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The Register's Editorial • April 26, 2008
Earlier this month, hundreds of law-enforcement officers, including a SWAT team and FBI agents, raided a compound known as the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas. Prompted by a report of child abuse, authorities ended up removing more than 400 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's being called the largest custody case in U.S. history.
And it has certainly gotten the public's attention.
Stories about religion, "plural marriages" and teenage girls marrying older men are captivating. Each day new details emerge - from reports that the sect "reassigned" women to different men or that it kicked out young boys for minor infractions and to ensure older men had their pick of girls.
It's the kind of story that allows observers to pass judgment not only on those living at the ranch, but also on child-welfare officials. Some believe the state is justified in placing hundreds of children in emergency foster care. Others think the state has gone overboard and traumatized children unnecessarily.
It seems clear that girls were being sexually abused, so the state had to step in. Yet how best to deal with so many families and so many children is a harder call.
It could take months or even years to sort through the details of this case. But regardless of the outcome, the entire ordeal is sad.
Families have been torn apart. Children have been traumatized. Being placed in a foster home is a terrifying prospect for any child - regardless of conditions in their prior home. The unknown is frequently scarier than the known.
The Texas case is unique in scale. The state is trying to find good homes for hundreds of kids at once. Officials must walk a line between not infringing on one's right to practice religion and performing its duty to protect children.
But some perspective is in order. The hundreds of children involved in this case are only a fraction of those placed in foster care in this country each year.
According to the Child Welfare League of America, more than 500,000 kids are in the foster-care system at any given time. Like the youngsters in Texas, each of these children is nervous about living with strangers. Each one is worried about the future. All states struggle to find good foster homes to care for children. Child-welfare workers and judges across the country must sort through details of each troubled family and determine what's best for a child.
So maybe the country's focus should be on the bigger issue - a half-million children in foster care. That should captivate all of us. These kids spend an average of 28 months in the system. Of the 50,000 adopted each year, about 60 percent are adopted by foster families. Those who aren't adopted or reunited with their families frequently don't graduate from high school. Only about 2 percent complete college. All of that underscores the need for states to work even harder at keeping families together.
At the end of the day, each one of the stories of the 500,000 American children in foster care is heart-wrenching and complicated - even if they don't make headlines in newspapers.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
20080426/OPINION03/804260322/-1/BUSINESS04
Emphasis added by H4K Editor |