Posted on 05/23/2008 6:50:19 PM PDT by FreeInWV
SAN ANGELO, Texas - State child welfare authorities on Friday appealed a stinging court ruling that said their seizure of more than 440 children from a polygamist sect's ranch was unjustified, but they also agreed to reunite 12 children with their parents while the case moves on.
The agreement narrowly specifies 12 children, some of whose parents had filed a motion with a state district court in San Antonio for their release from state foster care.
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mothers hug after the news of a court ruling in their favor. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/LM Otero Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins declined to comment on the agreement.
CPS agreed to allow the parents to live with their children in the San Antonio area under state supervision, said Teresa Kelly, a spokeswoman for Rene Haas, a lawyer for the parents. The families cannot return to the Yearning For Zion ranch, where they lived before the raid.
Aside from mothers staying with their infants in foster care, no other parents from the west Texas ranch have been allowed to stay with their children.
CPS's case for removing all children from the ranch was thrown into doubt Thursday when the Third Court of Appeals ordered a lower-court judge to rescind her decision giving the state custody of more than 100 of the children. The ruling was broad enough to cover nearly every child swept up in the April raid on the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
A teenaged girl from British Columbia was reported among the children taken away by state authorities in the raid.
CPS said in its appeal to the Texas Supreme Court that the appeal court was wrong to say that the vast majority of children at the ranch did not face the sort of extreme danger state law requires for them to be removed without a court order. The agency cited evidence it said showed that the church pushed teenage girls into spiritual marriages with older men.
"This case is about adult men commanding sex from underage children; about women knowingly condoning and allowing sexual abuse of underage children; about the need for the department to take action under difficult, time-sensitive and unprecedented circumstances," the state agency said in its appeal.
The state asked to keep the children in foster care while the case is reviewed.
The limited agreement CPS offered covers 12 children, but it was unclear how many families that includes. Kelly said three of the children belonged to one family who had asked the court for their children's release. Kelly didn't know why the other nine children were attached to the agreement.
Lori and Joseph Jessop had been scheduled to appear in Bexar County district court on their motion to release their three children - ages four, two and one - but CPS offered the agreement instead, Kelly said.
Similar agreements in the near future are unlikely; the couple filed their motion in a different court than the other families.
State officials said in their Supreme Court filing that it would be impossible to return all children covered in Thursday's ruling because they have not determined which children belong to which parents, and DNA tests were incomplete. The appeals court ruling technically applies only to the 38 mothers who filed the complaint.
In justifying their removal of the children from the ranch, Child Protective Services cited as "documented" sexual abuse a statement from a girl who said she knew a 16-year-old who is married with a five-month-old baby; and the statement from another girl that "Uncle Merrill" decides who and when she will marry. The state also cited five underage pregnant girls.
Authorities also said the appeals court overstepped in its ruling because a lower court had discretion to rule in the custody case.
Attorneys for the parents whose case is under high-court consideration urged the justices to reject the state's appeal, saying their children "are being subjected to continuing, irreparable harm every day that they are separated from their parents."
Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said the appeal was no surprise "although one would hope that at some point they would realize the futility."
The parents were prepared for an extended legal battle, he said.
"They're hopeful to get on with their lives, but in reality, they understand," he said.
The agency accused parents of being unco-operative and not providing proper identification - though in dozens of individual custody hearings this week, parents provided state-issued birth certificates. Other sect members mistakenly believed to be minors also provided drivers' licenses as proof of their age.
The Third Court of Appeals said the state acted hastily.
The children were taken into custody more than six weeks ago after someone called a 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 state has struggled for weeks to establish the identities of the children and sort out their tangled family relationships. The youngsters are in foster homes all over the state, with some brothers or sisters separated by as much as 960 kilometres.
Isn't that really special of CPS. /s
Hey. They are above the law. Didn’t you know that?
Ya just git back on your on side there Yukon King , and keep your damn kilometres out of Texas .
The state wanted to make it look like they are being compassionate. Woopee, they released 12 kids under strict scrutiny. Oh, well, those 12 kids are better off now.
I think the action makes TX CPS look bad, though, because they have just admitted that those 12 kids were not being abused by their parents.
“The families cannot return to the Yearning For Zion ranch, where they lived before the raid. “
My husband’s theory is starting to make more and more sense. He says someone wants the ranch property really bad. The FLDS paid $700,000 for it and now it’s worth millions after FLDS made improvements.
One of the stipulations for release of the 12 children is that they not be allowed to return to their home. Interesting.
Another issue that most overlook is that CPS hired an additional 70 staff to manage this effort. If a judge rules that all (or nearly all) children are returned, what will happen to the new staff? What about the embarassment and legal costs of botching this? If they do not retain custody, the CPS will fall upon very hard times.
I read that one of the girls that they were holding in foster care and claiming was 16 turned out to be 23. Sounds like grounds for a false imprisonment lawsuit if their ever was one...
Every day, more things the CPS told us are found not to be true.
If they return the kids, those 70 new CPS workers will all have to go find other “clients”. Which means if you have some neighbors that are particularly picky, you better get out and cut your yards nice and neat, or they might come visit you.
This is a lie. They know it's a lie. They're just piling lies upon lies upon more lies.
Texas law is NOT unambiguous on this. It QUITE clearly states that there must be "immediate danger" before children can be taken from their parents.
IMMEDIATE. The word is in the law. The law doesn't say anything about "extreme danger." It cites "IMMEDIATE danger!"
Jeez. Think they got that yet?? IMMEDIATE NOT EXTREME!
Is this the lying little weasel that sparked this whole hoax, that suddenly nobody can actually find?
More lies. Their case is nothing but lies.
So now they are saying that the marriages were only 'spiritual' marriages, and not marriages in the traditional sense?
If you are seriously interested in the truth, I believe you need to watch this video before making any further comments.
http://www.lhvm.org/vid_lvp.htm
You're wasting your time with this crew, especially Saundra. No matter how much "truth" you put before them, they just can't get their heads out of the sand long enough to see or understand how vicious and how cunning this polygamy cult really is.
Saundra's hysterical posts are nothing more than FLDS talking points, written and released by "Big Willie" Jessup, who was Warren Jeff's body guard and chief enforcer.
CPS never alleged that any specific parents were directly abusing their own children, but rather that the parents were condoning the abuse of adolescent girls and training all the boys and girls to believe that it was appropriate for adolescent girls to "marry" older men upon the command of the "prophet". Needless to say, the "prophet" has been convicted of a sex crime involving a minor and is currently on trial for additional sex crimes involving minors. All the parents were teaching their children to worship this prophet and follow all his orders unquestioningly, and the proof was his framed portrait hanging in all the homes and the schoolrooms.
As CPS identifies parents and matches them to children, and learns about the individuals in various families, it's perfectly appropriate to start allowing some parents to live with their children. Allowing them to go back to the ranch, which is essentially one big shrine to the "prophet", have been designed and built to his precise specifications, and being inhabited only by people who worship this "prophet", would clearly be resuming the brainwashing to worship this child sex convict. That would NOT be appropriate. Hopefully, some of the families will take advantage of the experience of living outside the control of the cult, to figure out that they were all (including the adults) being abused by the cult leaders, and decide not to rejoin it.
Like many terms, the LDS and FLDS have different meanings for "marriage" than others might (e.g., like "eternal life" doesn't mean "immortality").
It's not like the FLDS folks are changing what they're saying, though, from what I understand.
Funny thing is that there were government-issued IDs shown, too, from what I've read.
Seems like they were so blinded by what they assumed was going on, they got tunnel vision and really screwed things up. And you and I will end up paying for it.
I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. I was suggesting that it was the state, not the cult members, who had been less than honest.
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