“SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — Adult mothers who have been allowed to stay with their young children since they were taken from a polygamous sect will be separated from them after DNA sampling is completed next week, a child welfare official said Saturday.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther late Friday ordered that parents and children of the Yearning For Zion Ranch submit DNA samples to help sort out family relationships that have confounded authorities since 416 children were taken into state custody two weeks ago.

The child welfare agency has said that the sect encourages adolescent girls to marry older men and have children, and that boys are groomed to become future perpetrators. Sect members deny the allegations.”

From the AP >

The continuing saga of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, where members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints settled, highlights how religion can be used to brainwash and negatively affect the lives of otherwise ordinary people. The children were taught from a very young age that rejecting polygamy would land them in hell.

It is true that people can be brainwashed without religion but there is no denying that this was a religious organization and that God, damnation, and the rest of the church’s belief system were the tools that were used to abuse the victims.

“BAGHDAD:At least 40 women have died this year at the hands of religious vigilantes in the southern city of Basra, the police chief said Sunday, describing the discovery of mutilated bodies accompanied by dire notes warning against “violating Islamic teachings.”

“The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior,” Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in this oil-rich city some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Iranian border and 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad.”

Those who behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion,” Khalaf said.”

Via the Herald Tribune >

The people who committed these murders included notes saying that the women were killed for un-Islamic behavior.