ACLU oversteps in Texas polygamy case

By Andrew Haesloop

Come one, come all, to the greatest show this side of Broadway! It's right here in Eldorado, Texas!

Yes, events in Eldorado are developing into the biggest media circus since the Michael Jackson trial. Every cable news station is camped out on a lonely Texas road, and speculation over the raid of the Yearning for Zion polygamous compound is rampant. Even the American Civil Liberties Union has chosen to display its increasing lack of coherence by throwing its legal hat in the ring, causing one to question the legitimacy of the organization's latest actions.

Last month, authorities near Eldorado received a phone call from a young lady claiming to be 16-year-old "Sarah Jessop," a child bride who was allegedly abused physically, emotionally and sexually by a much older male in the YFZ compound. This ranch is a compound owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, which broke away from Mormonism after the mainstream church renounced the sanctity of polygamous marriages.

Upon receiving Jessop's detailed information, the Texas and Schleicher County Authorities entered the YFZ ranch on April 3, removed every child they could find (over four hundred in total), and searched the entire compound for evidence and documentation of abuse. They found numerous young women, presumably underage, who were either pregnant or already had children.

As it turns out, "Sarah" has yet to be found, and the cell phone from which she called the authorities is allegedly registered to a young woman in Colorado with a history of making false reports. Yet despite the ongoing mystery surrounding "Sarah," experts on the FLDS, including exiled former members and escapees, have come out of the woodwork to tell their tales of intimidation, abuse and brainwashing -- yes, brainwashing! Is your cult radar going off yet?

The most prominent of these former members testifying against the group is Carolyn Jessop (given the nature of polygamous marriages, FLDS membership is dominated by just a few last names), who escaped the sect in 2003 and successfully sued for full custody of her children. This brave woman relayed the horror of her life in the YFZ compound. She described how her husband, Meryl Jessop, "did a form of water torture on babies, a method he would call 'breaking' them, where he would take the baby and spank them until they were screaming out of control, and then he would hold the baby face-up under a tap of running water." Jessop would then take the baby out, spank them, and repeat the process, "until the baby was just so exhausted it just couldn't fight anymore."

She goes on to say that the purpose of this process was to develop fear among the children at an early enough stage in their lives that they would not consciously remember the specific experience.

This brings us to the ACLU, which is currently engaged in another court battle to stop libraries from blocking pornography on public computers. In an attempt to gain press coverage for itself at all costs, the ACLU has offered to defend the FLDS in the hopes of reuniting the children with their parents. Their case banks on the fact that the whistle blower, "Sarah," may be nothing more than a hoax and that the authorities had insufficient evidence to raid the compound, let alone to separate hundreds of children from their parents. If the courts believe the lawyers of the ACLU and FLDS, it will set the FBI back by years, if not decades, in their mission to nail the corrupt, abusive, remorseless leaders of this group.

The defense case, however, is undermined by the suspicious behavior of sect members since the raid. Some parents have refused to identify their own children, despite their pleas to be reunited, and the sect's de facto leader has holed himself up in a sect-friendly town on the Utah-Arizona border. Furthermore, sect members have refused to comment publicly on the abuse allegations.

The wholesale tragedy which underlies these events is sometimes difficult to contemplate: children raised to shed the human instinct for individuality, mothers forced to obey the most perverse whims of their husbands and an entire society bred to submit to the will of a so-called "prophet."

Now the circus has packed up and moved into the courtroom, where it will be concluded in one of two ways. This story will either be remembered as a cautionary tale for eager law-enforcement officers, or as a triumph for the rights of women and children in this country. Let us hope that the law is able to protect these children from this heinous culture of manipulation and abuse.

Andrew Haesloop is a senior political science major.