I am a cautious person by nature. I don't like making quick decisions with minimal information. I will if I have to, when I have to, but I prefer to do my homework, study things out, put together research, make comparisons, and weigh in at the appropriate time and in an appropriate manner. I am not an impulse shopper, unless it's a candy bar when I'm starving. :o(
If I am cautious, even too cautious, in withholding condemnation of someone accused of wrongdoing, it is because of this: I know that sometimes we well-meaning human beings are wrong. I know that we can make mistakes. We hear things that may have a seed of truth, and then that truth gets exaggerated and then that truth is buried in such a blend of truth and falsehood that it is difficult to sift out what is fact from what is fiction. I am wary of judging based on hearsay. There are people who have spent years in prison, even spent time on death row, who were ultimately cleared and vindicated because "better" evidence came along, whether it be information that surfaced later, a witness who didn't come forward soon enough, or DNA matching technology that erased all doubt as to who the guilty party in a crime really is. I want convincing evidence before I am willing to condemn.
Also, I would like to point out that while I have challenged ideas in the broader polygamy discussion, and argued against fierce criticism, I have not attacked anyone personally. I have not been a harsh "critic" of polygamy's critics. I can be a harsh critic of abusive conduct, and of hyperbole, and of lying, when that conduct, that hyperbole, or that lying is designed, intentionally, to harm others. I couldn’t care less if someone "lies" out of compassion ("No, you don't look fat in those jeans", or "well, maybe it’s just the pants are not that flattering a style, it's not you!"). But there are those who manipulate, lie, deceive, cheat, steal, etc., to get gain, to win favor, to influence or to gain power over other people. They may take other people's money, their wives, their children, and their possessions, or even defame their good name. Defamation can cause loss of jobs, loss of clients, loss of friends, and cause many repercussions that go with that.
When I cross paths with someone who is a destructive person, intentionally or unintentionally, I give that person a wide berth. I do not need, nor want, to invite that into my life, thank you very much. If a destructive person turns that destruction into my path, and targets it at my family or friends, I will fight back. I am not going to stand for it. I promise you. I will use every means legally available to me to protect myself and my family from a person who seeks to wreak havoc and bring harm.
There are those who think nothing of lying, exaggerating, stereotyping, and misrepresenting information to create a false impression, smearing an entire class of people because of the conduct of certain individuals, and that is wrong. It hurts people. It hurts families. It hurts children. My policy is, "First do no harm." I help where I can help. I may be slow to condemn, but I act fast once I KNOW the truth for a fact.
I know from working in the world of domestic violence that domestic violence is real. I have sat in the room with a domestic violence victim whose eye socket was shattered and bleeding while she cried and explained to me that she couldn't leave her husband because she couldn't afford to pay her mortgage payment and would lose her home. I also know that the most dangerous time for a domestic violence victim is the time she decides to leave her abuser. At my job, I collect news reports and help edit the DV Related Deaths Report. A good number of those deaths are murder/suicides (female is murdered, male kills himself), and most of them, year after year, follow a break-up or a filing for divorce.
I mention this because I want you to know that I know, I understand, that it must be the victim's decision to act, because only that victim truly knows the danger, the risk, the consequence, of her (or his, as the case may be) action.
Likewise, how much harder is it for those of us working to help DV victims get the resources they need, when police officers or victim advocates show up at a DV call and must deal with a person who is not a DV victim at all, but someone trying to manipulate the system, someone who knows that crying "DV" and getting a P.O. may be a route to tipping the scales in a custody battle, or even a way to bring some misery into the life of a former partner through an act of spite.
Such people undermine legitimate cases of domestic violence. They do a disservice to victims who risk their lives to make that one phone call, or that courageous gesture to leave with their lives and the lives of their children on the line.
So I make judgments with caution. I believe victims when they tell me their stories. I refer them and offer them resources, and I let them make their decisions on their own behalf, so that they can feel what it means to be in control of their own destiny. I don't push, and I don't "save". Ultimately, we can't do anything anyway until a victim is ready to act for him or herself.
I want to help; I do not want to harm.
We all leave a footprint in this life, and that footprint grows and grows after we are gone. I don't want my footprint to be a destructive one.
I was a fairly happy-go-lucky child. My mom said I was born talking and cut my teeth arguing with her. :o) I was very blessed to have loving, nurturing and freedom-loving parents who encouraged us kids to be whatever we wanted to be, to dream big and live our dreams.
At the same time, I struggled with strabismus from the time I was born. I had glasses as a toddler and for years afterward, until eye surgery repaired the muscle and allowed for a cosmetic solution to my "four eyes" appearance. I was teased a lot in those early years. I even ran over my glasses with my tricycle, and destroyed them in other creative ways on several occasions because they were a misery to me. It didn't matter that they helped me SEE. They caused me horrible pain and suffering. They caused me rejection. Of course that was a financial blow to my parents who did their best to provide everything we needed, with my dad at times working three jobs and going to school, and my mom home with several little kids.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, I had my surgery and didn't have to wear glasses anymore. Still, when I read a lot (which I loved to do), or wrote a lot (which I loved to do), or didn't sleep enough (who wanted to sleep with so many cool things to do?), my eye would turn in. Throughout my middle school and high school years, I avoided making eye contact with people for fear someone would notice. Sometimes someone
did notice and asked me if I was looking at them or somewhere else. It always left me embarrassed and in greater fear of other people seeing my weird eyes. I suffered a variety of types of bullying during those years. I had been raised to turn the other cheek and follow the Golden Rule. I didn't believe it was right to "be mean". How do you defend yourself against bullies and people who are picking on you if you restrain yourself from several routes of self-defense? Fighting wasn't allowed, fighting back with words was just as bad if those words were cutting or cruel. I did learn that I was skilled at verbal sparring. I became adept at verbal slams and could flip a verbal attack back on the attacker in such a way that it became unpleasant for people to go after me that way. Still, it grieved me, and I felt shame, that it wasn't really the way Jesus would want me to be, so that, after a time, I repented of it and decided to find a different way to deal with challenging people.
When I was 16 years old, I was riding a motorcycle with my brother, and some neighbor kids who were goofing around in the street decided it would be fun to link arms and block us. My brother swerved and we fell on the pavement. After we brushed ourselves off, my brother walked the bike to the house but I stayed and chewed them out for causing us to fall. We could have been seriously injured and I felt protective of my brother who was younger than me. The neighbor kids swarmed around me and laughed and prodded and put their arms around me and acted like they were being friendly, but it was shallow and fake and I knew it, but what I didn't know was that it was just a distraction so that one of the boys could put his arm over my shoulder, reach down and grab my breast. I was shocked and appalled, slapped his hand away and ran into the house in tears.
My mother had been folding laundry in the living room and saw it happen through the window. She called me into the room and told me she knew what had happened. I didn't want to talk about it. I was humiliated, and even more humiliated that my mother knew. She said we needed to confront him and tell his parents, but I just wanted it to go away. Ultimately, I went to my room and my parents went to the boy's house. With his parents in the room, my mom told them what she saw, and the boy denied it. His parents supported him, his father even saying to my mom that the fact that I had not come was proof enough for him that it didn't happen.
What was worse was that the boy's older brother was also there, with another neighbor boy who was a year older than me. He was the older brother of some of the girls who had been hanging in the street causing the problem in the first place. For the next several weeks at school, these older boys spread rumors about me at school, that I liked it when boys grabbed my breasts and other cruel things. I was the victim, but I was the one who was taunted by my classmates.
I said nothing. I did nothing. I didn't defend myself. I didn't counter anything that was said. I was silent.
After weeks of this, I was feeling intense despair about going to school. I wanted to home-school but my parents wouldn't let me. They wanted me to be strong, to stand up for myself, and they were afraid that if I left school, I would be running away and that would only serve to further injure my self esteem.
One day, while riding the school bus home, one of the older neighbor boys who had started all the teasing in the first place, began making insulting comments about me on the bus. I felt deflated, I looked down at my books and wanted to disappear, and wondered what I could do or what could finally make it stop. To my surprise, a popular boy who was always kind to me intervened. He delivered a sharp insult to the older boy, who was twice his size, but nowhere near as popular, and I watched as the mob of insults and teasing turned its attention away from me and onto the mean boy who had started it all. I couldn't have done it because I had deprived myself of permission to defend myself if that defense seemed mean or cruel in any way.
I know what it feels like to be a victim. I know what it feels like to be mean, to inflict pain, even if it has been intended for my own self-defense. I am not the kind of person to hurt someone else for my own gain or personal interest. But I have injured other people's feelings when I have tried to defend myself. I have hurt others’ feelings when I didn't mean to, or when I didn't know any other way to fight back. I don't consider that weak, but I do consider it outside my principles. I try to adhere to my own code of honor when it comes to dealing with people, but I do realize that when I am dealing with a destructive person, who does not have the same code of honor, who will lie, cheat, deceive and manipulate to cause harm, I have not always been successful in turning the other cheek, or in refraining from using my own power to put that person in a place where he or she cannot have power over me or wield that power to commit harm or evil or destruction upon my family. I am not going to apologize for that. I don't believe I should have to. I have the right to protect myself and to protect my family.
I'm not 16 anymore. I learned a lesson that day. I know how mobs work and how dangerous and malevolent they can be. And as a result, I am cautious. I make careful decisions. I don't rush to judgment. I don't give a lot of weight to rumors or gossip. I weigh out my actions and act decisively. Some of you may feel that that is too slow, but I have been a victim of mob derision and cruelty, and of lying destructive people at different times in my life, to know the ignorance that controlled and drove it.
Last week, Warren Jeffs was found guilty of child sexual assault. I have never made any secret about my utter disdain for sex abuse of children. The statement released shortly before the verdict by the
Principle Rights Coalition sums up my feelings perfectly about child abuse. I have never heard of or seen anything so disgusting or sickening as the evidence released in this trial. I don’t know what it is that creates a sexual predator. Where do all of these sexual predators come from? There seems to be an endless stream of them: Philip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, and the bottomless pit of perverts caught on camera on shows like Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”, people from all different backgrounds, communities and positions of trust.
Regrettably, I am afraid there is reason to take pause (as this
Salt Lake Tribune editorial says) at the way the evidence was collected in the 2008 YFZ ranch raid. Evidence obtained in the Escalade when Jeffs was arrested may be safe, but how do we know that yet another higher court will not throw yet another Jeffs conviction out? How hard is it for the state to just do its job legally and honestly, and convict people in a way that provides justice to all involved? If a conviction is overturned on a technicality, is that justice for anyone? It certainly isn't justice for the victim, and it isn't accountability for the perpetrator, if the perpetrator is guilty. If the state bends the law to convict, how can we be confident that we have justly convicted a guilty party and not an innocent one? As I mentioned before, unfortunately there are those who have been wrongly convicted and suffered years of imprisonment before they are vindicated.
Also, I continue to be dismayed at the ongoing mess that has been made in connection with the UEP trust. I remain unconvinced that the state had the right to take the trust and reorganize what was religious into a secular document. I believe that was un-Constitutional. It has nothing to do with sex abuse. It has to do with abuse of power, and abuse of power is wrong whether it is committed by the hand of an individual, or by the long arm of the state.
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