Officials seize 416 children from polygamist families

[amalgamate]

Mothers in ranch raid sent away from children
Judge wrestles with custody issues for hundreds in polygamist sect case

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Texas officials who took 416 children from a polygamist retreat into state custody sent many of their mothers away Monday, as a judge and lawyers struggled with a legal and logistical morass in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.

Of the 139 women who voluntarily left the compound with their children since an April 3 raid, only those with children 4 or younger were allowed to continue staying with them, said Marissa Gonzales, spokeswoman for the state Children's Protective Services agency. She did not know how many women stayed.

"It is not the normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made," Gonzales said.
The women were given a choice: Return to the Eldorado ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon sect, or go to another safe location. Some women chose the latter, Gonzales said.

The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption. The sheer size of the case was an obstacle.

"Quite frankly, I'm not sure what we're going to do," Texas District Judge Barbara Walther said after a conference that included three to four dozen attorneys either representing or hoping to represent youngsters.

The mothers were taken away Monday after they and the children were taken by bus under heavy security out of historic Fort Concho, where they had been staying, to the San Angelo Coliseum, which holds nearly 5,000 people and is used for hockey games, rodeos and concerts. The polygamist retreat is about 45 miles south of San Angelo.

Mothers complain kids getting sick
Authorities ordered the children to be moved after some of the youngsters' mothers complained to Gov. Rick Perry that the children were getting sick in the crowded fort.

About 20 children had a mild case of chicken pox, said Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu with the state Health Department.

Perry spokesman Robert Black said the governor did not believe the children were being housed in poor conditions at the West Texas fort. "Let's be honest here, this is not the Ritz," Black said, but he called the accommodations "clean and neat."

Monday's courtroom conference was held to work out the ground rules for a court hearing beginning Thursday on the fate of the children.

The judge made no immediate decisions on how the hearing will be carried out. Among the questions left unanswered: Would a courtroom big enough to hold everyone be available at the Tom Green County Courthouse, or would some kind of video link be employed?

Texas bar officials said more than 350 lawyers from across the state have volunteered to represent the children free of charge. Moreover, the 139 mothers who voluntarily left the sect to be with their children may hire lawyers, too, to help them fight for custody.

The sheer numbers left the judge perplexed as she considered suggestions from the lawyers for how to handle Thursday's hearing.

"It would seem inefficient to have a witness testify 416 times," the judge offered. "If I gave everybody five minutes, that would be 70 hours."

In an unintended illustration of the problem, Walther gave the lawyers 30 minutes to break into groups and report back to her with ideas. It took almost two hours for everyone to reassemble.

The raid followed a call to a domestic violence hot line from a 16-year-old girl who said she was beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband.

In addition to becoming a monumental legal morass, the case is proving to be a public-relations headache for the state.

Over the weekend, some of the mothers went on the offensive, complaining the children are falling ill and are frightened and traumatized from living in cramped conditions at the fort, with cots, cribs and playpens lined up side by side.

[Bent_Bladi]

that's disturbing...

[Al-khiyal]

Appeals court rules Texas acted improperly in seizing FLDS children

SAN ANGELO, Texas, May 22, 2008 -- A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch. The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled Thursday that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law.

Child welfare authorities defended their seizure of the children from the ranch as they mulled their next move. In a statement on its Web site, the Department of Family and Protective Services recounts the evidence it felt showed the children were in danger. But it concludes: "While our only duty is to the Court of appeals ruling children, we respect that the court's responsibility and view is much broader. We will work with the Office of Attorney General to determine the state's next steps in this case."

The Third Court of Appeals said the state did not have sufficient evidence that the children on the ranch were at immediate risk of abuse. It is not yet clear how soon children will return home, and the timeline depends in part on the next move by Child Protective Services.

The ruling is considered immediately in effect, said Julie Balovich, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which filed the appeal. The agency represents 48 mothers from the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The appeals court rulings covered 41 of the mothers.

At a press conference earlier in the day, Balovich had said there was a 10-day period for the district judge to vacate the order placing children in state custody. That is incorrect, Balovich said Thursday evening. CPS could choose to comply with the order and return some or all children. It could seek a stay of the appellate ruling. And it could appeal, a move it has already indicated to TRLA attorneys that it intends to make. If CPS and the district judge do nothing, the appeals court will order the children returned to their parents, Balovich said.

Status hearings cancelled

As Balovich spoke to reporters in San Angelo, FLDS women stood behind her beaming and teary-eyed. Afterward, they declined to comment, but gathered in groups and hugged one another.

The court ruled the FLDS sect's belief system alone did not endanger the children, and that the ranch should not have been treated as one household, Balovich said. "It's great thing for families in Texas, it's a great thing for justice in Texas," Balovich said.

Attorneys for FLDS children have been arguing the state has not shown individual children were abused or in danger. "All they did was prove these children exist and they lived at the ranch," said Amanda Chisholm, also a TRLA attorney.

Meanwhile, hearings on the children's status, scheduled for this afternoon and Friday, have been cancelled. District judges are conferring about what to do next.

Critiquing the state's case

Texas officials raided the YFZ Ranch, home to the sect's members, to investigate a later-discounted abuse allegation. Once at the ranch, they found evidence of a pattern of abuse - such as sex with underage girls - that justified removal of all children, CPS said.

"The very first interviews at the ranch revealed a pattern of underage girls being "spiritually united" with older men and having children with the men," its Thursday statement said. "Investigators also observed a pattern of organized deception in those first interviews."

Records found at the ranch "further confirmed the pervasive pattern of sexual abuse," it added. They listed "13 girls who were ages 16 and 17, including nine living at the YFZ Ranch. All nine of the girls living at the ranch were listed as wives in the document."

But the appeals court ruled CPS failed to provide, as required by Texas law, "any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety" to children on the ranch who had not reached puberty. The department also did not prove pubescent girls were in physical danger, the judges said.

CPS officials testified that five girls who became pregnant at ages 15 and 16 - coupled with an FLDS belief system condoning underage marriage and pregnancy - warranted immediate removal. But that simply wasn't enough, the judges said.

"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 appeals court wrote. "It is the imposition of certain alleged tenets of that system on specific individuals that may put them in physical danger."

Reaction to the ruling

While the appeal was filed on behalf of TRLA's clients, the reasoning would apply to all of the children, Balovich said. Attorney Rod Parker, a spokesman for the sect, agreed. "This validates what we've been saying for days. There's no immediate danger to the children," he said. Parents "are very thrilled. They are looking forward to having the children come home," he said.

In San Angelo, attorney Polly Rea O'Toole, who represents Richard and Susan Barlow, said of the ruling: "I am overwhelmed. I'm just thrilled. It is exactly the right decision." The couple has eight children. "They were overcome with emotion and thrilled at the prospect of getting their children back," she said. Richard Barlow said he thanked God and his attorney.

Two FLDS women walking into the courthouse who were approached by a reporter hadn't yet heard about the decision. "Hurray!" said Sarah Barlow, 45, as she received the news. Added Ilene Jeffs, 45: "Praise the Lord. We're grateful for that." Barlow has two children in state custody. Jeffs said three of her children were taken by the state.

Attorney Stephanie Goodman, who represents an FLDS mother, said: "We're just very pleased right now. We'll wait to see what happens next." Added attorney Gonzalo Rios, who also represents FLDS mothers: "It feels real good. Every day it's been an uphill battle."

Lawyer Nancy DeLong praised the appeal courts' criticism of the mass hearing that was held before a district judge ordered the children into state custody. At the hearing, general evidence about the sect was presented, rather than evidence about each child's situation.

"I think this is a first step toward recognizing the hearing was not done correctly and that there are certain rights parents have," she said. "We're very hopeful the district court will abide by this decision."

[Al-khiyal]

Texas officials plan to appeal ruling on polygamous sect's children

May 23, 2008 -- Texas child welfare authorities plan today to appeal a stinging ruling that found they had no right to seize more than 440 children from a polygamous sect's ranch, a court spokesman said.

Child protective services notified the Texas supreme court today that "they will file something today", court spokesman Osler McCarthy said.

The state can ask the high court to block the ruling by the Third Court of Appeals in Austin. The appellate court found the state failed to show the children were in any immediate danger when they were rounded up from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado and sent to foster facilities around the state.

A message left for a child protective services spokeswoman was not immediately returned today.

Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hailed yesterday's ruling as vindication. They have said there was no abuse at the ranch in west Texas and they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

Church members said they were elated but expected an appeal.
"We're going to take it one day at a time," James Dockstader said this morning on NBC's Today programme. "We expect that they would go ahead and appeal it, but we are in full hope that" the children will return soon.

He and his wife, Nancy, have five children in state custody.

The ruling in one of the largest custody cases in US history, hammered the state for removing the children and directed state District Judge Barbara Walther to vacate the order. Technically, it applied only to the children of 38 mothers named in the appeal, but the ruling was broad enough to cover nearly every child swept up in the April raid.

The children were taken into custody more than six weeks ago after someone called authorities claiming to be a pregnant, abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.

Child welfare officials argued that five girls at the ranch had become pregnant at 15 and 16 and that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex with older men and groomed boys to enter into such unions when they grew up.

But the appeals court said the state acted too hastily in sweeping up all the children and taking them away on the broad beliefs of the renegade Mormon sect.

"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse ... there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent,"' the court said.

"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal," the court said.

The court said the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children.

Half the youngsters taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.

The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children because some parents might be abusers.

The Department of Family and Protective Services issued a statement defending the raid, saying it removed the children "after finding a pervasive pattern of sexual abuse that puts every child at the ranch at risk."

"Child protective services has one duty - to protect children. When we see evidence that children have been sexually abused and remain at risk of further abuse, we will act," the department said.

[Al-khiyal]

Families welcome back 400 children taken from sect

June 3, 2008 -- One of the biggest child custody cases in US history reached a turning point yesterday when a judge ordered the return of more than 400 children who had been taken from a polygamist sect's ranch.

The majority of the children are likely to return to the ranch, called Yearning For Zion, in El Dorado, Texas, run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).

A spokesman for the group, Willie Jessop, said that it was pleased with the decision. "We are grateful that the court at least allowed mothers and children to come back," Jessop said.

The order came after the Texas supreme court ruled last week that the state's child protective services agency had been wrong to raid the compound in April.

The agency, acting on anonymous telephone calls reporting sexual abuse at the compound, removed 468 children and placed them in foster care across the state.

But the appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that officials had failed to prove that the children were in immediate danger when they were removed.

Investigators failed to identify the pregnant 16-year-old who had made the calls alleging that her middle-aged husband beat her, raising the possibility that the calls were a hoax.

Despite the failure, authorities insisted they had little choice other than to remove the children.

"We had no choice but to treat those calls as credible," said a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety. "If we had not treated them as credible and something bad happened, people would be very upset."

At a brief news conference yesterday a child protection services spokeswoman insisted that the investigation would continue. "We still feel very strongly about this case and the safety of these children," she said.

Authorities believed that underage girls were being forced into marriage and sex at the FLDS compound.

The raid was the second time in a year that the sect has been the focus of a major investigation. In November the sect's leader, Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life for being an accomplice to rape related to a marriage he performed in 2001. He is currently in jail awaiting trial on charges of sexual conduct with a minor and incest.

Documents seized during the raid showed that Jeffs, 52, had married four girls under the age of 14, one in Utah in 2004 and three at the Texas compound. Recovered photographs also appeared to show Jeffs kissing his young brides. One shows him with his 15-year-old wife at the birth of their baby.

Last week authorities took DNA samples from Jeffs to help them determine whether he is the father of children born to underage mothers.

Under the terms of the order issued by the court all the children must remain in Texas, and parents collecting their children must be photographed and agree to cooperate with any inquiry. They must also attend parenting classes.

The raid on the compound brought back memories of the 1992 raid on the Branch Davidian ranch near Waco, Texas, which resulted in the deaths of 21 children.

The FLDS compound is similarly cut off from the rest of the world. The raid and the images of young mothers and children being removed from their community prompted intense media scrutiny of the group.

Former FLDS members who had left the sect were frequently featured on US television news discussing their experiences and how to escape the polygamous lifestyle. After initial reluctance, several mothers from the sect also began to appear regularly in the media defending their way of life.

Dressed in simple dresses with their hair tied in buns, the women were an echo of another era. Their children were similarly unworldly, with social workers reporting that many of them were unfamiliar with simple childhood items such as crayons. They had also been taught to fear anyone wearing red clothing, the colour of the devil.

Prosecutors alleged that the cult was forcing girls as young as 12 into marriage. But initial reports of more than 30 underage mothers proved to be mistaken as investigators were able to determine the age of the women.

The FLDS, which claims it has around 10,000 members, split from the Mormon church more than a century ago. As well as the compound in Texas and members in Mexico and Canada, it openly practices polygamy in two neighbouring communities in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.

Although polygamy is illegal, the FLDS maintains that a man must have three wives to reach the highest realms of heaven.

[amalgamate]

i'm so glad they returned back to their parents. Haram for those little ones to get taken away so quickly.

I hope they could get rebound from shock smoothly.

[Al-khiyal]

Raymond Jessup goes on trial in Texas for marriage to underage girl

October 26, 2009 -- Jury selection began today in the trial of a Texas religious figure accused of a polygamous marriage to an underage girl, the first of a dozen defendants to face charges in a crackdown on what authorities describe as the sect's culture of polygamy and underage sex. In a case that drew worldwide attention, Texas authorities last year removed more than 400 children from the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an insular Mormon breakaway sect, after receiving an anonymous telephone call reporting sexual abuse there.

Raymond Jessop, 38, is the first of a dozen members of the group accused of facilitating or engaging in underage polygamous marriages. In his trial, prosecutors are expected for the first time reveal evidence of illicit sex on the sect's Yearning for Zion ranch, a 1,700-acre plot of former scrubland that includes gardens and a massive limestone temple. Jessop, 38, is son of the sect's de facto leader. The man the group believes to be its prophet, Warren Jeffs, is in prison after being convicted of being an accomplice to rape for his role in arranging an underage marriage.

Jury selection got underway in Eldorado, Texas today as prospective jurors lined up in the rain outside a municipal building. Attorneys must seat a jury of 12 from pool of about 300 people, and could face difficulty because of the case's notoriety and the small size of the community. The Associated Press reported that at least 10 in the jury pool sported the long frontier-style dresses and buttoned-up shirts favoured by members of the sect, many of whom vowed to register to vote ahead of the trial in order to be eligible for jury service.

The case unfolded in April 2008 when a caller now believed to be a hoaxer told Texas authorities that she was a teenaged wife and had been sexually abused. On a visit to the compound, child protection agents found several very young pregnant women and removed more than 400 children from the compound, a move later reversed by the Texas supreme court. The matter provoked a national debate over the rights of religious groups to live as they please without state interference, as well as revulsion over the allegations of child marriage and polygamy and discomfort with the sect's rejection of mainstream American society.

Women of the sect went on television to defend their lifestyle and begged for the return of their children, wearing their customary dress. The children were soon restored to the sect but authorities vowed to pursue the men who married underage girls and engaged in sex with them. Documents seized during the initial raid indicated that one of Jessop's wives, a 16-year-old girl, endured three days of difficult labour but was not taken for medical treatment because Jeffs feared her age would be discovered and the sect prosecuted. "I knew that the girl being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there," Jeffs wrote in a journal seized from the ranch.

Jessop is also charged with bigamy in connection with Jeff's daughter, whom he is accused of marrying the day after she turned 15. Under Texas law no one under 17 can consent to sex. Jessop faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sexual assault of a child. The trial is expected to take two weeks. The sect broke from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago. Its members settled in sparsely populated areas of the American west and moved to Texas about six years ago from the group's historic home in the Utah-Arizona borderlands. The mainstream Mormon church long ago renounced polygamy.