I've not written about what appears to be the organized, ritual abuse of young girls by the FDLS cult near San Angelo and in other parts of the country. My horror at the stories of sexual abuse knows no bounds -- but I have more questions than answers on the story, and so I have held back from commenting.

That said, I've got a problem with this detail released by Texas officials -- I find it unreasonably prejudicial and not particularly illuminating.

Although Cockerell didn’t elaborate on the broken bones, a report by his department’s Child Protective Services division said medical exams and interviews indicated “that at least 41 children have had broken bones in the past.”

“We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we’ll continue to examine,” the CPS report said.

Maybe i'm nuts, but 41 kids out of 464 with broken bones AT SOME POINT in their childhood doesn't seem all that outrageous to me. It is less than 10%, which would probably be about the rate my classmates and I suffered growing up. Heck, I can remember one summer in which one of my closest friends fractured his skull when fell riding up a steep hill on his bicycle and another broke her arm falling out of a tree in her yard -- and there weren't 20 school-aged kids on our street. The raw statistics on the broken bones tell us nothing -- and until we learn more about the types of breaks and possible causes, we can't no that these 41 broken bones really mean anything. CPS should have waited to disclose the information until they could determine more conclusively whether these injuries were from normal childhhood accidents or from abuse.

Posted by: Greg at 10:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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