Texas and The Compounds

So Texas is having to give the kids removed from the polygamist compound back to their parents as there was not enough proof that they were really in immediate danger to remove them. The Texas Supreme Court has ruled so the kids are definitely going home. I was surprised but glad when they were all removed and I am happy for the good families that are getting their kids back now, as many of them surely are good families, but still very worried for the kids.

See...I believe in religious freedom as long as no one is getting hurt and I don't actually have a problem with polygamy as long as it occurs between consenting adults who have little consanguinity (I personally could not hold with a religion that allowed polygamy but not polyandry, but I don't need everyone else to feel that way)...but we know this religious sect has a history of incest and child sexual abuse from way back because enough girls have escaped to tell the tale before they even got to Texas. Does that mean that all of the families allow such atrocities, even in a culture that may be more supportive of such behavior than mainstream culture? Of course not. I feel for those good families whose children have been ripped from them when they were in no real danger of harm...of course I do. I maybe even can identify with them a bit since I belong to a fairly non-mainstream religion myself and have raised my children with non-mainstream values (if on the other side of the spectrum from this group). Also, I am a social worker and former CPS worker, and I knew from the beginning that it was highly irregular for the State to treat that whole compound as one family and remove hundreds of children. I know why they did it, though, and why I am worried that the children are going home.

Waco.

When I was in college, CPS investigated a weird religious compound in Waco after receiving allegations of child sexual abuse similar to the ones received about this compound. CPS followed the rules they were supposed to follow and looked at the individual families and found no proof that abuse had occurred and left the kids there. Then the kids all burned. To death. All of them. A short time later, I went to graduate school with some of the social workers who had participated in the investigation. Texas social workers aren't going to be able to forget Waco - not ever.

So while removing all those kids may not be legal for some very good reasons, there are also some very good reasons why Texas did it anyways. And there is a generation of social workers in Texas who watch this story with a panicky feeling that we hope those mothers understand. We just care about their children, too.