This is one of the worst news stories I’ve ever, ever heard.

Two young boys in the Czech Republic were kept for months in a basement dungeon by their mother. Not only were they sexually and physically abused, naked in their own urine and chained up, they were also forced to cut themselves. Why? So that their mother could feed their raw flesh to their relatives.

The entire torture was conducted in accordance with text messages from the leader of their “religious” group, the Grail Movement. This leader is referred to only as “The Doctor.”

And this is a true story.

The mother, who is currently on trial, now claims that she was brainwashed. She says she’s sorry and doesn’t know how she could have done such things.

I don’t buy it for one second. You know how this was discovered? A neighbor caught it on his baby TV monitor. According to various articles, that is because the mother had her own TV monitor hooked up so that she could watch the boys while they were in agony whenever she felt like it. To me, there is no coming back from that.

Now the questions seem to be (1) will the court buy the “brainwashed” excuse, and (2) how far is a religious organization allowed to go in the name of their beliefs? Read More »

On April 3rd, an unidentified 16-year old girl called Texas police officials to report that her 50-year old husband had raped and abused her. She led authorities to a 1700-acre property called the Yearning for Zion ranch that housed hundreds of polygamist Mormons.

Monday’s raid of the compound yielded some 416 children and 136 women in what Texas officials are calling the “largest child-welfare operation in Texas’ history”. The women were dressed in homemade pioneer era clothing and many of them were pregnant.

It’s important to point out here that this particular sect of Mormonism is not indicative of Mormonism as a whole. It is a deviant sect, a radically fundamentalist sect that is reinforcing stereotypes Mormons and even more functional polygamists have long been trying to discourage. Warren Jeffs,the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the man who built the compound, hasn’t been making things easy. Read More »