Judge orders forfeiture of Texas polygamist ranch

[Squinch]

13. The fundamentalist polygamous sects like FLDS have earned their nickname: The American Taliban.

The communities are pretty consistent in their widespread exploitation of children. For many years in this group, the FLDS, girls were married off as young as 12 and 13, to men in their 40's and 50's.

Before Jeffs was caught, and possibly still, though the information is harder to come by, children were taken out of school at absurdly young ages in order to put them to work full time and make money for the elders. Young boys (13,14,15) are routinely banished and abandoned in order to take them out of competition with the old men for teenaged wives. (By that I mean they are taken from their isolated communities with no skills and no education, and dumped on the streets of cities or by the sides of roads and told not to return home.)

Anecdotal reports by people who have left the community indicate that incest is pretty rampant. including molestations of both boys and girls.

Their "prosperous properties" are largely funded by a practice known as "bleeding the beast" which is essentially bilking the government for every penny they can in the form of illegal welfare and municipal payments. For example, the FLDS community in Short Creek declared themselves a school district, took all the state monies earmarked for education, and used the money for things like planes and the construction of a runway.

This is a community that needs to be prosecuted for their systemic racketeering abuses, systemic child abuses, and systemic abuses of women. So yes, the collective punishment is warranted.