The first reunions began today as parents of more than 450 children, stolen from them by the dismal Child Protective Services (CPS) of Texas, started picking up their kids. In the end, as it was described in the 3rd Court of Appeals decision, the state offered no evidence of physical or sexual abuse in all but five teenage girls’ cases.
To put that in perspective, they found that 99% of the children that lived on the Yearning for Zion Ranch were not abused. I was curious how that stacked up against national averages, so I turned to The Google and discovered that just over 1% of American children are victims of physical or sexual abuse.
(For the record, the FLDS announced today that they would forbid the future practice of underage marriages. Their spokesman estimated that about 2% of the ranch’s residence live in that circumstance.)
So what does this case really tell us about the media, our culture, and our government?
Our revulsion at child abuse shouldn’t prevent us from looking critically at the actions taken in this case. The state of Texas literally emptied a small town of all of its children, housed them with strangers and publicly accused their parents of child abuse. The media ate up the state’s explanation with a spoon, demonized the parents, their religion, and their lifestyle, but never bothered to ask any critical questions.
At this point, the question that I would like to see asked is, “When will the criminal investigation into the actions of CPS begin?”
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