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Understanding Religious Sects and Cult like organizations
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It is important to understand what makes an organization become disenfranchised from main stream society to the point that the commit criminal activity and flee from authorities. This is currently a Texas issue, but the roots stretch out over many years and to many states and Canada. The issue is the perceived freedom of religion. The freedom of religion has allowed this group to get away with heinous things like child marriages, and abuse of young boys thrown out of the sect over the years.
Abuse of women is documented well by females who left and are now part of TAPESTRY AGAINST POLYGAMY. The article below has commentary from my College Professor Ph. D., it explains that as a communications expert that the websites are manipulative and also carefully written in non contemporary linguistics.
My hope is that the L.E.O.'s involved remain safe, and that the children and innocent victims are out of harms way.
The background of the Church of Jesus Christ (mainstream L.D.S. faith) and the F.L.D.S. have similarities, but the mainstream church denounced polygamy many years ago.
The Church and the Sect both are arch rivals at some degree with the Baptist Church and Protestant religions. This can be seen historically in clashes at different levels.
As a non practicing Catholic, I just about had a coronary when I saw Baptist Church buses moving the members of the compound. It was a cold chill and a fear of how this would be interpreted by what I see as controversial, and disenfranchised members of a Sect.
I am happy for the community support and the hard working members of the social work and CJ Law Enforcement Communities.
Thank you for doing the job and doing the right thing even if it is very difficult. Keep the kids out of harms way, as well as the child brides and brain washed adults.
************IMPORTANT WEBSITES TO KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THE WACO LIKE POTENTIAL OF WHAT IS GOING ON IN TEXAS*****************
fldstruth.org
captivefldschildren.org
THE NEW pro FLDS websites.
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=3130748&nid=572 ARCHIVE LINK TO FLDS related news in Utah
FLDS Church launches new Web sites
April 21st, 2008 @ 9:00pm
John Hollenhorst and Lori Prichard reporting
FLDS leaders have turned up the heat in their public battle with Texas officials. They've launched two Web sites offering an entirely new look at the raid on their ranch.
Crying girls, protesting boys and sobbing mothers: That's the imagery FLDS leaders are hoping to get into the public eye and into people's hearts. It's a surprising trend, a secretive group in 19th-century clothing going public, and going to war, with 21st-century technology.
Video captures one of the tense and tearful moments when cops escorted children and mothers from the FLDS ranch. "I don't want to go," one boy says.
You can hear the cries as mothers and children are whisked away by law enforcement. The video may be grainy, the audio fuzzy, but the intended message is crystal clear.
FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said, "It's just heartbreaking." That's what those at the FLDS compound want you to feel: Heartbreak through pictures of children torn from their mothers, of mothers forced to leave their homes.
These scenes are out for public consumption on a new Internet Web site. FLDS leaders abandoned their traditional stance of privacy a few days into the raid.
Parker is back in Utah after more than a week in Texas orchestrating media for the FLDS. "They really feel that they want to keep to themselves, and this is very uncharacteristic for them. But this is such an extraordinary circumstance that it required an extraordinary response," Parker said.
They opened their ranch gates to the media, and FLDS wives have done numerous interviews that were broadcast worldwide.
The FLDS Internet presence now includes an introduction to the faith. It shows the line of men claimed as FLDS prophets, stretching from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to convicted felon Warren Jeffs.
There are previously unseen photos of armed agents inside the compound, tearful wives and children, and possessions disrupted by searchers. "We're trying to get people to see what's really going on down there, how barbaric it is," Parker said.
Texas officials have fired back in a media duel. "We have a setting within a compound where many of the kids seem to have been sexually assaulted, subject to abuse. Whenever you have a setting like that it's very important to remove all the children from that very dangerous setting," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.
In the long run, FLDS supporters hope their images will turn the tide of public opinion, as happened after the last big raid in 1953. At minimum, they say they're trying to overturn negative myths and falsehoods about FLDS people.
"It's rumor, and now there's someone answering it, and I think, long-term, that's going to have a positive effect on the relationship of these people to society in general," Parker said.
Media expert Kimberly Zarkin, Ph.D., of Westminster College, says to get the public to respond, you have to get the public to care. And to do a better job of that? "There are no names on the Web site," she said. "Names have to go up. What we know about public relations, the more personal things are, the more of the connection."
Zarkin says along with pictures of the children should be simple stories. Instead, there are no stories.
And when there is a written message, like that on the FLDS truth Web site, the wording is not concise, Zarkin says, but rather convoluted.
The site reads in part: "We seek to disabuse the minds of the honest in heart, of the deceptions inherent in reports from malicious and evil disposed persons."
Zarkin said, "They're using very old-fashioned language, which is actually enhancing their outdatedness. They need to start talking to people in colloquial language, in the first person."
Doing battle with the state of Texas is likely to be expensive, so maybe it's no surprise the FLDS Web site is openly soliciting contributions. Your credit card is welcome.
To view the two FLDS Web sites, click the related links.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
E-mail: lprichard@ksl.com
