The Denver Post, also picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune, reports that the Texas Rangers are now investigating the call prompting the FLDS raid by Texas law enforcement:
Texas Rangers are investigating whether a Colorado Springs woman made calls pretending to be an abused girl in a polygamist compound, sparking a mass child protective action in Eldorado, Texas.
Rozita Estraletta Swinton, 33, was arrested at her home Wednesday evening on charges of false reporting in two Colorado cases, but Texas Rangers were present for the arrest, Colorado Springs police said Thursday night.
Colorado Springs police said Swinton’s arrest Wednesday stemmed from local charges involving calls in February in which she claimed to be an abused child being held in a basement.
The investigation is focusing on Rozita Swinton who has been arrested in connection with phony calls in Colorado. It is amazing to me how little the MSM is covering this story, particularly the cable networks who fell overthem selves to link beds in the FLDS temple to deviant sexual rites.
History of prior arrests for false reporting:
According to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records, Swinton also was arrested Wednesday on a fugitive warrant from Douglas County relating to another false reporting case.
On June 23, 2005, Castle Rock police arrested her on a misdemeanor charge of false reporting, according to CBI records.
Det. Sgt. Scott Claton said an adoption agency called June 21, 2005, saying a woman identifying herself as Jessica called saying she was considering giving up her baby to adoption.
She later left a letter on the agency’s door saying she changed her mind and was considering leaving the infant at a fire station and committing suicide.
Prior conviction for prior false reporting to police:
Swinton was charged June 28, 2005, with obstructing police and making a fake police report. She pleaded guilty to the false reporting charge and is currently serving a one-year deferred judgment in the case, according to Douglas County Court records.
Connection to FLDS case–calls traced to Colorado Springs
ABC News reported on its website Thursday that former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints member Flora Jessop, who operates a rescue mission for teenage girls trying to escape the sect, told Texas authorities she had gotten calls from a girl claiming to be an abused member named Sarah.
A girl with that same name made the original calls for help to a San Angelo, Texas, hotline, sparking the raid in which 416 children were taken into protective custody.
Jessop told ABC News that the Texas Rangers directed her to record the calls and the Texas Rangers traced those calls to Colorado Springs.
Wow! I guess it’s still too early to know whether Swinton actually made the calls to Texas, which is why I suppose the Texas Rangers haven’t yet made any arrests; but, one has to wonder where that same Texas restraint was when they raided the FLDS ranch in full military regalia, based on what could possibly have been a phony phone call. And, when did they know the calls came from Colorado–before the raid, after the raid?
Live Blogging FLDS Hearing updates San Angelo Newspaper
April 18, 2008 at 9:38 am
There should be no wonder as to why the MSM is focusing it’s attention on the “deviant sexual rites”: Sex sells. It’s the public’s purient interest in sex that is driving this case. Nothing more, nothing less.
April 18, 2008 at 9:58 am
Flora Jessop, she was telling the media the mothers just up and left their children on Monday trying to say they don’t care about their children. She used the media to deliver a recorded message to the mothers. It’s like she is comsumed with hate for them. She has continually said bad things about them and is selling a book about it. She is profiting from this drama.
Why does anything she say or report come into consideration?
April 18, 2008 at 10:12 am
This is how I feel: God works in mysterious ways. Those kids needed help even if that story wasn’t true. 400 kids being raised in that fashion, imagine the dandelion effect and how many lives would be affected. I’m in favor. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to eat my words.
April 18, 2008 at 10:54 am
AS i have said before there are those that believe that these children have been abused.
It is not that i think or believe that abuse does not happen in any sector of the worl or to any nieborhoods or any families.
I find it odd and unbeilvable that it would happen to 416 children all in the same nieborhood.
If this is about child RAPE why are we naot hearing about an arrest of a Rape susspect?
April 18, 2008 at 11:42 am
Sounds great until it’s your kids they come to round up, annegb. “But I’m not raising my kids poorly or strange”, you say? Well, that’s for a child protective services employee to decide after a brief visit to your home.
April 18, 2008 at 11:58 am
john f. – don’t try to scare annegb. Texas has created a huge mess here, but there’s some truth to what anne says. Are you comfortable with young girls being isolated from the outside world, taught that God wants them to become plural wives and then being assigned to have sex with older men as a plural wife? Even though this may not meet the standard definition of “abuse”, it comes pretty close.
April 18, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Pretty Close? Is that a legal term of art used by the Texas CPS in child removal proceedings?
April 18, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Those law enforcement officers in their APC bristling with automatic weapons, why just the other day the Salt Lake Tribune had an editorial on how police are “outgunned”, maybe the Midland Sherrif’s Office could have used air support also.
I used to think that if only the Prophet Joseph had been around in contemporary times he would never have faced the collusion of government and mobs ending in his assassination. I thought how more tolerant and understanding a society we are today and respectful of religious diversity. Well starting with Waco I began to realize that what happened to the Prophet Joseph in 1844 would be reprised in 2008. Baptist buses taking away the children!
April 18, 2008 at 12:27 pm
john f. is actaually quite on the mark here. In this case, it is the the government which decides what the standard for abuse is. Many times, these standards are purely arbitrary and politically motivated. In some states, merely homeschooling your child is frowned upon by social workers and public school administrators as abuse. Isolation is abuse? In my worldview, perhaps isolation is a GOOD thing, what with so-called “roles models” such as Paris Hilton, hip-hop, rampant violence and “prosti-tot” fashions flooding our society.
While some things clearly are abusive, we tread a slippery slope when trying to expand the definition of abuse. After all, if radical groups like PETA had their way, parents would be tried for abuse because children are fed meat and dairy products.
April 18, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Baptist busses taking away the children is not far fetched. Remember the Baptists converging on Salt Lake City a few years ago to convert Mormons? they would simply view the capture of over 400 FLDS children to be a “blessing” and a chance to “save” them from damnation.
April 18, 2008 at 12:50 pm
ECS
CPS is known to terrorize innocent parents. They are known to lie and not respect parents rights. Parents are guilty from the start versus being innocent.
April 18, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Guy you are right, something is wrong when every homeschooling book out there has to have a section on “What to do when they knock!” or “Protecting your rights!” The thing is, it’s not even about dealing with a truant officier or school district. It’s always a chapter on how to deal with CPS who has nothing to do with the mandatory attendance laws.
Mr. Klicka has a good book called Homeschooling The Right Choice, it has a great skit that teaches moms how to deal with CPS.
April 18, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Gene you are right,
sorry
April 18, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Evidence gathering. Arrests don’t always happen within minutes of discovering a crime.
My the internet generation are impatient…
I will say that from the testimony I’ve been reading at the live blogging it seems like Texas has very, very little evidence at all. Most seems to rest on Voss who doesn’t exactly come off as a terribly credible witness. The psychiatric testimony this afternoon was pretty compelling that most children should be reunited with the parents.
It’s always hard to tell from third hand accounts what’s going on. And of course we can’t tell the mind of the judge. But I’ll lay really good odds that by next week most kids will be back with their parents.
I hope upcry holds Texas officials to account for all this. Particularly this Voss character.
April 18, 2008 at 2:02 pm
The psychiatric testimony this afternoon was pretty compelling that most children should be reunited with the parents.
I dunno, Clark. The psychiatric evaluation is pretty compelling to me. These children are not as “mature” as other kids, therefore, um, well, ok, yeah, what that Voss lady said.
I did enjoy seeing that many of the commenters in that article are now expressing sympathy for the FLDS, whereas a week ago it the comments were almost all anti-FLDS.
April 18, 2008 at 2:21 pm
In this case, I think it’s preferable to err on the side of protecting the childrens’ physical safety than the parents’ rights.
April 18, 2008 at 2:52 pm
“If these children are returned to their homes today, are they in any immediate danger of sexual, emotional or physical abuse? another mother’s attorney says .
No, the expert says.”
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 18, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Guy – have you seen this article in the NY Times?
SAN ANGELO, Tex. — Testifying Friday in the case of 416 children taken from a polygamous compound, an investigator from the state’s child protection agency said there was evidence that 20 or more under-age girls had given birth as a result of sexual contact with older men.
April 18, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/us/18cnd-polygamy.html?hp
April 18, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Buried at the bottom of CNN’s front page.
Bed in temple not used for sex, sect expert says…
April 18, 2008 at 5:45 pm
There does appear to be evidence that many under age girls are pregnant or have already given birth. That’s a pretty strong case for statutory rape which is obviously child abuse. The expert’s testimony that “mom2oneson” is saying Yay too was in reference to a certain age group of children, not the young girls. Of course, before certain children can be returned to the parents, they will first have to determine who the parents are. Doesn’t sound like the FLDS group is very forthcoming in that regard. DNA might be the only way to really sort all that out. If they want to get their children back as soon as possible, they should risk the bigamy / polygamy charges and start cooperating. I don’t know why the law cares about polygamy anyway – as long as they are adults. However, that’s another issue altogether. My concern is whether there is child abuse. I’d rather the CPS err on the side of caution than do nothing. The parents are getting a pretty fast hearing and nobody has been put in jail – sounds like they are being more than fair here and doing their best to make it as easy on the children as possible.
I hope there will be a way to keep this from being an “all or none” decision.
The judge certainly needs a lot of wisdom to deal with this situation.
April 18, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Some background of teenage pregnancies in Texas:
The non-Hispanic white rate is 60 per 1,000, the black rate is 130 per 1,000 and the Hispanic rate is 145 per 1,000.
The rate at YFZ seems to be 45 per 1,000, 20 percent lower than the rate for other Texas girls in the polygamous girls’ demographic cohort and more than 60 percent lower than among Hispanic girls in Texas.
That seems to indicate that underage girls at YFZ are 20 percent less likely to have sex than other white girls across the state and 60 percent less likely to have sex than Hispanic girls across the state.
Further, the rate of teen pregnancy at YFZ is lower than the rate of teen pregnancy in more than three-quarters of Texas counties.
The best thing the state can do now is apologize. If they are sincere in wanting to protect teenaged women from getting pregnant, they ought to take lessons from YFZ, because they are doing a better job of it that the state as a whole.
April 18, 2008 at 9:04 pm
If kids were taken away for abuse that may or may not ever happen, all kids everywhere would be in state custody. If you lived next door to a child abuser, would you want your kids taken because they may be in danger from your neighbor? This seems like a lot of guilt by association with the kids the sad victims.
I just read that the call which began the raid may have been a hoax! In the meantime, over 400 kids and families have had their lives permanently and publicly shattered by the state. Why didn’t they verify the call first?
April 18, 2008 at 10:32 pm
For what is worth I heard a clarification of this on the Greta Van Susteren’s Show (Fox News, around 10:10 PM Eastern Time, April 18) by the FLDS lawyer/spokesman. He said that the 20 underage pregnant girls happened over a 10 year period of time (I am assuming this comes from the Bishop’s record introduced as evidence yesterday). Naturally, not all of these births occurred in Texas. He also said that currently there are five underage girls that are pregnant (which is the number reported by the Trib yesterday). He also said that that in the majority of these 20 cases the male was only a few years older than the female (i.e. the male partner was also a teenager). Finally, he said that the marriage of the 13 year old mentioned by Texas CPS comes from this 10 year record as well and that it occurred nearly ten years ago.
April 19, 2008 at 10:04 am
If the police actually wanted to help which I doubt… They could have easily gone to the ranch and taken each woman aside and asked her “are you being abused or held against your will ? if so we can escort you out of here and give you a safe place to live”
They didn’t do that because they don’t give a #@*& about child abuse or rape. This is all about religious persecution. These people are a threat to the corporate consumer culture. Living there in their idylic sustainable commune making their own food and clothing. Corporate america doesnt want women sharing husbands and living together in harmony. They want insecure women competing with eachother over men and buying alot of cosmetics and getting silicon breast implants and buying a new wardrobes made in sweatshops thousands of miles away.
Police really dont care about rape. They only care on TV shows. It has always been this way. Any woman who has ever reported a rape to police knows exactly what Im talking about.
America is filled with suffering children who live in dysfunctional families and alcoholic parents. Id like to note here that Mormons dont drink or use drugs.
While the average american kid { whose mother is at working making tax money to fund the war in Iraq to kill other peoples kids} is being raised by the television these Mormon kids had not just one stay at home mom but several mother figures doting on them. Lucky kids…
I bet their neighbors got really jealous and that is why they decided to run them out of texas. Who is going to want to stay in a place where your kids aren’t safe from being stolen.
Human beings mature at 14 this is a fact of nature. People can pass all the arbitrary laws they want about who is a child. Heck they could say anyone under 30 is a child and shouldn’t have any rights. It is all about divide and conquer. Of course I’m against forced marriages. But does anyone have true choice in their lives or is it all an illusion. Does a black kid born in the getto ever have the choice not to be treated like a black kid that was born in the ghetto ?
People should stop falling for these distractions intended to divide us into warring camps. Our world is being destroyed by global warming we should all be working towards living in sustainable villages like these Mormons were trying to do.
Hurting these people hurts all of us in the end. Taking away their rights takes away our rights.
April 20, 2008 at 9:53 pm
here is a page on the hoax-caller, and I do beleive she is a seious example of the filthy political games just beginning to emerge from the mud:
http://www.freeconstitutionblog.com/2008/04/polygamist-raid-executed-on-false.html
The hoaxer is listed as an Obama delegate. She looks to be another Tawana Brawley. Obama better be quick about stomping out her connections to him if he wants to hold onto his campaign because she is probably more brainwashed than people accuse the FLDS women of being, on account of she probably has been running this scam with some support from political dirty-tricksters for years. Even if she is legitimately just nuts, with some kind of social-service form of Munchausen’s, it is obvious that her plitical friends know her wellenough to make her a delegate, then they know her well enough to manipulate her illness to trigger Civil unrest in Texas: again: Clinton–Reno–Waco….. SEEN IT BEFORE!
April 20, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Maybe this woman is a patsy though even if she is guilty of this malicious prank call it is still the fault of the authorities for what happened next.
The technology exists to retroactively find every cell phone that was in that area at the time the call was made and investigate if the call was actually made from those phones. There are ways to trace calls made to hotlines and it would have revealed that the call was made from a cell phone in another state. I still have my doubts about who made the call and frankly it really doesn’t matter. The baptists wanted to run the Mormons out of their town that is plain for anyone to see.
Ive seen some coverage of this on television and I found it very disturbing. It was pure propaganda they portrayed these mothers as sub human creatures with no feelings. And then they interviewed some social worker who implied that the hostage chidren were happy. yea right.
Then the reporter proudly proclaimed that they would all be DNA tested as if they were all a bunch of criminals who had commited a crime. What a messed up justice system. Real criminals have more rights than these people. Real criminals can talk to their lawyers and get out on bail. Not the case for these young Mormon “enemy combatants” I bet they are working those poor kids over with all the techniques they have been perfecting at Gitmo.
The people who applaud what happened to these people would have been right at home working in one of Hitlers concentration camps tossing babies into fires.
April 24, 2008 at 11:47 am
[...] A military raid on YOUR HOUSE or church can now be conducted after nothing more than an anonymous phone call by someone making false allegations. [...]
April 24, 2008 at 12:04 pm
There is nothing freakier than religious fanatics.
Except political conspiracists.
April 24, 2008 at 1:20 pm
the people surrounding these circumstances come up for election from time to time that will be an opportunity to express the way you feel about the handling of this affair
April 29, 2008 at 6:18 am
So they raiding FLDS compound on the pretense of a fraudulent phone call. Investigation should have stopped and the government should leave those folks alone. I don’t agree with their religion or lifestyle but who am I to judge? who are all of you to judge?