Hi Julie and Brittanmea,
I've been following this post with a morbid curiosity as to understand you and Brittiania's position.
Not to make this personal, but I get the impression that you've never experienced any hardship or situation in which your life, liberty, or property were at risk.
The reason I say this, is because the logic of your arguments and deductions are so idealistic that I would have sworn that they were conducted by theoritical arosticrats debating the hypotheticals over a glass of cognac.
There are times to hold hypothetical moralistic debates, and then there are times for actions.
THere are great quotes out there about how you judge a society by how it treats the poorest or most unfortunate among us. What say you about a society that tolerates the sexual abuse and abandonment of teenage girls and boys?
In this age, in this society, it is morally apprehensible for a teenage girl to be 'married' to an elderly man against her will. PERIOD. And the 'against her will' part is a biggie since they are 'conditioned' since birth that this is the way it is suppose to be. This is a form of slavery and we abholished slavery about 150 yrs ago.
Is it possible that this cult was a peaceful cult and happy go lucky. Yes, it is possible. And IF this is true, then the authorities will FIND NO EVIDENCE to support the claim that there was sexual misconduct.
However, I believe that to be highly improbable. They will find evidence in the form of little kids running around whose mothers are in fact, 15 - 18 yrs old and simple math will determine that these girls had the children when they were 14 - 17 which means that these men had sex with them 13 - 16 which means that statury rape occurred.
Now, I am a strong proponent for our rights and checks and balances of the government. But never, ever ever, ever ever ever, should we turn a blind eye to an attrocity due to a technicalty or hypothetical moralistic bullshit arguments.
Sometimes, the ends do justify the means. But you must ask yourself, if you must error, if you must make a mistake, which side of the fence do you want to make that mistake on. Would you want to error on the side of the children? Or do you want to error on the side of the adults running this compound?
Error on the side of the children, because if it is an error, if you are wrong, then all you will end up doing is pissing off a bunch of law abidding adults.
But if you error on the side of the adults, and are wrong, then you have abandoned scores of little girls and boys to rape, abandonment, and living a daily ritual of fear, pain, and lord knows what else.
Which side should we error on? If you were a little girl living in this compound, what side would you want the authorities to error on?
Mel...