Apparently my blog has (for this week anyway) become source for FAQ's about foster care and how the situation for the children removed from the FLDS group will play out. For the record, I'm not getting into a discussion about the rightness or wrongness of the sequence of events that led to the children's removal, or about religious persecution. I'm simply talking about how the courts will respond, and what is on the horizon.
Richard asks, "On what conceivable grounds does this tyrannical judge Walther conclude that a child 5 years and 1 day old is less deserving of having its own mother to be with it, than is a child 4 years and 355 days old."
Normally the court doesn't make this distinction because normally no mothers are permitted to stay with their children once the children are placed in state custody. In my experience this is an unprecedented act of compassion within the foster care system. Additionally, I've seen parents have their weekly visitation with their children suspended for months at a time because the DA found they were attempting to tamper with a witness (the child).
When I watch the interviews with the mothers who were with their children but have returned to the "compound" they sound like just about every other parent with a child in the foster care system. Their circumstances are tragic indeed, as it is for every other parent whose child is in foster care. They do not answer a lot of questions when questioned by the media about their lifestyle, and certainly in this context that is absolutely their right. My concern is that when they get to family court they will continue to refuse to answer the same questions when questioned by the court. Because this case is being built around their lifestyle, the lifestyle is going to be the meat of the state's case.
I hear righteous indignation in their comments and I can certainly sympathize. The court will not. These parents would be best served by knowing that they have just experienced the beginning of a life-altering event. Until the custody issue is resolved their life is not their own. They will be required to submit to a lot of things they will not want to. It will be hard. They won't like it. They will either do the things required of them or they won't.
If the parents continue to be evasive about their lifestyle, if they continue to focus on what they perceive to be an unjust seizure of their children, if they refuse to work the plan laid out by the court, they run the very real chance of losing their children forever. I hope the parents of these children understand the seriousness of what they are facing and how their actions will affect their children.
