal court ruling this week suggests that the state is powerless to protect the more than 400 children who were seized in April from the closed compound of a polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon sect.

Columnist Daphne Bramham

The problem is that the child protection laws weren't written to hold a community such as this to account. The laws require the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services prove "immediate" danger to the physical health and welfare of the children that requires "urgent" removal.

But in a group such as this, the danger is pervasive, inherent and imminent but not urgent or immediate. The future of any baby born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not bright.

Boys face the very real prospect that soon after puberty they will be encouraged or forced out of the community. Polygamy requires such culling because for every man with three wives -- the number of wives the FLDS believe a man requires to reach the highest realm of heaven -- two men get none.

The other option is that the boys will grow up to be criminals, practising polygamy in the name of God and possibly becoming sexual predators by accepting without question any child brides they are assigned.

Girls are taught from birth that they are to be the servants of men -- their fathers, their husbands and their prophets. They are taught to keep sweet and give themselves "mind, body and soul" to which ever man is their priesthood head. They learn early on that the more children they have, the greater their heavenly glory.

For both boys and girls, there is no chance to dream of anything beyond what the prophet tells them. And that is inherently abusive.

The United Nations has decried the practise of polygamy as antithetical to equality rights, human rights and the rights of the child.

But Texas law doesn't countenance this kind of abuse.

The law in British Columbia, where an estimated 1,200 fundamentalist Mormons live clustered in a community they call Bountiful in the southeastern corner of the province, has never been tested. But it could well be equally blind to this slow, degrading and destructive abuse.

And that's the frustration of child protection workers and anyone who cares about children. We abhor what is happening to these children, but seem powerless to do anything to stop the perpetrators of this systemic abuse.

There must be a way and it's up to politicians and legislators to find it.

dbramham@png.canwest.com