Posted on 04/14/2008 8:17:56 PM PDT by BlackVeil
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — 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, spokewoman 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.
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 chickenpox, 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."
CPS said the move to the coliseum had been in the works since last week, but couldn't be done sooner because the facility had been booked for another event and had to be cleaned and set up for the children.
CPS also said about two dozen teenage boys were moved to a facility outside San Angelo with the judge's permission. "We don't normally say where we place teens," Gonzales said when asked where they were sent.
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 will need 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.
The secretive nature of the sect — and the indoctrination children receive from birth to mistrust outsiders — have added to the confusion.
Randoll Stout, one of the lawyers who plan to represent some of the children, said the youngsters "seem to change their names. Adults change their names. Children are passed around."
Betty Balli Torres, executive director of the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, said 10 women went into the San Angelo legal aid office last week seeking help and reported there were 100 more women who needed lawyers.
Attorneys began meeting with the women over the weekend. She said it was vital that the mothers be represented by lawyers. Otherwise, they could lose their children — "what we call kind of the death penalty of family law cases," she said.
A church lawyer, Rod Parker, said the 60 or so men remaining on the 1,700-acre ranch have offered to leave the compound if the state would allow the women and children to return to the place with child welfare monitors. But the state Children's Protective Services agency said it had not yet seen the offer and had no comment on it.
The sect practices polygamy in arranged marriages between underage girls and older men. The group has thousands of followers in two side-by-side towns in Arizona and Utah. The sect's prophet and spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, is in prison for forcing an underage age into a marriage in Utah.
In Salt Lake City, dozens of polygamist wives with children in tow held a rally on the steps of City Hall to denounce the Texas raid. Rally organizers brought 475 wrapped care packages for the children in state custody.
"Reunite these children with their families. Let them go home," said Kent Johnson, an 18-year-old in a pinstripe suit who choked up.
Associated Press reporter Kelley Shannon contributed to this story from Austin.
(Yeah, isn't it nice to know we live in a "free republic"...sounds like the "iron curtain"...and Utah has long had a reputation of being a spiritual iron curtain)
Are there large islamic groups living in seclusion in Texas?
If they whisked her out of there, they have just invited the Feds to join the party, especially if they moved her out of Texas.
Dizzy is a good word to describe it. I’ve been searching on the net for information re: the phone calls. Here’s an article in the Houston Chronicle:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5701506.html
It explains why it was necessary to separate some mothers from their children, if indeed they were their children. Six women took them up on their offer of “safe haven.”
In the article there is a quote from ‘Brenda:’
“It’s been all through history, “ said Brenda, the mother of two. “We were just here trying to live a peaceful, happy, sweet life. We don’t understand why we can’t do this freely.”
Apparently six women didn’t think it was such a ‘sweet life.’
As for ‘Brenda’ excuse me while I go bang my head. She can’t understand why they can’t abuse children freely?
Wintertime, wake up. This isn't setting precedent, it's FOLLOWING precedent. This sort of thing happens all the time in regular child abuse cases. I've seen it myself here in NY.
CPS can go into a school, interview your child and they don't come home that afternoon.
The only difference between this case and others is the magnitude of children involved.
BTW, this sort of behavior by CPS is not unknown amongst homeschool circles. In many cases, homeschooling is enough justification to yank someone's kids. You know that.
Then it appears that you are fornicating with ignorance.
I think they are all mentally “challenged”. (I’m trying to be nice here!)
Have you heard that the kids don’t know who their REAL mothers are? They call numerous women “mother” so they couldn’t give them back to them anyway until they know who belongs to who.
I’ll bet they watched the kids interact with the “moms” and realized there was no way they were ever going to get the truth of identity, etc.
What a mess!
Hopefully, the six who chose ‘safe haven’ can shed some light on who belongs to who.
Yes, I do know that.
What are the chances that this kids will be sexually and physically abused while in foster care? From what I have read, there is a very high likelihood.
God bless those 6 women. I’d be willing to send money to help them get on their feet far far away.
I agree. Friends of mine who were foster parents themselves said that any kid who has been in foster care for more than two years is guaranteed to have been sexually abused at some point during that time.
When that happens, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
It’s also a very high likelihood that these kids in this situation will be physically and sexually abused if they are sent back to the FLDS compound. Pregnant underage girls are proof of that.
As opposed to the near 100% chance that any girl child will be sexually abused by her ‘spiritual’ husband then put on welfare fraudulently?
As opposed to the greater than 50% chance that any boy child will be abandoned and ‘excommunicated’ because there are not enough women to go around; and dumped out on the street with no skills or education?
Get a grip.
bookmarking—you ladies are doing a great job with all of this information, am enjoying reading! :)
Only the Muslim half of large communities in Irving and Dallas. There is a HUGE mosque off 161, and women swaddled in hijab even when it is 105 degrees.
The fact that the guy who honor killed his two daughters at DFW airport a few weeks ago hasn’t been found should also be a matter of concern.
Difference is, the polygamists were politically correct targets. Take on a Wahabi lobby, and then you’ll get sued.
It’s sad that there is such a double standard.
It’s a toss up trying to decide who’s worse; the Muslims or the FLDS?
I believe that the word "sweet" is the word that the cult uses to define the permanent demeanor that the women are to wear at all times and when they are being warned or admonished they are instructed to 'be sweet' or 'live sweet'.
“The fact that the guy who honor killed his two daughters at DFW airport a few weeks ago hasn’t been found should also be a matter of concern.
Difference is, the polygamists were politically correct targets.”
The difference is that this isn’t an individual, this is a 10,000 member cult in four states and two nations, that has a financial empire, and it’s religion is sex with young underage girls in the form of performing marriage ceremonies between them at age 12 to age 16, with men of ages up to 50 and 60 and older.
These sex practices aren’t practiced on girls found hitch hiking and such, the religion literally consists of breeding compounds where hundreds of women married to a handful of men produce the youthful off spring that the older men assign to each other.
This is the practice of the religion itself, this story is not about a bad priest, or a bad element of a few guys at one of the compounds that went renegade, this isn’t about a new leader that led some of them astray from the basic tenants of their religion before he showed up.
This is the religion of the group, and we have been trying to stop them for generations, it is a tough thing to do because of all the legal complications of gathering hard evidence with such a closed cult and the fact that as Mormons living under Mormon law enforcement they were winked at.
Busting a man or 50 men is not the end, because this is not a simple cult that got out of balance temporarily, the child rape coupled with the rest of the polygamy that is also illegal but involves the girls and women over 17 is the core of the religion, either the cult ends, or the rape continues.
The phrase is “Keep Sweet.” Apparently it is something of a mantra repeated to young girls to remind them of their place.
“Keep Sweet” thanks
That was a reference to his daughter Amy that he quoted on foreign policy once back in about 1979, she is 41 years old now, she was born in 1967.
He is still married to his one and only 80 year old wife.
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