No need to wait for Mother’s Day to be horrified by Texas taking 437 children — more than 70 younger than 2 years old — from their mothers.
First thought: It’s what we did to Native Americans a century ago — taking children from families and sending them to boarding schools to erase their tribal ways, or adopting them out to white families.
But the Texas Child Protection Services had a compelling reason for its April 3 action: RESCUE. It appeared these children were not safe in their community.
The youngsters lived at Yearning for Zion Ranch, a West Texas polygamous community of the Fundalmentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. FLDS followers broke off in 1890 when the mainstream Mormon Church rejected polygamy, or having multiple wives. Polygamy is illegal in this country.
Some 118 years later, there are conditions we consider abhorrent at the ranch: polygamous marriages, forced marriages, teenage pregnancies. America believes in religious freedom, but protecting children is equally important.
In other FLDS communities, the boys are often expelled, as young as 13, considered “dead” by their families, perhaps so they would not be competition for the girls against the older men. Officials who aid them estimate as many as 2,000 FLDS Lost Boys. Zion Ranch boys were not treated so harshly, reportedly because they were favored by leader Warren Jeffs, now in prison for decreeing marriage of a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old cousin.
If ever there were a need for the wisdom of Solomon, here it is — and wisdom is in short supply. You hate seeing children taken away from families, yet it’s intolerable to leave them where they may be vulnerable to abuse.
It’s more complicated because of the intricate intermarriages of a small group of people over generations. The children call all their father’s wives “mother” and all the men “uncle,” and there are many people — adult and children — with the same names.
There’s little information of how the children are being cared for at the state shelters.
What do you do when you suddenly have 400-plus youngsters, toddlers to teens, to care for? Hopefully because they’ve all been together at a coliseum there’s less fear about being with strangers. They began to be placed in temporary foster homes Tuesday evening, which some observers consider precipitously fast. When family ties are unraveled by DNA, officials say parents will probably be allowed to visit their children in foster care “in some fashion.”
DNA testing is being done on the children, then the parents, to try to sort out who is in which family. By Tuesday night, only a few men had volunteered genetic samples; some see it as a first step to get their kids back, others know DNA could be used to determine who impregnated underage mothers.
That evening, buses took 100 children to new locations; boys 8 and older were sent to the same place where the teenage boys were sent last week. Supposedly siblings will be kept together, and underage mothers will be kept with their babies. Parents have no idea where their children are, and the kids don’t know where their parents are.
There is no easy solution for this sad and perilous situation. Though it occurred in Texas, it is a national concern that those children are protected, compassionately cared for, and not become political or bureaucratic pawns.
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They were a triple-threat team, working diligently and devotedly as staff for the Denver Landmark Commission, and April 30 all three are leaving. It is a tremendous loss for the city; their departure leaves much worry about the future of protecting our historic structures.
Everett Shigeta, preservation architect, has helped shape preservation for 12-1/2 years. Chris Murata, preservation architect, eight years, handled most of the mind-numbing design review. Alice Gilbertson, senior city planner for a year, has extensive community experience.
“The program has been very successful, we have a national reputation for being successful, but it’s been really difficult. There’s battles every day, people don’t realize how much work goes with design review,” Shigeta said. “Denver has 10,000 addresses protected, and you can see the impact on our neighborhood. The problem with success, we couldn’t keep up with such a small staff. It’s important to do the work correctly.”
Hard working, capable and community-oriented, the three are exemplary public servants. The city’s distinctive character and architectural diversity owes much to them.
Joanne Ditmer’s column on environmental and urban issues for The Post began in 1962 and now appears once a month.
