ms hamilton gets it right

(in a way that is). of course we could stop a LOT of this shite if we (canada included) PROSECUTED polygamists. it's against AMERICAN LAW AND CANADIAN LAW. when one knows 13 and 14 and 15 year old girls are FORCED into 'marriage' and raped and FORCED to have children and young teen aged boys are FORCED to leave the only world they know and one does nothing, one deserves to be publicly flogged (figuratively, that is). f**k 'religious' rights. when you're torturing children, THEIR rights take precedence. ms hamilton is wrong in her thinking we actually WILL start prosecuting more of these cases. hell, our politicians are committing THE most heinous crimes and we're letting THEM get away with it. why should we make another bunch of old white guys pay for THEIR crimes? (my anger is not only directed at THIS religious sect but ALL religious sects who abuse children - or even adults - in the name of THEIR god)

Prosecuting Polygamy
By Marci Hamilton, Huffington Post
There is nothing so dangerous for a child as an insular, patriarchal religious organization, and the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, whose compound in El Dorado, Texas, is now under control of the Texas authorities, is one of the scariest examples. It took the extraordinary bravery of a 16-year-old girl to set in motion a chain of events that should have happened long ago.
She reported that she had been "married" to a 50-year-old man, forced to have sex, get pregnant, and have a baby. Because of her, Texas authorities have taken hundreds of children and women to safety. From all reports, they have yet to find her.
I give the Texas law enforcement and child protective agency officials a great deal of credit for moving in on the compound. They bucked the three trends in our culture that have kept these children at risk for far too long.
First, authorities in general are too fearful of intervening in religious enclaves, even when the harm is so awful and apparent. Yet, there is no right of religious liberty to engage in child and spousal abuse, or polygamy for that matter. The taboo against holding religious entities accountable is simply foolhardy.
In fact, enforcement of the polygamy laws could have stemmed many of these abuses. Yet, it is the rare prosecutor who will prosecute on the basis of the polygamy laws, despite the fact those laws are utterly clear and repeatedly have been upheld against constitutional attack. The largest enclave of FLDS resides in Bountiful, British Columbia. A misguided Canadian public official announced just yesterday that the government cannot go forward with a prosecution of polygamy against the FLDS (where the accounts of abuse are legendary), because of concerns about religious liberty. If Canadian law, though, protects polygamy, it also protects the child and spousal abuse that inevitably follow. That is not religious liberty, but rather religious licentiousness. American prosecutors have been marginally better, though there are many more cases out there that they ignore on daily basis..........