I think this has been a big news story in the US. An 'off-grid', 'unschooling' family living in utter squalor in Kentucky have had their 10 children removed from them. They were living in filthy conditions, basically a shed with an unfenced pond nearby, litter everywhere.

Turns out that they were regular LDS until recently. They were normally housed and the mother kept a blog showing all the boys in shirts and ties and the girls in Sunday dresses.

http://homespunharvestfarm.blogspot.co.uk/

She also had a personal blog with some of her religious and political opinions which are frightening and LDS-inspired.

http://theycallmemomm.blogspot.co.uk/

The Mom did say recently that she's not really religious any more and I don't know you could really pin this one on the LDS church, in genuine sympathy with her I wonder if she needs mental health care. Thought it was interesting for this forum though.

anon brit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> with an
> unfenced pond nearby

Maybe laws are different the UK, but in the US nearly all ponds are unfenced.

Most ponds in the uk are unfenced as well. The issue here as I understand it was that the pond was right by the hovel that little children were living in, so a drowning hazard.

maybe it was a sewage lagoon

In short, the family lived much as our Mediaeval-early 1900's ancestors lived, which is now considered "strange".

I'll follow Scrooge to Bedlam.

If the grid ever does go down, folks on this board aren't going to survive.

The developed nations no longer have to tolerate the filth that takes the lives of innocent children. In a normal developed nation, when a parent endangers the life of a child, we take the child away to get him or her out of danger. In short, there are laws--good laws.

It's no great argument to declare, "Hey, I know how to live in filth and you don't."

Sorry, I'm calling BS on that one.

Living without running water and without electricity, are completely different phenomenon than living in squalor and filth.

People, antecedent to the current epoch, were educated, literate, intelligent and for the most part made the best of their respective situations.

Hoarding. Improper sanitation. Illiteracy. Rubbish strewn hither and yon. Paranoia. Those issues are not attributable to not having access to running water and electricity.

http://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/images/Educators/Educators_TeacherandStudents.jpg



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2015 11:32AM by schlock.

Until 1900ish large numbers of children died. That's not now seen as acceptable in the rich west.

I'm aware that the U.S. Interwebs are full of debate about how far the U.S. government should interfere in cases like this. I'm personally not very interested in that.


What caught my eye was how fast this family went from being hardcore but mainstream lds to complete destitution, filth and neglect. Btw I was bought up on a smallholding and my take is that these people are totally failing at it and their kids are at risk as a result.

At first I thought that this was more likely to be a mental health issue than an lds one, but the more I think about it the more I think the church has some blame. Huge numbers of kids, patriarchy, etc could well have a part to play in this kind of situ developing.

more likely weren't taking kids to church so someone called child services on them. From the looks of the websites, they were doing this for some time. Kids of a certain age are considered 'deprived' if they do not have their own personal bedroom. Overcrowding is just one reason to call a dwelling unfit for purpose, no running water is another, stronger reason, like no heating. (I don't know how cold it gets where they are)


There was a christian family from Germany who were adequately home schooling their kids when a court (acting on behalf of local government) decided the kids *had to* socialise with other children in a school setting. They were tracked down in France where they had fled and their intelligent, polite children were removed forcibly. There was a case in England of a disabled 18year old who had had no formal schooling, and was actually too old to go to school, was ordered by a court to attend 6th form so he could 'socialise' with his peers in a school setting.

Really, these home schooling horror stories are publicised because home schooled kids see through media lies and spin and can tell what is factual lessons and what is indoctrination. Governments the west over do not like this. Sounds like TSCC.