'Allegedly,' my foot

Headline in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Arrest warrant issued for woman whose bogus tip allegedly triggered FLDS raid

"Allegedly" is a legalism originally imposed on newspapers by lawyers concerned about libel prosecutions, and since abused to the point of absurdity by media liberals afraid to call a crook a crook, implying doubt about guilt even in situations where guilt is utterly clear.

I have sometimes seen cases where, in discussing the case of a convicted murderer facing a sentencing hearing, reporters feel the need to qualify their description of the killer's crimes with "allegedly" or "according to prosecutors"! This kind of nonsense makes me want to scream:

"For the love of H.L. Mencken and all that's holy, man, this perp's been read his rights, given his day in court, tried and convicted by a jury of his peers! If they hanged him tomorrow, he'd have no cause to complain. He hacked his mother to death and was covered in her blood when the cops caught him with the bloody knife in his hand. He told the cops -- and I quote -- 'The old nag had it comin' to her.' What in God's green earth is this 'allegedly' doing in your story? Are you afraid this scum's going to get his court-appointed lawyer to sue you for defamation? Don't you think that weak-chinned weasel from the public-defenders office might be too busy trying to keep his guilty-as-sin client from riding the needle to be worried about what you write in a newspaper?"

The ridiculous overuse of "allegedly" so annoyed Wes Pruden that, during his tenure as editor of The Washington Times, he banned any variation of the word -- allege, alleged, allegedly, allegation -- from the newspaper. "Police said," or some variation thereof, was the preferred way of dealing with criminal complaints, and persons charged with crimes were "accused robbers" or "robbery suspects," etc.

This latest development in the case of Rosita Swinton -- discussed by Don Surber at some length -- highlights how prosecutors and the press sometimes cooperate in obscuring unpleasant truths.

What a reasonable person can discern about this case by careful reading of the press accounts is this:

• Swinton, a Colorado resident who was also a pledged state Democratic convention delegate for Barack Obama, has a habit of hoax phone calls in which she pretends to be an abuse victim, for which she has been previously prosecuted.
• At some point last year, perhaps as a result of watching an "Oprah" segment on polygamy, Swinton developed an obsessive interest in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) -- rogue Mormons disavowed by the mainstream LDS Church -- and began devouring news accounts of the group's activities.
• In late March, in phone calls to an Arizona activist who runs an anti-polygamy group, Swinton claimed to be an FLDS teenager named "Sarah" who was being abused in a polygamist marriage.
• Subsequently, a Texas family-crisis hotline received similar calls, which were the basis for the search warrant that led to the raid on the El Dorado FLDS compound.
• Texas Rangers later flew to Colorado, interrogated Swinton and conducted a search of her home.
• The Texas child-welfare officials who conducted the El Dorado raid (and tried to put more than 400 FLDS children, including tiny infant babies, into foster care) have refused to confirm that Swinton, the known phone hoaxer, was the bogus "Sarah" named in the warrrant, or that her hoax calls were the sole basis for the warrant.

The Texas child-welfare officials obviously don't want to admit that their paramilitary raid -- employing SWAT teams with M-16s and armored personnel carriers --was the result of a hoax, since such an admission (a) would expose them as the gullible chumps they are, (b) potentially result in their unemployment, (c) might expose them to civil liability, and (d) would undermine the prosecution of whatever crimes the FLDS allegedly committed.

The clever reader will note that the original lurid tabloid-style reports about the El Dorado raid -- Virgin Teens Raped by Sick Sex Cult! -- weren't really heavy on the kind of caveats that now are used to hide the idiocy of the Texas officials allegedly duped by the alleged hoaxter, Rosita Swinton. For some reason, reporters are extending to Swinton and the Texas officials she duped a presumption of innocence that was sadly lacking when the "Sarah" affidavit was posted online.

Look, I have about as much respect for the kook theology of Mormonism as I have for Scientology or the "Heaven's Gate" suicide cult, and regard the FLDS as a kind of ultra-kook fringe for hard-core kooks who consider the more mainstream Mormon kooks as insufficiently kooky. The polygamist practices of the FLDS -- "elders" with a dozen or more wives, teen brides forced to become the fourth or fifth or 17th wife of patriarchal geezers -- are creepy beyond words.

But you know what? Welcome to America, where creepy kooks have rights, too. However creepy, kooky or indeed criminal the actions of the FLDS in Texas, they apparently weren't disturbing their neighbors or posing any threat to the larger community. If -- as now appears almost certain -- the only pretext for the raid was a hoax call from an obsessed psycho in Colorado who wasn't a Mormon and had never been within 500 miles of El Dorado, Texas, then these FLDS people are victims of government abuse, and any charges against them based on this warrant will never withstand appellate scrutiny.

A man's home is his castle, and if it so happens that his castle is a kook compound where he's keeping a harem -- hey, why doesn't somebody stage a raid on Hugh Hefner? A lot of people are upset at the idea of the teen mothers at the FLDS compound, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: Texas has the highest teen birth rate in America. If every pregnant 15-year-old in Texas is justification for a paramilitary raid, they're going to have to hire a lot more SWAT officers.

P.S.: One reason "America's Most Wanted" is my favorite show on TV is that they avoid this "allegedly" crap when dealing with criminals. John Walsh never hesitates to call a perp a "lowlife scum."

CONFIRMED: She's an Obama delegate!

UPDATED & BUMPED (again): The same MSM that leaped to a conclusion of guilt in the Duke lacrosse rape hoax now seems strangely reluctant to connect the dots regarding Obama delegate Rozita Swinton and her hoax calls that caused the Texas polygamy raid. CNN:

Authorities have not clearly said that they think Swinton made the March phone calls that prompted the raid. But the affidavit says she is "known to make false reports of sexual abuse to the police and other agencies."
Calls were made to a Texas family shelter March 29 and 30 from a female identifying herself as Sarah Barlow, the affidavit says. The caller said she was 16, had a baby about 8 months old and was pregnant again. She said that her 49-year-old husband was physically and sexually abusive toward her and that they were living at the YFZ Ranch.
The phone calls were made from a prepaid cell phone with no available records, according to the affidavit. However, it has been used in other cases linked to Swinton, the document says.

Do you guys in the MSM need somebody to draw you a picture? Texas officials are, understandably, reluctant to admit that the April 4 raid -- in which authorities seized 416 children from their parents -- was the result of a phony call from a hoaxer in Colorado.

Under the law, a raid based on a fake call may nonetheless result in criminal prosecutions or custodial intervention, but lawyers for any innocent parents at the FLDS El Dorado ranch are looking at a tort lawyer's dream case. So if reporters are waiting for Texas officials to state unequivocally that Swinton's bogus calls were the sole cause of that raid, they're going to be waiting a damned long time.

Whatever happened to the fearsome "watchdog" press that's supposedly always on guard against officials abusing their authority? Bet the cops in the Rodney King case wish the media had been this reluctant to jump to conclusions.

Special shout-out to Andrew Sullivan: Is everything just politics, man? When I began blogging about the Texas FLDS raid, it was just because I'd seen a headline and thought it was interesting in a freakish sort way.

But "from the git-go," as he says, Rusty Shackleford thought the story sounded fishy, and he was ultimately proven right. And as the bogusness of the case became more and more evident, one thought keep recurring: Texas took custody of all 416 children from the families at the Yearning For Zion (YFZ) Ranch.

They didn't just take pregnant teenagers, or pubescent girls at risk of being forced into "spiritual marriages." No, they took all 416 children -- babies in diapers, toddlers, 6-year-old boys, whatever.

To me, the entire Mormon belief system is bogus crackpot stuff, and this polygamous FLDS splinter sect has a documented history of illegal abuses. But ... all 416 children? I just can't get over the draconian quality of this. I know my 7-year-old gets homesick after spending two days at a friend's sleepover party. What a horrible thing for Texas to inflict an indefinite and painful separation on these children -- including even unweaned infants! -- whose parents' only malfeasance is to have resided at the FLDS compound.

That's my angle on the story, and the fact that the hoaxer whose bogus calls evidently caused the Texas raid is also a pledged Obama delegate is merely an amazing (and, I admit, amusing) coincidence. I'm sure you find this coincidence somewhat less amusing, Andrew, but when you start slamming Rusty as part of the "Clinton-Rove axis" (!) engaging in "McTruthiness" (?) your childish sub-DKos jibes only make you seem like a demented partisan hack.

Damn, Andrew -- you used to be an important journalist. It's disturbing to see you spiral downhill like this. Get hold of yourself.

* * PREVIOUSLY* *

An affidavit now definitely links Rozita Swinton to the call that caused the raid on the Texas sect.

* * * * *

In case you doubted that Rozita Swinton -- the Colorado woman accused of making the hoax calls that may have triggered raids on the Texas polygamist cult -- is actually an Obama delegate, now the Colorado Springs Gazette confirms it:

A 33-year-old woman with a reasonably clean criminal history, Swinton has been active in politics and once sold insurance. . . .
After the El Paso County Democratic caucuses and convention, she was named one of the 360 delegates to the state convention at the World Arena on May 17, chosen to support Barack Obama. El Paso County Democratic Chairman John Morris said he and other party organizers did not know Swinton. . . .

An accomplished liar "with a reasonably clean criminal history"? Well, of course she's a Democrat! And of course her fellow Democrats deny even knowing her. Kind of like Obama and Bill Ayers.

UPDATE: Rusty links and remarks:

Most of those in the comments still defending the raid seem to focus on the allegation that "girls as young as 13 are married and pregnant". One of the FLDS lawyers I keep seeing on TV says that this is patently false, and the claims made by the state is not that there are "13 year olds" but a single allegation that one 13 year old was pregnant 10 years ago.
If that is true would it change your perception that there is some justification for tearing hundreds of kids away from their families based on a search warrant executed on false grounds?

Good point. A kind of Manichean mindset appears to be affecting perceptions of this case. Some people seem to think it's an either-or proposition, and that we must choose to believe one of two things:

• The FLDS are harmless and innocent religious eccentrics whose practices are beyond criticism.

... or ...

• The FLDS are vicious and dangerous abusers whose practices justify even the most extreme measures by law enforcement.

In other words, this Manichean approach means that our judgment on the actions of Texas officials is made contingent on our opinions of the FLDS. If we think the FLDS are good, then raiding them is bad, and vice-versa.

I reject that approach. Regardless of whether the FLDS are good or evil, they are human beings who have -- what was Jefferson's phrase? -- "certain unalienable rights." Our rights are not dependent on our popularity; the fat geek has the same rights as the homecoming queen. And freaky religious cultists have the same rights as boring Methodists.

Furthermore, the fact that Swinton is an Obama delegate is certainly newsworthy, but it's hardly fodder for GOP attack ads. The fact that this one woman just happens to be both (a) an Obama delegate and (b) evidently deranged -- that's just a coincidence.

The area around Colorado Springs is a Republican stronghold (67% for Bush in 2004) and I'm sure that Team Obama had to cast a wide net to find enough delegates to file a state-convention slate. That this one kook happened to turn up in that delegation is a function of the Law of Large Numbers. Surely, somewhere among all the John McCain delegates to state GOP conventions, there is at least one Swinton-style kook. And let's don't even start with the Ron Paul delegates . . .

Obama delegate in cult hoax?

UPDATE 4/20: Welcome Jawa readers. Check out the "Oprah" factor in this case.

* * * * *

If this pans out, it's going to be huge:

Texas Rangers participated in the arrest of a Colorado woman who allegedly pretended to be a girl locked in a basement. The Rangers were in the state as part of their investigation into the Texas polygamy custody battle, local police told ABC News.
It was unclear if the arrest was related to the phone call from a woman who claimed to be a 16-year-old girl, a phone call that sparked what has become one of the largest child custody cases in U.S. history.
Officials in Texas raided a polygamist compound and took 416 children into custody after an abuse hotline received a series of phone calls from the purported teen who said she was being held at the compound. The girl, who called herself Sarah, said she was being physically and sexually abused by her adult husband, court documents say. . . .
ABC News has learned that Texas Rangers flew to Colorado Springs, Colo., and participated in the arrest of a 33-year-old woman who was charged with filing a false report.
The FBI also told ABC News it is assisting local police in the investigation. Colorado Springs police said in a statement that "The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs Wednesday as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas." . . .
Colorado Springs police said they arrested Rozita Swinton last night on local charges of pretending to be a girl locked in a basement, claiming abuse and calling authorities for help.

So if this Swinton woman does indeed turn out to have faked the "Sarah" call, it's national news because (a) this Texas polygamy cult story has been all over cable TV news, and (b) well . . . Rusty Shackleford:

Rozita Swinton, the woman arrested today for falsely tipping off the police that she was an abused child bride at the FLDS polygamy cult in Texas is a PLEDGED BARACK OBAMA STATE DELEGATE!!

Rusty links to Patterico, who discovered the Obama angle. Rusty's finely tuned B.S. detector led him to suspect something fishy about this teen-bride story from the get-go. If it is indeed true that Swinton faked the raped-and-abused-virgin-cult-teen call -- man!

A freaking Obama delegate! Does it get any weirder than that? I'm just wondering what her motive could have been.

UPDATE: Houston Chronicle:

It sounded so genuine: a terrified voice of a young girl expressing fear that if rescued from a religious cult, blacks might harm her.
The calls to the Child Protection Project, run by a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, were recorded at the request of the Texas Rangers. . . .
The calls to the former sect member, meanwhile, led the Rangers to Colorado Springs, Colo., where police Wednesday arrested Rozita Swinton, a 33-year-old black woman. . . .
Child Protection Project founder Linda Walker and the Phoenix-based group's executive director, Flora Jessop, said Friday they were stunned when they learned the woman's identity.
"In her little baby voice, she said, 'If you rescue me, and I get out of here, do you think the black people will hurt me?' "
Walker said. "She had done her homework. She knew it was a racist cult. We know that these kids are very frightened of black people.
"The Texas Rangers told us she was obsessed with the FLDS. They confiscated tons of material on the FLDS (in the search of Swinton's home). She even gave real addresses and real names of FLDS people."
Walker and Jessop hesitated to say that Swinton was the person who called the Texas hot line to describe sexual and physical abuse by a 50-year-old husband at the ranch outside Eldorado, but they endorsed the resulting actions of Texas authorities.
"Regardless of who made these calls, the system worked exactly as it was supposed to work," said Jessop, a former FLDS member whose cousin, Merrill Jessop, runs the ranch.

Oh, man! How totally off-the-wall can a news story get? So even though it appears that a hoax call led to the raid, this lady says "the system worked exactly as it was supposed to work"?

Note the bizarre circularity of this thing:

• Critics of FLDS publish material detailing bizarre cult practices and beliefs, including racism.
• Black woman becomes obsessed with FLDS, collects material from critics.
• Officials get call from black woman, pretending to be cult victim, expressing racist fears.
• Based on hoax call, officials raid compound, seize 416 children.
• Call is exposed as hoax, black woman arrested.

And she's an Obama delegate! I'm sure the Clinton campaign brain trust is huddled up trying to figure out some way to exploit this for the Pennsylvania primary. Maybe George Stephanopoulos can ask a question about it on "This Week" . . .

UPDATE II: Linked by Dad29, who says, "One is reminded of the phone call which engendered the Lawrence case." Indeed -- also a Texas case.

Texas cult: The Oprah factor

Rusty Shackleford says the Texas FLDS compound story has "stunk to high-heaven from the git go," and look at the way Rusty puts two and two together:

Houston Chronicle: "The Texas Rangers told us [hoax suspect Rozita Swinton] was obsessed with the FLDS. They confiscated tons of material on the FLDS (in the search of Swinton's home). She even gave real addresses and real names of FLDS people."
Rusty: Hence, how Swinton would be able to "identify" the man who "Sarah" was allegedly married to, but didn't know that Dale Evans Barlow, the man originally pegged as the "50 year old husband", didn't actually live in Texas, but in Arizona.

Right, and now let me add something else to the equation: Notice that the middle (maiden) name for "Sarah" was "Jessop" -- "Sarah Jessop Barlow."

Well, Flora Jessop is the executive director of the anti-polygamy group quoted in that same Houston Chronicle story. And if you do a Google search on "FLDS" and "Jessop," you immediately discover that Carolyn Jessop is the author of a bestselling book, "Escape," about her life inside FLDS -- and that Carolyn Jessop appeared on "Oprah" in November 2007!

Bingo! So what must have happened is that Swinton:

• Watched this "Oprah" episode in November;
• Became obsessed with the FLDS cult;
• Read about the compound in Texas;
• Learned the name Dale Evans Barlow from reports of his prosecution;
• Combined Barlow's name with "Sarah," a common female biblical name, and "Jessop," the name of the two prominent ex-FLDS women, to create a name for her fictional 16-year-old victim; and
• Then did a Google search to find the phone number of a domestic-abuse hotline near the FLDS compound in Texas.

OMG! More than 400 children have been seized by the state of Texas because of an "Oprah" episode?

Also I wonder if Swinton became an Obama delegate for the same reason she became obsessed with the FLDS, namely, she saw it on "Oprah"?

UPDATE: The "Oprah" Web site includes an excerpt from Carolyn Jessop's book, including this bit about physical abuse among FLDS:

[T]he women we'd see in the community when we went shopping were wearing dark sunglasses. I was surprised when a woman took her glasses off in the grocery store and I could see that both her eyes were blackened. I asked my mother what was wrong, but the question seemed to make her uncomfortable and she didn't answer me. My curiosity was piqued, however, and every time I saw a woman in dark glasses, I stared at her to see if they were covering strange, mottled bruises.

Hmmmm. Remember how the hotline tipster "Sarah" talked about beatings? And then this:

We were taught that outsiders were "agents of the devil" who wanted to kidnap us and take us away. They were seen as evil people who wanted to destroy the work of God. If they could get access to the children of God's chosen, then they would try to hurt or destroy us.

Right -- another theme in the tip from "Sarah." But perhaps the telltale clue here is this:

[Oprah producer Lisa Ling's] guide in Colorado City is Carolyn Jessop. Carolyn was raised by three mothers and has 36 brothers and sisters. At 18, she says she was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader, Merril Jessop. Carolyn had eight of Merril's 54 children, but she says she was always desperate for freedom.

The tipster "Sarah" likewise was "was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader." But whereas Carolyn Jessop was 18 when she was married, the Texas hotline hoaxer Rozita Swinton decided fictional "Sarah" should be 16, having been forced to marry at 15 -- i.e., conveniently below the legal minimum marriage age in Texas, so as to constitute the basis for a search warrant.

Nearly every element of the story that "Sarah" told in her calls to the abuse hotline was included in the November "Oprah" episode or in Carolyn Jessop's book.

UPDATE II: Rusty notes the "fake but accurate" angle on Swinton's hoax, and says:

Sure, she lied about everything, but isn't the goal of removing children from parents who's lifestyle we don't approve of trump truth? . . .
Let's just go into any community and take away all the kids since we know that some of them are abused, some get knocked up young, and some are molested. In some communities, these phenomena are pervasive. . . .
There is a bright line which government cannot cross under normal circumstances. That line is the home.
A raid on an entire community, without probable cause, in peace time is tyranny, plain and simple.
What next, raiding a hippie commune because we know they must smoke dope and we know they practice free love?

As I've pointed out earlier myself, "if every pregnant 16-year-old in Texas is cause for a paramilitary raid, they're going to need more SWAT teams."

UPDATE III: Sorry if these updates are creating a thread longer than God's arm, but stuff just keeps popping up. This is from a Salt Lake Tribune story that Rusty linked:

FLDS women who were in state shelters with their children until Monday say investigators appeared desperate to find "Sarah" and were grilling girls by that name. ...
On Monday, hours after being separated from the children taken into state custody, FLDS women claimed authorities appeared driven to find Sarah.
"They are trying to pin it on anybody named Sarah," said Annette, who is back at the YFZ Ranch after more than a week in custody with her six children and five nieces and nephews she is raising.
Sarah is a common name and several are in custody, she said. One by one, the Sarahs have been interviewed, she said. "They find out and then let them go, then grab another one and try to find out and the let them go."
"There is just not a Sarah that fits what they said," said Annette.
Investigators have zeroed in on one Sarah in particular, Annette said. The girl, who has a 5-month-old daughter, is petite and looks young, so the investigators don't believe she is 18, she said.

So while the Texas attorney general says "the case really doesn't hinge upon that particular 16-year-old," investigators spent days grilling every teenager named Sarah from the Texas ranch -- including one 18-year-old who merely looks young. Sounds to me like Texas officials know they've got a credibility problem in this case.

PREVIOUSLY:
4/19: 'Underage sex cult'

4/18: Obama delegate in cult hoax?
4/18: Texas cult case: Where's Sarah?
4/14: Polygamy cult custody case
4/11: Texas teen sex cult update
4/10: Cult's sick sex temple
4/9: Not in the Constitution
4/9: 'Spiritually married'?

'Are the Amish next?'

Reacting to the Texas FLDS case, a California reader e-mails to ask, "Are the Amish next?" and adds:

By the way -- aren't there statistics about 13 year olds having babies in the inner cities? And girls that young going to Planned Parenthood.
The mothers of "some" of the inner city pre-teens are on drugs etc.
At least these Texas mothers don't teach their kids to smoke dope.

Excellent point. According to one recent report, Texas had the nation's highest teen pregnancy rate in 2004, and it wasn't because of religious cults:

In the latest statistics available, 24 percent of the state's teen births in 2004 were not the girl's first delivery. . . .
Erandy Gonzalez, 17, of Oak Cliff, could almost be the poster girl for Texas' challenges. She is Hispanic, and Hispanics by far have the highest teen birth rates of any ethnic group. She is the mother of a 15-month-old girl and is pregnant again.
In 2004, Hispanic girls ages 15 to 19 accounted for 61 percent of teen births even though only 39 percent of Texas adolescents were Hispanic, according to the federal National Center for Health Statistics.

Got that? If you're a pregnant Texas teenager named Gonzalez, the Dallas Morning News interviews you for a feature story. If you're a pregnant Texas teenager named Sarah, the SWAT team kicks down your door and arrests your parents.

Both Hispanic culture and FLDS culture seem to encourage early childbearing, but only one of these cultures is labeled a "cult" and targeted for paramilitary raids.

Considering the prevalence of teen pregnancy in Texas and judging from the way the FLDS case is being handled, it would appear that Texas child-protection officials are not so much concerned about teen sex or teen pregnancy -- it's teen marriage that they consider an abomination.

This very common contemporary attitude -- that it's OK for teenagers to screw around as long as they don't get married -- reminds me of I Timothy 4:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry . . .

Of course, I guess I need to be careful about quoting apocalyptic prophecies, since somebody's liable to label me a "cult" and next thing you know, there'll be a tank in my driveway and TV news choppers hovering overhead.

One of the funniest items to come from the FLDS hearing is a sentence in this brief Associated Press report:

Earlier, a children's cult expert testified that the belief system at the polygamous compound is abusive and that teen girls are trained to be obedient and compliant.

Obedient teenagers? Whoever heard of such a thing? Clearly, this must involve unimaginable abuse.

Also, the AP story quotes a witness who testified Friday that a bed in the FLDS temple -- which Texas officials had suggested was part of some bizarre sex ritual --"is for naps during the sect's long worship services." Given my own habit of nodding off during sermons, maybe I should suggest this idea to our pastor.

BTW, speaking of culture, in Australia, they're giving Norplant contraceptives to 12-year-old aboriginal girls:

The Mayor of Woorabinda, Roderick Tobane, says he knows of six girls under 16 who have received the implants and says their parents have taken a mature attitude.
"[They are] acknowledging that their children are sexually active and they're putting measures in place to make sure that their children don't get pregnant," he said.

Send in the Texas SWAT teams!

UPDATE: Evidence mounts that Obama delegate Rozita Swinton made the hoax calls that led to the Texas raid:

Rozita Swinton, 33, gave a statement to Texas Rangers, who also seized evidence from her Colorado Springs apartment. While authorities would not say specifically what was in Swinton's home, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement issued late Friday that the officers found "several items that indicated a possible connection between Swinton and calls regarding the FLDS compounds in Colorado City, Ariz., and Eldorado, Texas." . . .
Anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop said she recorded hours of phone calls between herself and a 16-year-old girl named "Sarah," who claimed to be pregnant and in an abusive plural marriage to an older man. Jessop told the Deseret News she got the first call on March 30 — a day after a family crisis shelter first received a similar call.
The call to the family crisis center triggered the raid on the YFZ Ranch, where 416 children were taken into state protective custody. The man named in the phone calls, Dale Barlow, was questioned in Utah by Texas Rangers and has yet to be arrested.

So this whole thing apparently began with a Colorado hoaxer who became obsessed with the FLDS cult (probably, I surmise, after watching an "Oprah" episode about polygamy that aired in November). Dale Barlow is in Utah and doesn't seem to be a suspect, so what about the 416 children seized in the Texas raid?

"What we're hearing from DPS is that it is a possibility (that Swinton is 'Sarah'), but we don't have any concrete evidence of that," Shari Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family Services, said Saturday. . . .

But then notice how Ms. Pulliam's concern about "concrete evidence" shifts rather strategically:

Regardless of whether "Sarah" is real or not, Texas child welfare authorities said it does not have any bearing upon their case now.
"Our basis is what we found when we got onto the ranch. That is the numerous teenage girls that had been sexually abused and groomed to marry," Pulliam said.

Ah! So she's not willing to believe that Swinton is a hoaxer until she has "concrete evidence," yet she offers only assertions about the "sexually abused" girls. I hate to keep repeating myself, but I will: If Texas officials believe any of the FLDS girls have been abused, all they have to do is ask the judge to order OB-GYN exams. Since the family services officials are so doggone adamant about these abuse charges, why have there been no medical exams of the alleged victims?

A week ago, Texas officials were proclaiming to the world that every FLDS girl was ritually raped and impregnated as soon as she reached puberty. Have the family services people found even one 15-year-old with stretch marks on her belly? A 14-year-old with a Caesarian scar, maybe?

To repeat myself once more, this is starting to look like a Texas-style McMartin Preschool case.

UPDATE II: The Pentagon gave $1.7 million in contracts to FLDS-connected firms.

UPDATE III: At Jawa Report, commenter/guest-blogger Good Lt. warned commenters against going too far with the "presumed innocent" angle on the FLDS, citing the testimonials and court records of the cult's abuses, and saying "just be careful about how far you're willing to go to bat for these loons." I responded in the comments:

I, for one, am not "going to bat for these loons."
To me, the issue is whether Texas officials are justified in seizing custody of all 416 children from the FLDS ranch.
You say, "There are court documents showing that girls as young as 13 have been impregnated." Show me those documents, please. Why aren't those documents posted on Smoking Gun, as were the affidavits that contained all those lurid allegations from "Sarah"?
The Texas officials seem to have created a climate of hysteria in order to justify the seizure of all the FLDS children. And the hoax "Sarah" call was Exhibit A in this hysteria. Now the Family Services people have gotten what they wanted, but where are the actual abuse victims? For that matter, where are the suspected abusers? To my knowledge, no one at the Texas FLDS ranch has been charged with any crime. So you have children (over 100 of them under age 4) being seized by the state, and yet the state has identified neither criminals nor victims.
My arguments have nothing to do with a defense of "loons," and everything to do with a profound suspicion of bureaucratic overkill by Family Services.

And Good Lt. responded in the main thread:

Don't interpret this as my advocacy of rampant government intervention in the affairs of strange religious groups. Let's just say that I'm with the former child brides and ex-FLDS members on this one, and other anecdotal and historical evidence -- including the leader of the cult being convicted of accomplice to rape of a 14 year old with previous members of the cult being convicted of similar crimes in the past -- establishes a pattern of alleged and confirmed abuses by this group that are cause enough to err on the side of the kids and women locked up behind the fences.

An entirely valid perspective, and one that I share, insofar as the suspicion of child abuse is not used as an excuse for government abuse. That's why I keep reiterating that Texas officials are seeking permanent state custody of all 416 children from the FLDS compound.

However pervasive abuse might be within FLDS, can it really be true that all 416 children -- boys and girls from infancy to age 17 -- are abuse victims? Does mere membership in FLDS, or residence at the cult's Texas compound, constitute proof of abuse?

Finally, a lot of my interest in the Texas FLDS story is from the media-criticism perspective. When the affidavits and search warrant were first made public, the MSM jumped to the conclusion -- and, frankly, I followed along -- that not only was every allegation true, but that these lurid allegations were merely the tip of a ritualistic iceberg of bizarre kinkiness at the Texas compound.

I'm always wary when prosecutors (or defense attorneys) attempt to "try their case in the media." That tactic is generally a harbinger of bad outcomes, which is why I keep citing the McMartin Preschool case.

'Searching for Sarah'

Suspected hoaxer Rozita Swinton is the subject of my latest American Spectator Online article:

"Nothing catches an editor's eye like a good rape," gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once observed, and this month's lurid tales of teenage girls ritually raped in the temple of a Texas polygamist cult caught editors' eyes around the world.
"Documents: Sect married girls at puberty," declared the headline on an April 8 Associated Press story, while the online version of the Everett, Washington, Daily Herald featured this April 10 headline: "Texas cult's girls required to have sex in temple." . . .
Bizarre and illegal though the FLDS sect's practices may be, however, no one at the "Yearning For Zion Ranch" has yet been charged with rape, polygamy, or any other sex crime.
In fact, the only person arrested in connection with the April 4 raid on the 1,700-acre Texas compound is a Colorado woman whose hoax phone calls may be the source of those tales of ritual rape that unleashed a global epidemic of leering headlines.
Officials say Rozita E. Swinton is a "person of interest" in the cult case, and reports of her arrest strongly suggest that it was the 33-year-old Swinton who called a domestic-abuse hotline in Texas, identifying herself as "Sarah Jessop Barlow." . . .

Read the whole thing, please. Different people react to this case in different ways. After reading the draft of my Spectator article, my wife was deeply disturbed by the thought of young children who'd never been away from their mothers being placed into foster care. I suspect that's a common reaction among mothers, however much they reject and condemn the polygamist practices of the FLDS.

It was interesting to write a feature article about a subject that I'd blogged about frequently over the past few days, and the experience illuminates the differences between blogging and journalism. I intend to write about that later, but I've got a freelance reporting assignment today -- Harrisburg, here I come! -- and so blogging will be light until Tuesday.

In the meantime, I'd encourage you to check out the American Spectator blog, or perhaps peruse my previous blogging on the Texas FLDS case:

4/20: 'Are the Amish next?'
4/19: Texas cult: The 'Oprah' factor
4/19: 'Underage sex cult'
4/18: Obama delegate in cult hoax?
4/18: Texas cult case: Where's Sarah?
4/14: Polygamy cult custody case
4/11: Texas teen sex cult update
4/10: Cult's sick sex temple
4/9: Not in the Constitution
4/9: 'Spiritually married'?

UPDATE: My Friday post about Swinton as Obama delegate has been linked by something called "Rezko Watch," a site that a cynic might suspect as a front for the Clinton campaign. Frankly, I don't care if "Resko Watch" is a front for the Chinese Communist Party. Just link me baby -- I'm all about the traffic. (Cynic? Who, me?)

Also, I stumbled onto some interesting comments in a debate over the Texas cult among Protein Wisdom commenters:

• Gamera: FOXnews said that there are 20 pregnant children under the age of 18 among the 400+ kids removed from the ranch.
• Thor: Child abuse is associated with being pregnant and under 18? [Abusive epithet.] East L.A. would have to be stormed with the National Guard.
• Spies, Brigands, and Pirates: 20 out of 400? 5%? I wonder how that compares to the proportion in a garden-variety high school? . . . Answer: the overall pregnancy rate among American teens is 7.5%. For black teens, it’s 13.4%, for Hispanics it’s 13.1%.

See? You can get an education by reading blogs. Take notes, kids. This might be on your final exam.

The 'culture' defense

Kids, don't try this at home:

The story of the Greenfield man who allegedly sold his 14-year-old daughter to a young suitor for cash and beer went worldwide, and the police chief who ordered the arrest said Tuesday the incident arose from a clash of cultures.
The social mores in parts of rural Mexico, where arranged marriages are common for young girls, ran head-on into California law designed to protect juveniles from sexual predators.
"It's kind of a clash of two different cultures, but I have to uphold the local law," Greenfield Police Chief Joe Grebmeier said.
The case involves a father, Marcelino DeJesus Martinez, 36, a young male neighbor, Margarito DeJesus Galindo, 18, and Martinez's 14-year-old daughter who Galindo sought to marry.

Notice that the "clash of cultures" argument is only ever offered by the media in defense of foreign cultures. If Americans expect our own culture to be respected elsewhere (e.g., the Middle East), that's "imperialism." But any foreigner who can manage to get across our borders, legally or otherwise, is entitled to receive the "Get out of jail free" cultural-defense card from the MSM.

So, while any American who sold his teenage daughter would be denounced as a misogynistic oppressor, and the case cited as conclusive evidence of how our culture is infested with patriarchal exploitation, as long as your name is Martinez and you're from Oaxaca -- oh, what quaint rural customs! It's a "clash of cultures"!

PREVIOUSLY: Diversity is our strength!

UPDATE: Barbara O'Brien (Mahablog) thinks she understands this story, and my reaction to it:

[W]hen done by an illegal immigrant, sexual exploitation of a girl is an outrage. But sexual exploitation of girls by native-born Americans is perfectly OK.

Ah, the comparison to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is invoked. Very well, then. I didn't get up this morning expecting this discussion, but let's go ahead and have it, shall we?

Shortly after Texas officials raided the FLDS compound in Eldorado last year, it became apparent that officials were not merely seeking to prosecute specific crimes. Instead, they launched a paramilitary exercise that seized 432 children -- including babies and toddlers -- from their parents and put the children into foster care, evidently because officials considered the entire sect to be a criminal conspiracy. Furthermore, the media jumped on the story with lurid "teen sex cult" headlines, repeating as gospel the most sensational allegation in the search warrant affidavit.

What you had in the Eldorado raid, then, was (a) prosecutorial overkill and (b) flagrant media bias in favor of the prosecutorial overkill. The same media that waxes hysterically indignant about the treatment of al-Qaeda detainees at Gitmo were acting as cheerleaders while SWAT squads swooped down in America to seize babies from the arms of their mothers.

There was a distinct whiff of bovine excrement about this story and it soon emerged that, contrary to the sensational media tale about an abused teen victim named "Sarah Jessup Barlow" making a desperate call for help from inside the Eldorado compound, the original tip to Texas officials apparently came from a Colorado hoaxer. Rozita Swinton, who had a history of similar hoax calls, evidently became obsessed with the FLDS as a result of media accounts (including an "Oprah" episode) about the cult.

Furthermore, the FLDS claimed -- and the official report indirectly confirms -- that Texas officials were grilling every young mother at the Eldorado compound in a desperate hunt for the non-existent "Sarah Jessop Barlow," obviously because the officials did not want to admit that their massive raid (which cost taxpayers $12 million) had been launched under false premises.

Barbara O'Brien accuses me of saying that FLDS is "perfectly OK," but I never said any such thing. At the risk of offending Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch, I'll say that I consider Mormonism to be an un-Christian cult, a transparent fraud perpetrated by Joseph Smith, and would go so far as to say that the mob that stormed the Nauvoo, Ill., jail on June 27, 1844, did a service to humanity. Insofar as the FLDS intend to revive the original doctrines of Smith -- especially including polygamy -- they are on a mission of evil. They might as well be trying to revive Heaven's Gate or the Jonestown cult, so far as I'm concerned.

Rather than defending the cultic practices of the FLDS, what I actually said was this:

[I]f Texas officials are going to launch a paramilitary raid every time a 15-year-old girl gets pregnant, they're going to need to hire some more SWAT police. In point of fact, Texas leads the nation in teenage pregnancy. The crime that justified this raid in the minds of CPS officials obviously wasn't that teenage girls were having sex or having babies -- that happens every day in Texas -- but that they were "married."

A couple of points quite relevant to this topic:

• As the 2007 Dallas Morning News story I linked makes clear, a growing immigrant population was directly implicated in Texas' first-in-the-nation teen pregnancy statistics: "In 2004, Hispanic girls ages 15 to 19 accounted for 61 percent of teen births even though only 39 percent of Texas adolescents were Hispanic, according to the federal National Center for Health Statistics."
• In 2005, specifically to address the issue raised by the relocation of FLDS to Eldorado, Texas raised its minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16.

Which is to say that, confronted with two cultures in which early marriage is common, it was the arrival of the FLDS, rather than an influx of Mexican illegals, which provoked action by Texas legislators. Yet which culture actually contributes more to the teen pregnancy situation in Texas? The official report of the Eldorado raid found that 12 FLDS girls had been "married" before age 16, of which seven had been age 14 or 15 and thus would not have been victims of a crime if not for the 2005 revision of the law. (Whether or not you believe that 14-year-olds should be permitted to marry, such marriages are still legal in several states.)

So, 12 victims of FLDS, compared to how many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Hispanic girls the same ages who become mothers every year in Texas? The latest CDC statistics don't give us raw numbers state-by-state, but we know (Table 6) that 9,870 Hispanic girls 15 and under gave birth in the U.S. in 2006, including 320 who were giving birth to their second child before age 16 and -- believe it or not -- 10 cases in which girls under 16 gave birth to their third child.

If Barbara O'Brien is serious about "sexual exploitation of girls," then she must deem victims the nearly 10,000 young Latinas who give birth before age 16 each year in the United States -- to say nothing of the untold thousands of similar girls in Mexico where, we are assured by the San Jose Mercury News and the Greenfield, Calif., police chief, "Everything they were doing would be legal."

UPDATE II: John Hawkins muses on multiculturalism in a relevant way.