Thread: Texas Seizure of Polygamist-Sect Kids Thrown Out

Texas Seizure of Polygamist-Sect Kids Thrown Out

Thursday, May 22, 2008 3:29 PM



SAN ANGELO, Texas -- A Texas appeals court said Thursday that the state had no right to take more than 400 children from a polygamist sect's ranch, a ruling that could unravel one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered "legally and factually insufficient" grounds for the "extreme" measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.

The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.

The state never provided evidence that teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.

It was not immediately clear whether the children scattered across foster facilities statewide might soon be reunited with parents.

Every child at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado was taken into state custody more than six weeks ago, after Child Protective Services officials argued that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and groomed boys to become adult perpetrators.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the court said in its ruling, overturning the order to keep the children by state District Judge Barbara Walther, a former family law attorney.

The appeals court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as an individual household and that any abuse claims could apply only to individual households.

Julie Balovich, an attorney representing 38 mothers of the children, said the appeals court "has stood up for the legal rights of these families and given these mothers hope that their families will be brought back together."

"It is a great day for families in the State of Texas," Balovich said.

She said Walther has 10 days to comply with the appeals court ruling.

CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said department attorneys had just received the ruling and would make any decision about an appeal later.

"We are trying to assess the impact that this may have on our case," he said.

Calls to FLDS officials were not immediately returned Thursday.

Roughly a third of the children taken from the west Texas ranch were babies, and only a few dozen were teenage girls.

Of the 31 originally believed to be underage mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults _ one was 27 years old _ and the state conceded a 14-year-old girl had no children and was not pregnant, as officials previously asserted.

Five judges in San Angelo, about 40 miles north of Eldorado, have been hearing CPS's plans for the parents seeking to regain custody. Those hearings, which began Monday, were scheduled to run for two more weeks _ though it was unclear how the appellate ruling might affect those cases.

The custody case has been chaotic from the beginning. The hearing in which Walther ruled that the children should all enter state custody ran two days.

Hundreds of lawyers crammed into a courtroom and nearby auditorium, queuing up to voice objections or ask questions on behalf of the mothers who were there in their trademark prairie dresses and braided hair.

CPS has struggled with even the identities of the children for weeks.

The sect children were removed en masse during a raid that began April 3 after someone called a domestic abuse hot line claiming to be a pregnant abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.

The FLDS, which teaches that polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago. Members contend they are being persecuted by state officials for their religious beliefs.

http://www.newsmax.com/us/polygamist_re ... 98219.html

Of the 31 originally believed to be underage mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults _ one was 27 years old _ and the state conceded a 14-year-old girl had no children and was not pregnant, as officials previously asserted.

There are still about 15 children with babies. I bet these girls have not been emancipated from their parents and are just the unmarried concubines.

This isn't over. I bet this is about to become more than a CPS issue.

I don't know how they can say the ranch is not a group home, when all of the older boys are pooled together into one dwelling.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Dixie

Of the 31 originally believed to be underage mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults _ one was 27 years old _ and the state conceded a 14-year-old girl had no children and was not pregnant, as officials previously asserted.

There are still about 15 children with babies. I bet these girls have not been emancipated from their parents and are just the unmarried concubines.

This isn't over. I bet this is about to become more than a CPS issue.

I don't know how they can say the ranch is not a group home, when all of the older boys are pooled together into one dwelling.

Dixie

Most of the boys are kicked out! The old men don't want the competition for the little girls they enjoy raping...
Concerning the ages, they have no records and the kids were coached to lie!

Jessop shocked polygamists' children may return to families
May 22nd, 2008 @ 2:10pm
by Sandra Haros/KTAR

A woman who escaped polygamy and has vowed to fight abuse was shocked at today's news.

Flora Jessop says she's praying the children will stay with the state. Jessop said if and when those kids are returned their fate is sealed.

"A life of systemic long-term abuse and neglect and rape and they will create another generation of horrifying abuse," Jessop said.

Jessop vowed long ago to protect others from the type of abuse she suffered growing up in a polygamist community.

But Jessop is still hopeful after today's news.

"I'm hoping that CPS can go forward and convince the court that keeping those children in state custody is the right thing to do to protect them," Jessop said.






http://ktar.com/index.php?nid=6&sid=845084

Although I don't condone this lifestyle and there probably is abuse and law breaking going on by someone around there, I am glad to see that law enforcement can't take everyone without evidence, witnesses and due process of law. Its called civil rights. Not civil rights for the criminals but for the innocent. Are you going to make 400 people victims to save 100 from being victims? No, it doesn't make sense. This is the same rationale used in Iraq. Kill a hundred thousand innocent people to knock out five thousand terrorist? It defies logic. Would a bank robber steal $100 grand and then trade it for $10 grand? No, this is the same example. If you have a few drug dealers in an apartment community do you arrest the whole apartment community, especially if you have no proof? No, you don't. Once the bad results outweight the good results, the rationale for the good results have then turned to bad results as well and therefore has eliminated the good that can come out of it. Get the evidence by legal means, find the criminals and then arrest them, charge them, try them and let the jury decide, its simple law enforcement.

If they wish to stop this type behavior then maybe they should make a law saying only so many people can live together. As far as it being a compound seems like nothing different than a secured community. Ask the adult people if they want to live there of their own free will if they say yes, let them stay, if they say no, let them leave. The minors are controlled by the parents and if the parnets want to stay and their children to stay, then they stay too.

If the Parents are in on the abuse and the police have no evidence of the abuse and can't prosecute under the law, God will prosecute them later if they have done wrong.

I think this will be used to make tougher laws on home schooling, another way to end more of our rights. The government will tell us we need to send our kids to public schools so the government will know the children are ok. After all isn't this the only way to stop this type of thing while still upholding our so called civil rights. I've heard in some states they are already outlawing home schooling. Could this be an attempt to take that nation wide? We know the politicians us the PCism and children to get sympathy and control of things people wouldn't outherwise allow. If your against it and want to home school your kids, you must be hiding something aye? Seems like another slippery slope to me.