Reply #78: Your first assertion was addressed. [View All]

[Igel]

It underpinned the first judge's decision to have all the children in the compound taken into custody.

The appeals court heard testimony and concluded that the assertion was false. The children were not all living in a communal setting, the court ruled. Since not all the children were treated the same and living in the same conditions, they could not be treated the same and the judge could not assume they all were subject to the same conditions. The court found that there was likely evidence that some children were subject to abuse; since they were not all in the same household, this evidence wasn't justification for taking all the kids into custody.

The SC might disagree. The first judge may decide that *some* kids should be kept in custody, narrowing the case significantly. Of interest to me will be what use is made of evidence from kids that should not have been taken into custody; typically, evidence improperly obtained cannot be used, but I don't know if this is true for CPS-related issues and I might learn something.

As for not having the parents of some minors there, note the mess that Zoe's Ark got in in Chad or Sudan: They took kids that I'd consider orphans from their extended families. But in this case, the fact that some kids' parents had died did not entail their being orphans. I don't know the details of the minors living with the group away from their parents; if they had the parents' permission to be there, and they're not being abused (sexually or physically), it's no longer my concern.

I don't like sexual or physical abuse. But the idea of worrying about education and the like is, I think, still primarily a family concern. I wouldn't like having my kid taken away because somebody thinks I'm teaching him something inappropriate, whether that's a religion, a political philosophy, or some facts--whether Islam or Xianity, conservativism or liberalism, or creationism or evolution. When he's 18, he'll make up his own mind (and I'm willing to venture he'll do that long before he's 18).